Valerie van Heest
Award winning author and inductee into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, Valerie van Heest is a veteran shipwreck explorer who combines her passion for documenting historic shipwrecks with her creative and interpretive abilities to preserve and promote Great Lakes maritime history. Her mission is to share the stories with adults and children through public lectures, museum exhibits, articles and books in ways to educate, entertain and inspire. She is the recipient of multiple awards for her books, exhibits, documentary films, as well as her volunteer work promoting Michigan’s maritime history.
Valerie has written extensively for a variety of magazines and documentary films. She has appeared on major television news networks as well as the Discovery Channel and is a regular presenter at museums, libraries, and film festivals sharing the dramatic stories of ships gone missing on the Great Lakes. As a director of the non-profit Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates, Valerie spearheads the search for ships lost off Western Michigan in collaboration with author Clive Cussler of NUMA and shipwreck hunter David Trotter, which has resulted in the collective discovery of more than a dozen shipwrecks. She has written four books, Icebound, Buckets and Belts, Lost on the Lady Elgin and Unsolved Mysteries: The Shipwreck Thomas Hume, and is a partner in Lafferty van Heest & Associates, a museum exhibit design firm.
Additional information may be found at:
Valerie will be presenting the following programs at this year’s show: