Member Spotlight: Betsy Clayton, Lee County Parks and Recreation

Our February Member Spotlight is a new member to our chapter! 

Betsy Clayton is the waterways coordinator for Lee County Parks and Recreation. She assists with Lee County Parks’ media relations with editing and writing, and also works with the Lee County Visitor and Convention Bureau in hosting eco-, outdoors and kayaking journalists from around the country and globe.

Her primary job is to market and coordinate the Great Calusa Blueway, a 190-mile mile marked canoe and kayak trail from Bonita Springs to Bokeelia via Estero Bay, Pine Island Sound and Matlacha Pass, the Caloosahatchee River and its tributaries (see www.calusablueway.com). She coordinates the Calusa Blueway Paddling Festival (www.calusabluewaypaddlingfestival.com), a 10-day countywide eco-festival with more than 70 events. It happens each year the last weekend of October through the first weekend of November.

Clayton also is a freelance journalist. She’s a columnist for The News-Press’ Tropicalia and an outdoors columnist for Florida Weekly. She writes for luxury lifestyle magazines and boating publications throughout the U.S. and Canada.

A graduate of the journalism school at the University of Oregon, Clayton also has lived in Washington State, California, Washington D.C. and – of course – Southwest Florida, her home for 16 years.