LimnoTech’s Legacy and Future: Built on Science, Guided by Values
By Tim Dekker, PhD, PE, CEO & President (Ann Arbor, MI)
August 18, 2025
We have reached a pivotal moment – LimnoTech has been in business for 50 years! For five decades, we’ve been deeply engaged in water science, engineering, design, policy, and planning. And as we reach this moment, we’re excited to be where we are. Our company is small, integrated, and nimble, with the privilege of having an outsized influence on our field.
LimnoTech was founded in 1975 on a very simple set of core ideals: Do cool work, work with great people, and change the world!
Those ideals served us well for decades, and really grounded us a few years ago as we went through a series of big changes. Our founder, Paul Freedman, stepped back from his CEO role, we developed a new leadership team, and transitioned the ownership of our company to 100% employee-owned. Everything we did as part of that process was guided by our commitment to the work, to each other, and to our mission as a company.
As we approached our 50th anniversary, we took some time to explore these elements – our work, relationships, and mission. We gathered everyone together for a corporate retreat where we delved into our founding ideals, reflected on the core values that have shaped us, and planned for the next 50 years.
This was LimnoTech’s first facilitated values exploration process. Yikes! As a brand-new CEO, I was worried – it sounded very corporate to have a facilitated discussion around values. I fretted that it would be a bust. I was afraid we would come up with a generic set of words that look pretty much like everyone else’s, and our transition into a featureless, corporate firm would be complete.
These were my innermost fears. But, in the run-up to the retreat, as we started to get into the values discussion, our facilitator took the time to dig into our culture. The conversations started to get real and honest. It quickly became obvious that people of all tenures had strong ideas about who we are and what makes us different.
We questioned that claim. Are we really different? Doesn’t everyone say that? But that claim had some real strength in the simple fact that we’re still here – in an age when so many companies like ours have succumbed to corporate buy-outs, consolidation, or straight-up failure. We are still standing and thriving. Why? There has to be a reason.
At the retreat, people debated, sometimes vehemently. People felt strongly about the words we use to describe ourselves and our values, because they deeply care about the company. So we had to get it right. And a few things kept coming up: we don’t compromise on the science, and we take on the hard work of leadership in innovation. We find partners who feel the same way, and we stick with them for a long time. And by doing so, we can do big things, in a world that needs us to do big things.
Those ideas led to our values and serve as core concepts to lead us into the next 50 years. Are they different? We think so. People know about our commitment to the science of water, and our leadership in the water space is out of proportion to our size. Our partnerships with clients, collaborators, and each other go back a long way – in many cases, decades. This is all true to our founding ideals – we found that our values describe how we do innovative and impactful work, what it means to work with great people, and how that enables us to restore and protect the environment to have a world-changing impact.
As we reflect on those partnerships on our anniversary, I would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude and thanks to:
Our clients — thank you for your trust and for challenging us to grow.
Our partners — thank you for standing with us and sharing your expertise in pursuit of common goals.
Our staff, past and present—thank you for your brilliance, passion, curiosity, integrity, and commitment to the science.
And to our community of collaborators, advocates, and families —thank you for helping us build a legacy that helps impact the world for the better.
This world is changing fast, and the demands on water resources are ever-increasing. There is important, urgent work to do, and we are in the right spot to make a big difference alongside our clients and partners. I couldn’t be more excited about our team at LimnoTech, and we are all looking forward to the next 50 years!
