Play all videos
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Titles and positions as of June 6, 2014
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Welcome
James Nachbaur, AAAS Fellow |
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Perspectives on Resilience
and Change
Introduction by Darshan Karwat, AAAS Fellow
Rear Admiral David Titley, Director, Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk, Penn State University
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Terms & Arenas for Preparedness & Resilience Action Introduction and moderation by Elise Lipkowitz, AAAS Fellow
- Laura Petes, Senior Policy Advisor, Climate Adaptation and Ecosystems, Office of Science and Technology Policy
- Vivian Thomson, Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences and Department of Politics, University of Virginia
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Current
Federal Efforts
Introduction and moderation by Elise Lipkowitz, AAAS Fellow
- Susan Ruffo, Associate Director for Climate Preparedness, White House Council on Environmental Quality
- Laura Petes, Senior Policy Advisor, Climate Adaptation and Ecosystems, Office of Science and Technology Policy
- Alice Hill, Senior Advisor for Preparedness and Resilience, National Security Council
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How Conflicts Inherent in Preparedness & Resilience Are Handled Today
Introduction and moderation by James Nachbaur, AAAS Fellow
- Marcy Rockman, Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for Cultural Resources at National Park Service
- Jalonne White-Newsome, Environmental Justice Federal Policy Analyst, WE ACT for Environmental Justice
- Megan Susman, Office of Sustainable Communities, U.S. EPA
- Alice Madden, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental & External Affairs, U.S. DOE
- Jessica Grannis, Adaptation Program Manager, Georgetown Climate Center
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Enabling
& Regulating Corporate Actions in Preparedness & Resilience Efforts
Introduction and moderation by David Hunter, Senior Government Representative for Environment, Industry and International Affairs, Electric Power Research Institute
- Lindene Patton, Chief Climate Product Officer, Zurich Financial Services
- Jackie Roberts, Chief Sustainability Officer, The Carlyle Group
- Jeff Hopkins, Vice President for Policy and Analysis, Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
- Michael Gerrard, Director, Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School
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Making Water Systems More Resilient
- Pilar Thomas (moderator and speaker), Deputy Director, Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, U.S. DOE
- Jonathan Reeves, Manager, Office of Emergency Management, DC Water
- Susan Leal, Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President for Water in the Americas, AECOM
- Lindene Patton, Chief Climate Product Officer, Zurich Financial Services
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Closing
Comments & Discussion
Introduction by James Nachbaur, AAAS Fellow
- David Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Senior Adviser to the President, Oberlin College
- In conversation with Kate Sheppard, Senior Reporter and Environment and Energy Editor, Huffington Post
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Perspectives
on Day 1
Introduction by Darshan Karwat, AAAS Fellow
Michael Dorsey, Interim Director, Program on Energy & Environment, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
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Perspectives
on Resilience & Change
Introduction by Darshan Karwat, AAAS Fellow
Harriet Tregoning, Director, Office of Economic Resilience, Department of Housing and Urban Development
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Lessons from Disasters
Introduction and moderation by Irina Feygina, AAAS Fellow
- Barbara Allen, Professor and Co-Director, Department of Science and Technology in Society, Virginia Tech
- Nate Kleinman, Steering Committee, Cumberland County Long-Term Recovery Group, New Jersey
- Daniel Wallach, Executive Director and Founder, Greensburg GreenTown
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Benefits & Perils of “Disaster Thinking” & Discussion with Disaster Speakers
Introduction and moderation by Irina Feygina, AAAS Fellow
- Sabrina McCormick, Associate Professor, Environmental and Occupational Health, George Washington University
- Rear Admiral David Titley, Director, Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk, Penn State University
- Jonathan Reeves, Manager, Office of Emergency Management, DC Water
Bringing back for discussion:
- Barbara Allen, Professor and Co-Director, Department of Science and Technology in Society, Virginia Tech
- Nate Kleinman, Steering Committee, Cumberland County Long-Term Recovery Group, New Jersey
- Daniel Wallach, Executive Director and Founder, Greensburg GreenTown
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Should the Rules Be Changed?
Introduction and moderation by Darshan Karwat, AAAS Fellow
- Jessica Grannis, Adaptation Program Manager, Georgetown Climate Center
- Victor Flatt, Director, Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation, and Resources, University of North Carolina School of Law
- Michael Dorsey, Interim Director, Program on Energy & Environment, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
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Synthesis
& Key Insights
Discussion led by Elise Lipkowitz, Irina Feygina, Darshan Karwat, and James Nachbaur, AAAS Fellows |
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Closing Comments & Discussion
Introduction by Darshan Karwat, AAAS Fellow
Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy, University of Marylan
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Governance determines who can
do what to whom, and on whose authority.
Governance is “the exercise
of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s
affairs at all levels. It comprises mechanisms, processes and institutions
through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their
legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences.” (Governance for Sustainable Human Development,
United Nations Development Programme, 1997).
“Governance is all the
processes through which collective decisions are made, implemented,
interpreted, and reformed… processes that are shaped not only by formal
government officials but also by private individuals, corporations, and a
diverse array of professional associations, community-based organizations, and
voluntary/non-profit/non-governmental organizations…” (Adapted from the Updated Guide to IAD [Institutional Analysis
and Development] and the Language of the Ostrom Workshop, Michael McGinnis,
2013).
Biographies of speakers and moderators (titles and positions as of June 6, 2014):
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Dr. Barbara Allen
Professor and Co-Director
Dept. of Science and Tech. in Society
Virginia Tech - National Capital Region
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Barbara
Allen teaches courses on science, technology and social justice, the
sociology of knowledge, and public participation in science and technology.
She is author of Uneasy Alchemy:
Citizens and Experts in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor Disputes and co-editor
of several books including, Dynamics of
Disaster: Lessons on Risk, Response and Recovery. She has written on the
public understanding of science, environmental health movements,
environmental knowledge controversies, and environmental justice in post-Katrina
New Orleans. She is currently writing a book comparing citizen participation
in shaping policy-relevant science within environmental health movements in
Europe and the U.S. She taught architectural technology and historic
preservation and is a big fan of south Louisiana’s many music festivals.
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Dr. Gar Alperovitz
Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy
University of Maryland
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Gar
Alperovitz has had a distinguished career as an historian, political
economist, activist, writer, and government official. He is the author of
critically acclaimed books on the atomic bomb and atomic diplomacy and his
articles have appeared in The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The Nation, and The
Atlantic. He has been a guest on numerous network TV and cable news
programs. Alperovitz is the architect of the first modern steel industry
attempt at worker ownership in Youngstown, Ohio. He is also the president of
the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives and is a founding
principal of the University of Maryland-based Democracy Collaborative, a
research institution developing practical, policy-focused, and systematic
paths towards ecologically sustainable, community-oriented change and the
democratization of wealth.
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Dr. Michael Dorsey
Interim Director, Program on Energy & Environment
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
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Michael
Dorsey is the Interim Director of the energy and environment program at the
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. He provides strategic
guidance to governments, foundations, firms and a multitude of others on the
interplay of multilateral environment policy, finance and economic
development matters. His scholarly work focuses, in part, on how multilateral
finance instruments impact climate and biodiversity policy. In 1992, he was a
member of the U.S. State Department Delegation to the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development, “The Earth Summit.” From 1994-96
he was a task force member of President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable
Development. He served seven years as a Director on the Sierra Club’s
national board. He has worked worldwide, including at the African Centre for
Technology Studies, the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and the
University of KwaZulu-Natal, the United Nations Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), The Royal University of
Groningen, and the Department of Regional Planning at the Royal Institute of
Technology, Sweden. In July 2010 Lisa Jackson, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Administrator, appointed him to the EPA’s National Advisory
Committee.
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Dr. Irina Feygina
AAAS Fellow
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Irina
Feygina is a social psychologist who tackles environmental challenges. At
NYU, she researched how people’s powerful connection to established
socioeconomic systems hinders effective responses to climate change, and developed
interventions that foster sustainable behavior. As a postdoctoral fellow at
Rutgers University she investigated the impact of energy efficient building
design and retrofits on occupants and developed psychologically informed
policies and planning guidelines. She organizes interdisciplinary meetings on
sustainability and social justice, and teaches courses at the intersection of
psychology and environmental studies. Her perspective is influenced by her
diverse experiences of growing up in the Former Soviet Union and immigration
to the U.S., her international work, most formatively among Tibetan refugees
on the Indian subcontinent, and as a journalist and interpreter in
multicultural organizations. Currently, she is a Congressional Fellow
sponsored by the American Psychological Association, working on legislative
issues of natural resource management and conservation; renewables, biofuels,
and shale energy development and regulation; energy efficiency; agricultural
policy; and severe weather resilience and adaptation. She enjoys working at
the intersection of science and policy, and applying a multidisciplinary
approach that integrates the natural and social sciences toward fostering
sustainable development.
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Victor Flatt
Director, Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation, and Resources (CLEAR)
University of North Carolina School of Law
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Victor
Flatt comes from the “Flatts” of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, where
the name is as common as Smith or Jones. Lester Flatt (of Flatt and Scruggs
and Beverly Hillbillies fame) is a cousin. Coming from this background, he
has always been concerned for the poorer in our society, and these are
exactly the people who will be hurt most by climate change. He has written
many articles and opinion pieces on environmental law and climate change, and
the most important point that he would like to be remembered for is
invigorating the idea of a “right” to a clean environment.
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Michael Gerrard
Director, Center for Climate Change Law
Columbia Law School
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Michael
Gerrard is Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law
School, where he teaches courses on environmental and energy law and directs
the Center for Climate Change Law. He is also Associate Chair of the Faculty
of Columbia’s Earth Institute. Previously, he was a partner in the 110-lawyer
New York office of Arnold & Porter LLP; he is now Senior Counsel to the
firm. He practiced environmental law in New York City full time from 1979 to
2008 and tried numerous cases and argued many appeals in federal and state
courts and administrative tribunals. He has served as a member of the
executive committees of the boards of the Environmental Law Institute and the
American College of Environmental Lawyers. He is author or editor of eleven
books, including The Law of Adaptation
to Climate Change: U.S. and International Aspects (with Katrina F. Kuh); Global Climate Change and U.S. Law;
and the Environmental Law Practice
Guide.
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Jessica Grannis
Adaptation Program Manager
Georgetown Climate Center
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Jessica
Grannis oversees staff and student research and analysis of federal, state
and local adaptation efforts. Her recent publications include an Adaptation Tool Kit for Sea Level Rise
and a book chapter on Coastal Retreat in the Law of Climate Change: U.S. and
International Aspects (with Peter Byrne). She was previously staff counsel
for the California State Coastal Conservancy and the Ocean Protection
Council.
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The Honorable Alice Hill
Senior Advisor for Preparedness and Resilience
National Security Council
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Retired
Judge Alice Hill joined the White House National Security Council staff in
September 2013. She serves as the principal advisor on preparedness and
resilience issues arising from climate change. Her duties include providing
advice and counsel on implementation of the President’s Climate Action Plan,
developing policy regarding building resilient infrastructure, removing
barriers to ensuring resiliency, promoting creation of innovative delivery of
climate change related information, fostering regional coordination of
federal climate preparedness and resilience services, and leading interagency
policy groups. Previously, she served as Senior Counselor to Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. In that capacity, she
chaired the Department’s Executive Steering Committee on Climate Change
Adaptation that developed the Department’s first-ever plans for adapting to
extreme weather and climate change. Prior to her work in D.C., she served as
a judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court as well as the Los Angeles
Municipal Court. She received her law degree from the University of Virginia
School of Law and her BA from Stanford University.
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Dr. Jeff Hopkins
Vice President for Policy and Analysis
Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
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Jeff
Hopkins manages programs related to the energy, power, and transportation
sectors. He has more than fifteen years of private and public sector
experience in economic and environmental policy analysis focused on the
global energy sector and trends in best regulatory practice, especially in
mining and agriculture. Prior to joining the Center for Climate and Energy
Solutions, he worked for seven years at Rio Tinto on energy and climate
policies, leading their climate policy engagement in the United States and
Canada and working with their globally-distributed community of practice. He
previously was acting chief economist for the House Budget Committee, where
he oversaw the agriculture and natural resource budget functions during 2005
and 2006. He worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research
Service on a number of issues, including the impacts of farm policy on global
competitiveness and environmental outcomes. He has a PhD from Ohio State
University in Agriculture, Environment and Development Economics and was a
Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala from 1987-1989.
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Dr. David Hunter
Senior Government Representative, Environment, Industry and International
Affairs
Electric Power Research Institute
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David
Hunter has more than twenty years of experience in energy and environmental
science and policy. Prior to joining the Electric Power Research Institute, He
was the founding U.S. Director of the International Emissions Trading
Association and ran their state, regional, and federal programs at a time
when emissions trading was one of the top two domestic issues in the U.S. He
was a frequent national and international speaker on carbon policy. He
previously spent nine years on Capitol Hill, where he was the principal
energy, environment, and climate change adviser to Senator Susan Collins of
Maine, Staff Scientist for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee, and a AAAS Congressional Science Fellow for Air, Energy,
and Climate in the office of Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont. He has also
served as Executive Editor of the
Journal of Environment and Development, was a Department of Energy Global
Change Fellow at the White House Office on Environmental Policy/ Council on
Environmental Quality, and spent a year studying atmospheric aerosols at
Brookhaven National Laboratory. He has a PhD in Earth Science from the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a BS in Natural Resources from
Cornell University.
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Dr. Darshan Karwat
AAAS Fellow
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Darshan
Karwat is a first-year AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow on the
Innovation Team at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington,
D.C. He received his BSE in Aerospace Engineering (2007) and PhD in Aerospace
Engineering and Sustainability Ethics (2012), both from the University of
Michigan. His current research focuses on the combustion chemistry of biofuel
blends, and on creating a paradigm for activist engineering that incorporates
social justice and ecological sustainability concerns into engineering
practice and design. He is the co-founder of the Student Sustainability
Initiative at the University of Michigan, and maintains an active blog,
Minimizing Entropy, which focuses broadly on issues of philosophy, culture,
ethics, morality, environmentalism, limits, language, choice, climate, and
justice (to name a few), and more specifically on individual activism in the
face of the seemingly overwhelming socioecological challenges we face. He
loves soccer, space, and cooking.
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Nate Kleinman
Steering Committee, Cumberland County Long-Term Recovery Group
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Nate
Kleinman is an activist, organizer, organic farmer, and recovering
politician. A native of Philadelphia, he became active in the Occupy movement
soon after its Philly incarnation began. He quickly quit his job as a
Legislative Assistant to a State Representative and dove full-time into
radical organizing. As an Occupier, Nate helped start the InterOccupy
collective, helped initiate and organize the first Occupy National Gathering,
ran for Congress, and, since Sandy hit, has been an organizer with Occupy
Sandy, mainly in New Jersey. As part of his Sandy work, he serves on the
Steering Committee of the Cumberland County Long Term Recovery Group;
participated in a delegation to Cuba (also hit by Sandy); organized the
“Occupy Christie” encampment in Trenton to coincide with Chris Christie’s
re-inauguration; and started Occupy Sandy New Jersey’s weekly homelessness
organizing calls, focused on homeless encampments near the Jersey Shore.
Still active with Occupy Sandy, his newest project is the Experimental Farm
Network, a collectively-run non-profit enterprise aimed at developing
climate-change-mitigating crops and sustainable agricultural systems using a
network-based model. As a first step, he and a friend are living on a farm in
rural Salem County, New Jersey, trialing over 1,000 different plant varieties
with a particular focus on breeding perennial vegetables, grains, and
oilseeds. He has been playing and experimenting in fields, forests, and
gardens since he was a toddler.
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The Honorable Susan Leal
Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President for Water in the Americas
AECOM
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Susan
Leal is Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President for Water in the
Americas at AECOM. She is a water utility expert and author specializing in
identifying realistic and creative solutions to the water-related challenges
facing our world. She was a Senior Fellow of the Advanced Leadership
Initiative at Harvard University in 2009-11. As part of her fellowship, she
co-authored Running Out of Water, a
book focused on solutions to our looming water crisis. She continues to serve
as an Associate of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard.
She is a member of the advisory board of the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, where she also received her
undergraduate and law degrees. As General Manager of San Francisco’s Public
Utilities Commission, she led the charge for a dramatic upgrade of the Bay
Area’s seismically unsafe water system and San Francisco’s outdated
wastewater system. She previously served two terms as the elected Treasurer
of the City and County of San Francisco and as a member of the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors.
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Dr. Elise Lipkowitz
AAAS Fellow
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Elise
Lipkowitz is a first-year AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the
National Science Foundation where she serves as a policy analyst for the
National Science Board. Previously, she was at the University of Michigan
where she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the university’s interdisciplinary
Society of Fellows and an Assistant Professor in the Department of History.
Her interests–shaped by her current fellowship, history of science training,
and prior career in public relations in the Silicon Valley-include the
history and development of federal science policy, science communications,
and the ways that civilizations understand and respond to climate change. She
is currently completing a book exploring the effects of nationalism and the
intensification of science-state relations during the French Revolution and
the Napoleonic Wars on the European scientific community. She holds a PhD in
History from Northwestern and a BA in History from Stanford.
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The Honorable Alice Madden
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental & External
Affairs
U.S. Department of Energy
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Alice
Madden started her career in the high tech industry and then practiced
employment law for nine years before running for office. First elected in
2000, she served four terms in the Colorado House of Representative.
Recognized as the architect of the stunning victories for progressives in
2004 and in 2006, her tenure included four years (2004-2008) as House
Majority Leader. Her focus on sustainability and climate change sprang from
her desire to preserve what makes the American West so special and she played
an integral role in building the policy foundation for what is now referred
to nationally as the New Energy Economy. She continued to apply her
experience and passion for economic and environmental sustainability as
Governor Ritter’s Climate Change Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff. She also
served as a Senior Fellow on Climate Change at the Center for American
Progress. She was appointed to her position at the U.S. Department of Energy
in 2013.
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Dr. Sabrina McCormick
Associate Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health
George Washington University
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Sabrina
McCormick is a sociologist and filmmaker. She takes an in-depth, mechanistic
approach to understanding how climate change gets under the skin. She works
on extreme impacts of climate-related phenomena like heat waves, emergent
vector-borne disease, and climate-related disasters. She recently served as a
Lead Author on the Special Assessment of the Nobel Prize-winning
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change entitled “Managing the Risks of
Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.” Her
award-winning documentary film work aims to transform science into stories
that compel social action. She is currently Associate Producer on “The Years
of Living Dangerously,” an eight-part Showtime series to air in 2014. She is
currently Associate Professor in the Environmental and Occupational Health
Department in the School of Public Health and Health Services at George
Washington University, and Senior Fellow at the Wharton Risk Management and
Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Dr. James Nachbaur
AAAS Fellow
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James
Nachbaur was initially most engaged by math and computer programming but over
the years has come to appreciate messier community, social, and policy
issues. At Bowdoin College, his first economics class led him to abandon his
applications to computational neuroscience PhD programs and instead apply to
a new, interdisciplinary PhD program augmenting economics with natural
science courses. At UC Santa Barbara and Indiana University, he worked on the
economics of if, under what circumstances, how, and how sustainably,
communities deal with threats to their livelihoods and with competition for
common-pool resources. After a stint in consulting, he spent nearly three
years applying economic theory, subject matter expertise, and quantitative
skills to public policy issues in the non-partisan Legislative Analysts’
Office in the California Legislature. He is in his second year as a AAAS
Fellow.
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Dr. David Orr
Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and
Senior Adviser to the President
Oberlin College
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David
Orr is the executive director of the Oberlin project and a founding editor of
the journal Solutions. He is the
author of seven books, including Down
to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse and co-editor of three others.
He has authored nearly two hundred articles, reviews, book chapters, and
professional publications. In the past twenty-five years he has served as a
board member or adviser to eight foundations and on the Boards of many
organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Aldo Leopold
Foundation. Currently he is a Trustee of the Bioneers, Alliance for
Sustainable Colorado, and the Worldwatch Institute. He has been awarded seven
honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a
National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, and
recently a “Visionary Leadership Award” from Second Nature. He has lectured
at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, and
Asia.
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Lindene Patton
Chief Climate Product Officer
Zurich Financial Services
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Lindene
Patton assumed her role at Zurich as Climate Product Officer on March 1,
2008. She is responsible for coordinating the product development and proposition
management efforts related to the Group’s response to climate change. She
formerly was Senior Vice President and Counsel at Zurich Commercial Markets,
part of Zurich North America. She joined Zurich in 1996 as Director of Risk
Management at Zurich’s Environmental Business Unit. Before that, she worked
at Advanced Risk Management Services at Willis, and prior to that she was
Associate General Counsel at EMCON, a company specialized in environmental
engineering and landfill design. She holds a BA in Biochemistry from the
University of California at Davis, an MA in Public Health from the University
of California at Berkeley and a JD from Santa Clara University School of Law.
An attorney licensed in the State of California and the District of Columbia,
she serves as a member of several advisory boards, including the federal
Environmental Financial Advisory Board.
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Dr. Laura Petes
Senior Policy Advisor, Climate Adaptation and Ecosystems
Office of Science and Technology Policy
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Laura
Petes is the Senior Policy Advisor for Climate Adaptation and Ecosystems at
the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). In this
role, she is leading OSTP’s engagement in activities to better prepare the
U.S. and its citizens for climate change under the President’s Climate Action
Plan. Prior to coming to OSTP, she was serving as the Ecosystem Science
Advisor in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate
Program Office. She earned her BA at Cornell University and her PhD in
Zoology (Marine Ecology) at Oregon State University. She has conducted
research on marine animals around the U.S. and the world - studying coral
reefs in the Florida Keys and Mexico, mussels in Oregon and New Zealand, and
oysters in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Jonathan Reeves
Manager, Office of Emergency Management
District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water)
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Jonathan
Reeves administers the Authority’s emergency management program. The program
is designed to follow four tenets: mitigation, preparedness, response and
recovery. He directs emergency response and planning activities as well as
the Authority’s involvement in the National Capital Region Critical
Infrastructure Protection Program. He developed and oversees a comprehensive
National Incident Management System for the Authority that includes the
Emergency Management Accreditation Program. He maintains relationships with
industry, government and public service organizations to enhance the
Authority’s image and help meet its objects. Previously, he was a project
manager and senior analyst and trainer at PCCI, an Alexandria-based firm.
There he was responsible for crisis emergency management contingency plan
review and training. He has a BA degree in environmental management from UC
Canberra in Australia and is a member of the International Association of
Emergency Managers.
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Jackie Roberts
Chief Sustainability Officer
The Carlyle Group
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Jackie
Roberts leads Carlyle’s global Environment, Social and Governance efforts and
works closely with teams and companies to drive understanding and adoption of
those principles and practices. Prior to joining Carlyle, she spent seventeen
years at the Environmental Defense Fund where she launched and led the
first-ever NGO-Business Corporate Partners, served as Director of Sustainable
Technologies and Senior Director of the Climate and Energy Idea Bank.
Previous jobs included a one-year faculty appointment at Harvard Business
School and work as an engineer at EPA. She holds a BS in chemical engineering
from Yale University, an MBA from the Yale School of Management, and an MA in
environmental studies from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies. In her free time, she likes to play ice hockey.
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Dr. Marcy Rockman
Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for Cultural Resources
National Park Service
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Marcy
Rockman is the NPS Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for Cultural
Resources, based in Washington, DC. She is an archaeologist by training and
her research focus is how humans gather, share, remember, and transmit
environmental information. She’s done fieldwork across the American West,
Europe, and the Middle East, worked in environmental compliance in many
places, and came to DC as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow in
which capacity she tackled social science in homeland security risk communication.
Her current role addresses impacts of climate change on cultural resources
and use of cultural resource information in federal- to global-level
adaptation and resilience planning. She has many publications, including
“Archaeology in Society: Its Relevance in the Modern World.” She has a BSc in
Geology from the College of William and Mary, and an MA and PhD in
Anthropology from the University of Arizona, and is just now learning how to
figure skate.
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Susan Ruffo
Associate Director for Climate Preparedness
White House Council on Environmental Quality
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Susan
Ruffo is the Associate Director for Climate Preparedness at the White House
Council on Environmental Quality. At CEQ, she leads implementation of the
climate preparedness pillar of the President’s Climate Action Plan. She also
manages the President’s State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on
Climate Preparedness and Resilience and the interagency Council on Climate
Preparedness and Resilience, focusing on strengthening Federal programs to better
prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change. Previously, she
was the Director of Coastal and Marine Adaptation at The Nature Conservancy,
where she led their strategy on coastal ecosystem-based adaptation, focusing
on how ecosystems such as coral reefs and wetlands can help reduce human
vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. She was also a Foreign
Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, where she served in the
U.S. Embassies in China, Argentina and Nigeria and Washington D.C. She has
degrees in Economics and Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
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Kate Sheppard
Senior Reporter and Environment and Energy Editor
Huffington Post
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Kate
Sheppard is a senior reporter and the environment and energy editor at the Huffington Post. She previously
reported for Mother Jones, Grist, and the American Prospect. Her writing has also been featured in the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog,
the Guardian, Foreign Policy, High
Country News, and The Center for
Public Integrity, In These Times,
and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop
Culture. Her reporting has been recognized with awards from the Society
of Environmental Journalists, the Online News Association, and Planned
Parenthood.
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Megan Susman
Office of Sustainable Communities
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
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Megan
Susman is a senior policy analyst in EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities.
She works on smart growth research, communications, technical assistance to
communities, and other projects, on topics including climate change
mitigation and adaptation and military base issues. She co-chaired the
Urban/Communities Workgroup of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task
Force from 2010-2011 and contributed to a technical input document for a chapter
of the 2014 National Climate Assessment. She earned her MA at Duke University
and her undergraduate degree at Bryn Mar College. Fun fact: she went
bungee-jumping at the place where modern bungee-jumping was born.
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Pilar Thomas
Deputy Director, Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs
U.S. Department of Energy
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Pilar
Thomas assists the Department of Energy in developing national energy policy
and programs related to Indian energy development. She is also responsible
for developing and implementing policy efforts within the Department and
federal government to achieve the Office’s Indian Energy policy objectives.
Prior to joining the Department, she served as the Deputy Solicitor for
Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Prior to her federal
appointments, she was Of Counsel at Lewis and Roca LLP, in the firm’s Tribal
Affairs and Tribal Gaming practice groups. She formerly served as Chief of
Staff to Chairwoman Frias of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. She also served as the
Tribe’s interim attorney general and was responsible for providing legal
advice and representation to the Chairwoman, the Tribal Council, and the
Tribe’s divisions, departments and enterprises. In 2002, she was appointed to
the position of Trial Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, Environment
and Natural Resources Division, Indian Resources Section. Her practice
included Indian treaty rights, water rights and regulatory litigation. She
received her BA in Economics from Stanford University, and her JD (magna cum
laude) from the University of New Mexico School of Law.
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Dr. Vivian Thomson
Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences and Department of
Politics
University of Virginia
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Vivian
Thomson is an environmental policy expert with thirty years of practical and
academic experience at the local, state, national, and international levels.
She directs the interdisciplinary BA program Environmental Thought and
Practice and the Panama Initiative. Her most recent book is Sophisticated Interdependence in Climate
Policy: Federalism in the United States, Brazil, and Germany. Her first
book was Garbage In, Garbage Out:
Solving the Problems with Long-Distance Trash Transport. From 2002 to
2010 she was vice chair and member of the Virginia State Air Pollution
Control Board, the state’s air pollution regulatory body, as an appointee of
Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. She has been senior policy analyst and
manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She was Distinguished
Fulbright Chair at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense in 2001-02. In
her environmental policy presentations she likes to lead sing-alongs,
sometimes in Brazilian Portuguese or Spanish.
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Dr. David Titley
Rear Admiral USN (ret.); Professor of
Practice in Meteorology; Director, Center for Solutions to Weather and
Climate Risk Penn State Department of Meteorology
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David
Titley is a nationally known expert in the field of climate, the Arctic, and
National Security. He is currently Professor of Practice in the Department of
Meteorology at the Pennsylvania State University, and founding Director of
Penn State’s Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk. He served as a
naval officer for thirty-two years and rose to the rank of Rear Admiral. His
career included duties as Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography
Command, Oceanographer and Navigator of the Navy, and Deputy Assistant Chief
of Naval Operations for Information Dominance. While serving in the Pentagon,
he initiated and led the U.S. Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change. After
retiring from the Navy, he served as the Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce
for Operations, the Chief Operating Officer position at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration. He is a member of the National Academies of
Science committee on Geoengineering and the Center for Naval Analysis’
Military Advisory Board and co-chairs the National Research Council’s “A
Decadal Survey of Ocean Sciences” committee.
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Harriet Tregoning
Director, Office of Economic Resilience Department
of Housing and Urban Development
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Harriet Tregoning is the director of HUD’s Office of Economic
Resilience and has extensive experience on the local, state and national
levels helping communities and regions build diverse, prosperous, and
resilient economies. As the recent director of the District of Columbia’s
Office of Planning, Tregoning worked to make DC a walkable, bikeable,
livable, globally competitive and sustainable city–re-writing the city’s
zoning code for the first time in 50 years, planning the revitalization of
the poorest parts of the District, and collaborating with her transportation
colleagues to bring the nation’s largest bike-sharing program to the nation’s
capital. Prior to this she was co-founder of the Governors’ Institute on
Community Design. She also served as both Maryland’s Secretary of Planning
and then as the nation's first state-level Cabinet Secretary for Smart
Growth. Prior to her tenure in Maryland state government, Tregoning was the
director of Development, Community and Environment at the United States
Environmental Protection Agency. Tregoning’s academic training is in
engineering and public policy. She was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard
University Graduate School of Design for 2003-2004.
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Daniel Wallach
Executive Director and Founder
Greensburg GreenTown
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Daniel Wallach is Executive Director and Founder of Greensburg
GreenTown, a not for profit organization that conceptualized and helped lead
the sustainable rebuilding of Greensburg, Kansas following the tornado that
wiped out the town in 2007. Today, the tiny two-square-mile community in the
middle of rural Kansas is an internationally recognized model of a
sustainably built community. In September of 2011 Daniel and others opened
the first affiliate GreenTown organization in Joplin, Missouri to help
integrate sustainability into the rebuild there after a major storm wiped out
a third of the town of 50,000. Wallach is a social entrepreneur and innovator
whose personal mission is to make capitalism, environmental health and
vitality interdependent. He is a pioneer in sustainable disaster recovery and
has been a vocal proponent of using disasters to catalyze positive, cutting
edge, and lasting changes for communities. Wallach’s education is varied but
his most impactful experience has been “Adversity University” when he was ill
for over a decade and studied religion and spirituality, environmental
sciences and the healing arts. Wallach was the co-founder of the Colorado
Association for Nonprofit Organizations (1987) and the National Council for
Nonprofit Associations (1988) and in his late twenties was a leader in the
organizing of the nonprofit sector in the U.S.
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Dr. Jalonne White-Newsome
Environmental Justice Federal Policy Analyst
WE ACT for Environmental Justice
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Jalonne
White-Newsome was the inaugural Kendall Science Fellow with the Union of
Concerned Scientists, engaging in independent research on climate change
adaptation and public health before joining WE ACT. While matriculating
through the Environmental Health Sciences Department at the University of
Michigan School of Public Health, her dissertation research focused on
understanding the public health impacts of extreme heat events, specifically
related to indoor heat exposure and how the urban-dwelling elderly adapt to
hot weather. She spent a lot of her time translating her research into action
through community outreach and engaging local policy makers and leaders on
related issues. Before academia, she spent over ten years working in various
manufacturing facilities, predominantly as an environmental manager, which
also entailed assuming the role of emergency coordinator and voluntarily,
liaising with the surrounding communities. She has held leadership positions
in many organizations, including the National Society of Black Engineers, Air
& Waste Management Association, Minerva Education and Development
Foundation. She is also an adjunct professor at Kettering University and a
Professorial Lecturer at The George Washington University. A native Detroiter,
she holds a BA in chemical engineering from Northwestern University and an MA
in Environmental Engineering from Southern Methodist University
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