Liz Perkins - Secretary

Liz Perkins is delighted to call Chatham her year-round home after spending 40 years in Pittsburgh, where she worked as a clinical social worker. While there, she was an avid member of a 20-person dragon boat team, competing in races throughout the region and developing an appreciation for both the area’s waterways and the rewards of working together as a team.

Liz also volunteered extensively with Somali Bantu refugee families resettling in Pittsburgh. Helping families adapt to an unfamiliar language and culture after years in refugee camps offered her a profoundly different perspective on her own community and reinforced the importance of connection, understanding, and support.

Her connection to Cape Cod and Pleasant Bay reaches back much further. Liz spent childhood summers on the waters of Stage Harbor and Pleasant Bay and still remembers scallops clapping through knee-high eelgrass—an underwater landscape that has largely disappeared. Those memories inspire her commitment to restoring and protecting the natural resources that make the Bay so extraordinary.

Liz serves as Secretary of Friends of Pleasant Bay and is a member of both the Membership Committee and Native Cultural Initiative Committee. Through the latter, she helps advance efforts to strengthen relationships with the region’s Indigenous communities and expand opportunities to experience and connect with the Bay. She is particularly committed to making the Bay accessible to young people, people with disabilities, and Indigenous community members, and is proud to help protect a place that has been part of her life since childhood.