- Group
- Board of Directors
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- Director
Joan Forsberg is a well-known maritime historian, scuba diver, author, speaker, and underwater videographer, whose passion is to explore Great Lakes shipwrecks. Joan is the author of Divers Guide to the Kitchen, and with her husband, Cris Kohl, she is the co-author of seven books: Shipwrecks at Death’s Door, Our World-Underwater-The First 40 Years, The Christmas Tree Ship, The Wreck of the Griffon,The 150 Most Famous Canadian Shipwrecks, Great LakesShipwrecks-Recent Discoveries, andShipwreck Tales of Georgian Bay, and is the co-producer of dozens of historical documentaries. A popular speaker at dive shows, museums, libraries, civic organizations, and dive clubs, she has also been interviewed on television on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, CBS, Chicago public TV, and was recently featured on the series, Expedition Unknown. Joan is especially proud of her long history of serving the non-profit industry. In the 1980s, she served as Treasurer for the Wheaton Community Theater Foundation, and also had responsibility for the physical plant used for storage of all theater materials. In service to the diving world, she was the Chairman of the Shipwrecks and Underwater Archaeology seminar room at Chicago’s Our World–Underwater Show from 1996 until 2019. In her three terms as President of the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago (2008-2010), she spearheaded several significant maritime history projects, particularly the sinking of the historic ship named the Buccaneer, a former Coast Guard rumrunner chaser,as the newest shipwreck site off Chicago. Joan was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame (WDFOF) in 2010, served as a Trustee on the Board of Directors for six years, and was a three-term Chairman of the Board. She was Copy Editor for Wreck Diving Magazine for virtually its entire lifespan and, since 2018, has proudly worked beside her WDHOF colleague Bonnie Toth, as Copy Editor for The Journal of Diving History
