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SEJ's 22nd Annual Conference Speaker Information

 

 

 

Here's who's speaking at which sessions.

 

 

 

Agenda Coverage Lodging/Transportation Exhibits/Receptions Environmental News About Lubbock

 

Below are biographies (or links thereto) of speakers for SEJ's 22nd Annual Conference, October 17-21, 2012, in Lubbock, Texas, as well as the sessions they're participating in.

Alphabetical Speaker List
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

 

 

 

Lubbock conference home.

 

A

 

Ameto Akpe
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE GLOBE: Women, Water and Health: From Dirty Wells to Endocrine Disruptors, 11:00 a.m.
  • Ameto Akpe is a Nigerian print journalist for BusinessDay newspaper and currently serves as the energy and foreign affairs correspondent. In the past five years she has worked on projects that challenged the mediocrity of Nigeria's public oil and gas managers, explored corruption in the water sub-sector and exposed labour union complicity in pension fraud. In 2011, she was part of a collaborative project with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting that focused on water and sanitation in West Africa. Prior to journalism, Akpe spent a year teaching high school geography in a remote village in southeast Nigeria.

 

Frank Allen
 

  • Event: Sunday, October 21 - Thursday, October 25, Post-Conference Tour: Big Bend National Park
  • Frank Allen is president of the Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources (IJNR), a non-profit that encourages and nurtures the professional development of all kinds of journalists at all career stages. He has spent nearly three decades in American newsrooms without winning a single Pulitzer. He was the first environment editor for The Wall Street Journal, where he held various reporting and editing assignments for 14 years. Earlier he worked for dailies and news-wire services in Oregon, Arizona and Minnesota.

 

Todd Anderson
 

 

Prigi Arisandi
 

 

Alfredo "Al" Armendariz
 

  • Event: Saturday, Lunch and Plenary Session, Election 2012 and the Environment, Noon
  • Dr. Al Armendariz is the Senior Campaign Representative in Texas for the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. Based in Austin, Al oversees Texas strategy for the highly successful campaign to transition America off coal and toward clean energy like wind and solar. Al is the former Regional Administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 6, which includes Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and 66 Tribal Nations. At EPA, Al was closely involved in the response to the BP oil disaster and in updates to the Texas air pollution permitting system. He is a former Assistant Professor of environmental and civil engineering at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He served as a research assistant at the MIT Center for Global Change Science at their Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratory in Massachusetts. He later joined Radian Corporation in North Carolina as a chemical engineer and worked as a consultant for natural gas companies and pulp, paper, and wood products manufacturers. Armendariz received a bachelors in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received a masters in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

Jodey Arrington
 

 

Tom Arsuffi
 

 

Dick Auld
 

 

Valer Austin
 

 

Kristen Averyt
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: Squeezing Blood from a Desert: Western Water Management, 11:00 a.m.
  • Dr. Kristen Averyt served as Deputy Director of Western Water Assessment since 2009, where she worked to develop climate science relevant to decision makers throughout the Western U.S. Currently, she is the acting Associate Director of Science for the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado. Kristen received a Ph.D. in Geological and Environmental Science from Stanford University and has also earned several awards and honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship to New Zealand in 1998 and a NOAA Knauss Congressional Fellowship in 2005, during which she worked in the U.S. Senate. As the staff scientist for Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she was one of the many scientists who received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Her current work focuses on the interplay between climate mitigation and climate adaptation efforts, including the energy-water nexus.

 

B

 

Rodney Baltzer
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 3, From Nuclear Enrichment to Nuclear Waste, 6:30 a.m.
  • Rodney (Rod) Baltzer, President of Waste Control Specialists LLC (WCS), has been with the Company for 13 years. He received a Bachelors in Agricultural Economics and Accounting from Oklahoma State University in 1990 and is a Certified Public Accountant. WCS owns and operates a waste disposal facility in Andrews County, Texas for the processing, treatment, storage and disposal of a broad range of radioactive, hazardous, toxic and other wastes from commercial and federal government waste generators. Rod has led the efforts of WCS since 2006 to obtain a license to dispose of Class A, B & C low-level radioactive waste from both the Texas Compact and the federal government. He also led the efforts to obtain a byproduct material (11e2) disposal license. Rod is also the spokesperson for WCS for media-related activities. WCS has completed construction for the Texas Compact and federal government low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities. WCS will be the first Interstate Compact low-level radioactive waste disposal facility to be licensed and operated under the Low-level Waste Policy Act of 1980, as amended in 1985.

 

Lucia Barbato
 

 

Cynthia Barnett
 

 

Hazel Barton
 

 

Tommy Beaudreau
 

 

Bill Blakemore
 

 

Betsy Blaney
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 8, Finding Water Where It Ain't, 9:00 a.m.
  • A correspondent in West Texas for nearly a dozen years and a member of The Associated Press' national ag reporting team, Betsy Blaney covers everything newsworthy in a 65-county region that is heavily agricultural. Cotton is king but cattle feedlots and other crops also play a substantial role in the region's ag economy. In addition to covering crops' growing seasons out of her Lubbock base, Betsy also is well versed in issues that pertain to agriculture, like drought and wildfires. Betsy also covers crime and the judicial system, oil and gas production, wind energy, the nation's lone low-level radioactive waste burial ground, wildlife issues and Texas Tech football and basketball.

 

Mark Boling
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Oil and Gas and Lizards: Hydraulic Fracturing 2.0, 7:30 a.m.
  • Mark Boling, general counsel and secretary of Southwest Energy, heads the company's strategic development with regards to sustainability and ethical management. Previously Boling was a partner at Fulbright and Jaworski, and then opened a private law practice in Houston specializing in the oil and gas industry.

 

Max Boykoff
 

 

Jane Braxton Little
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT: Freelance Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Jane Braxton Little writes about condors and climate change, forests, phibs and fire for a variety of national publications that run the gamut from Audubon to Scientific American and Utne. When not following scientists around on Pacific islands or in the remote backcountry of Tanzania, she writes from a second-floor office in a century-old building in California's Sierra Nevada.

 

Pete Brewton
 

 

Jason Brooks
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Oil and Gas and Lizards: Hydraulic Fracturing 2.0, 7:30 a.m.
  • Jason Brooks, Texas Habitat Conservation Foundation executive director with 11 years' experience in natural resource management, is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Texas conservation plan for the dunes sagebrush lizard.

 

Michael Brown
 

 

Brooke Buchanan
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE ECONOMY: Will Economic Growth Destroy the Planet — or Save It? 11:00 a.m.
  • Brooke Buchanan directs communications for sustainability at Walmart. She was a driving force behind The Green Room, Walmart's sustainability blog. She has an extensive background in political and government communications, including as national press secretary for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

 

Jeffrey Burnside
 

 

C

 

Bill Caesar
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE ECONOMY: Will Economic Growth Destroy the Planet — or Save It? 11:00 a.m.
  • Bill Caesar is president of Waste Management Recycle America (WMRA), a unit of Waste Management, Inc. He joined Waste Management in 2010 as Chief Strategy Officer, after working as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. Before that, he was a Special Assistant to Ambassador Thomas Simons and the coordinator of the U.S. assistance program in Russia. Bill holds an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and a B.A. in Russian studies from Georgetown.

 

Fabian Carvallo Vargas
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 1, From Stones to the Stars at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, 5:00 a.m.
  • Fabian Carvallo Vargas is an independent journalist, radio producer, trainer and reporter in many communitarian media. He has been writing and reporting about the environment and science for 15 years, since he founded his first magazine. His work has appeared in ¿Cómo ves?, Ibero 90.9, Radio Ciudadana, and La Voladora Radio. He is a biology graduate of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and earned his master's degree in communications there. He is a member of the Mexican Environmental Journalists Network (REMPA) and World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC). He lives in Mexico City.

 

Lawrence Cathles
 

 

Chris Clayton
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 7, Where’s the Beef? 8:30 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE LAND: Coppering Bets Against Climate Change: Facing Uncertainty in Agricultural and Forest Systems, 2:00 p.m.
  • Event: Friday, Dinner and a Movie at the Natural History Museum, following the 7:00 p.m. NASA session
  • DTN Ag Policy Editor Chris Clayton joined DTN in October 2005 after working more than seven years for the Omaha World-Herald, where his agricultural coverage included being part of the 2001 reporting team that uncovered a fraud case the FBI called the largest cattle scam in U.S. history. Chris' work has won story of the year and writer of the year from the American Agricultural Editors Association for a series published by DTN on recovery efforts in rural Louisiana a year after the hurricanes. He also has won the Glenn Cunningham Agricultural Journalist of the Year Award from the North American Agricultural Journalists for a series of articles following a steer's life and production practices of the beef industry. The National Farmers Union named Chris as the organization's agricultural communicator of the year in 2009. A series of articles in 2011 examining how immigration conflicts have affected a small town in Alabama again earned Chris writer of the year from NAAJ and story of the year from AAEA. Chris has worked for news organizations in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Nebraska. He lives in Glenwood, Iowa, with his wife and three children.

 

Karen Coates
 

 

Steven Cobb
 

  • Event: Saturday, Breakfast Breakout Session 1, Big Weather: A Guide to Explaining Extreme Weather to Your Audience, 7:30 a.m.
  • As science and operations officer for the Lubbock office of the National Weather Service, Steven Cobb's responsibilities include scientific training, technology transfer and professional development of the local NWS staff. He also leads the effort to integrate new techniques and datasets from the research community, specifically from the Atmospheric Science department at Texas Tech University. A native of Oklahoma, Cobb has worked in west Texas for more than 17 years, including the forecast offices in Midland and Amarillo. Prior to that, he worked in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Beckley, West Virginia. Education: M.B.A., Texas Tech University, 2007; B.S. in Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, 1991; Associate in Science, Redlands College, Oklahoma, 1988.

 

Jim Conkwright
 

 

Emily Coren
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT: Using Imagery To Tell Environmental Stories, 2:00 p.m.
  • Emily Coren is a science illustrator and writer in Santa Cruz, California. She has a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from UC-Santa Cruz that led to a position making transgenic butterflies at SUNY Buffalo. She graduated from the UC Santa Cruz Program in Science Illustration and drew bugs, plants and dinosaur bones at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History and developed educational content for Walden Media in Los Angeles. Her goal as a science illustrator has always been to use popular media to make science accessible to people with non-science backgrounds. Her current project is WalkaboutEm.com, a form of illustrated narrative environmental journalism and an interactive informal science education platform. She is also an advocate for science communication and recently had a piece up on Nature, "Why Cartoons, sex, and music are necessary in science communication."

 

Irasema Coronado
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE GLOBE: Women, Water and Health: From Dirty Wells to Endocrine Disruptors, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE GLOBE: Environmental Injustice: Industrial Hazards in Border Cities, 10:45 a.m.
  • Irasema Coronado received her bachelor's degree in political science and a certificate of Latin American Studies from the University of South Florida. She has an M.A. in Latin American Studies and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Arizona. Coronado is a professor in the Department of Political Science, and a contributing faculty member of the Environmental Science and Engineering Ph.D. program, at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is co-author of the book Fronteras No Mas: Toward Social Justice at the U.S.-Mexico Border and several academic articles, including "Conflictos Ambientales Internacionales e Intranacionales" and "Legal Solutions Vs Environmental Realities: The Case of the United States-Mexico Border Region." She has co-edited Digame! Policy and Politics on the Texas Border and Juntos Pero No Revueltos: Estudios sobre la frontera Texas-Chihuahua. She served as a member of the Environmental Protection Agency Good Neighbor Environmental Board from 1999-2002 and co-chair of the Coalition Against Violence Toward Women and Children on the Border. She was also part of the National Advisory Committee for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2003-2006. President Barack Obama appointed her to serve on the Joint Public Advisory Committee of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation in North America in 2010.

 

Craig Cox
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE LAND: The "Fabric of Our Lives" and the Life of the Land, 9:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE LAND: The New Age of Ag: From Biofuels and GMOs to Sustainability and Supply Chains, 10:45 a.m.
  • Craig Cox is Environmental Working Group's senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources. Craig began his career in conservation by joining the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in 1977 as a field biologist. Since then, he has worked for the National Academy of Sciences, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and as executive director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society. He joined EWG as Midwest vice president of EWG in 2008 and directs the organization's research and advocacy work in agriculture, renewable energy, and climate change. He has degrees in wildlife ecology and agricultural economics from the University of Minnesota. He is an avid fly fisherman, hunter, and hiker.

 

Elena Craft
 

 

Brent Crossland
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE LAND: The "Fabric of Our Lives" and the Life of the Land, 9:00 a.m.
  • Brent Crossland is a business development manager for fiber development at Bayer CropScience. He is currently responsible for Bayer’s "Branded Sustainable Cotton Initiative." With over twenty years of agriculture experience, he has been involved with the Global Certified FiberMax Cotton program since its inception. Within Bayer CropScience, Brent has also held positions as national product manager and sales manager for the U.S. crop protection and seed business. He is a graduate of both Texas A&M University and West Texas A&M University and holds a Master's of Agriculture degree in plant science. He is also a past recipient of the "Vice Chancellor's Award in Excellence" from Texas A&M University.

 

Brian Czech
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE ECONOMY: Will Economic Growth Destroy the Planet — or Save It? 11:00 a.m.
  • Brian Czech is the founder and president of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE), named the Best Green Think Tank of 2011 by Treehugger. Brian is also a visiting professor of Natural Resource Economics at Virginia Tech, National Capitol Region, and a conservation biologist in the national office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, an M.S. from the University of Washington, and a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin. He has authored hundreds of articles, book chapters, reviews, government documents, etc., including peer-reviewed articles in dozens of science journals, reflecting the breadth of his work in environmental affairs and economic sustainability. His books include Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train, which calls for an end to uneconomic growth, and The Endangered Species Act: History, Conservation Biology, and Public Policy. A third book, Supply Shock: Economic Growth at the Crossroads and the Steady State Solution is scheduled for publication in April 2013. Brian is also a regular contributor to the Daly News, a blog devoted to advancing the steady state economy as a policy goal with widespread public support.

 

D

 

Reggie Dale
 

 

Jennifer Daniel
 

  • Event: Saturday, Breakfast Breakout Session 1, Big Weather: A Guide to Explaining Extreme Weather to Your Audience, 7:30 a.m.
  • Jennifer Daniel received a degree in Earth Science from Baylor University and is now completing a Master's in Atmospheric Science at Texas Tech University. Her research includes utilizing total lightning information to improve the warning and forecast process with work specifically on advancing the ability of forecast models to predict the lightning threat. While at Tech, she was the president of the Student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society for two consecutive years, and successfully organized chapter members, the local NWS office, local media and emergency management officials to produce the Annual Severe Weather Awareness Day for the South Plains. She has also been a student volunteer with the National Weather Service for the past two years, assisting with documentation of weather data, forecasting and severe weather duties and speaking at local outreach opportunities. Jennifer additionally has spent several years in broadcast meteorology as a journalist and on-camera personality.

 

Joseph A. Davis
 

 

Stella Davis
 

 

Tony Davis
 

 

Melissa del Bosque
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT: Including Diverse Voices in Environmental Stories, 9:00 a.m.
  • Melissa del Bosque joined the Texas Observer staff in 2008. She specializes in reporting on the U.S.-Mexico border. Her work has been published in national and international publications including TIME magazine and the Mexico City-based Nexos magazine. She served five years in the Texas Senate as a policy adviser on Natural Resources and has a master's in public health from Texas A&M University.

 

Dayton Duncan
 

  • Event: Friday, Dinner and a Movie at the Natural History Museum, following the 7:00 p.m. NASA session
  • Dayton Duncan is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of multiple books including The Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History, Out West: A Journey Through Lewis & Clark's America and The National Parks: America's Best Idea, all companion books to documentary films he wrote and produced. Articles of his have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, American Heritage magazine, The Old Farmer's Almanac, and many other publications. Duncan has also been involved for many years with the work of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. Most recently, he co-produced and wrote "The Dust Bowl" and previously, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," a documentary that won two Emmys — one for best nonfiction series and one for best writing. In politics, he has served as chair of the American Heritage Rivers Advisory Committee and director of the National Park Foundation. Duncan is currently on the board of the Student Conservation Association, the National Conservation System Foundation and the New Hampshire Humanities Council.

 

Peter Dykstra
 

 

E

 

Alejandro Echeverry
 

 

Gabriel Eckstein
 

 

F

 

Dan Fagin
 

  • Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout 2, Poisons in the News: Toxicology and the Media, 12:15 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT: Academics and College Newspapers, 10:45 a.m.
  • Dan Fagin is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. His new book about environmental cancer epidemiology, Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, will be published in March 2013 by Random House. For fifteen years, Fagin was the environmental writer at Newsday, where he was twice a principal member of reporting teams that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Science in Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers. Co-author of the 1997 book Toxic Deception, Fagin is a proud former board member and president of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

 

David Ferris
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE ECONOMY: Will Economic Growth Destroy the Planet — or Save It? 11:00 a.m.
  • David Ferris is a journalist who writes about the business and technology of "clean" technology. The tech side he covers as a contributor to Popular Mechanics and cleantech columnist for Sierra magazine, and the business side as a blogger for Forbes. Based in Washington, D.C., David has also worked as a newspaper reporter, a magazine editor, and managing editor of Matter Network, a news site dedicated to sustainable business. Most exciting development: In early 2013, he'll live in India for six months to cover the challenges of energy in the developing world. More.

 

Douglas Fischer
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Reading Our Future in the Sands of Canyon Country, 8:00 a.m.
  • SEJ board member Douglas Fischer is the editor of DailyClimate.org, an independent, foundation-funded news service focusing on climate change. He has spent 17 years in journalism, including stints at the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune and Newsweek. Douglas' reporting has taken him down the Colville River on Alaska's North Slope on a float trip with then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, inside the culinary scene in Fairbanks, Alaska, as a restaurant reviewer for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, and to Copenhagen for the 2009 climate talks. Douglas joined SEJ in 2000 and was elected to the board of directors in 2009. He lives with his wife and two children in Bozeman, Mont., where he's learning to play the piano.

 

Marina Fisher-Phelps
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 1, From Stones to the Stars at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, 5:00 a.m.
  • Marina Fisher-Phelps is a PhD student with the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech University. She is currently working on research related to bat ecology and conservation in West Texas. She has previously worked with captive fruit bats in Florida. More.

 

Matthew Frank
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE WATER: A Price on Water: Privatization of the Top Liquid Asset, 2:00 p.m.
  • Matthew Frank is the associate editor and senior staff writer at the Missoula Independent, western Montana's weekly paper, where he's won several regional and national awards for his environmental, political and investigative reporting. Before joining the Indy in 2009, he served as the managing editor of the regional online magazine New West. Matthew has a master's degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana. Originally from Western New York, he traveled west by bicycle after graduating from Allegheny College in 2003, and hasn't looked back.

 

Wood Franklin
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 8, Finding Water Where It Ain't, 9:00 a.m.
  • L. Wood Franklin, P.E., is currently the City Engineer for the City of Lubbock, Texas. Wood received his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Texas Tech University and has been employed with the City of Lubbock Engineering Department since 1998. As the City Engineer, Franklin is responsible for the oversight of the Water Engineering, Storm Water Engineering, and Streets Engineering Departments. He is currently responsible for the management of the Capital Improvement Projects related to these departments. Wood has been working on the Lake Alan Henry Water Supply Project from conception through design and construction. The 220 million dollar project is nearing completion in 2012.

 

Chris Funk
 

 

G

 

Nancy Gaarder
 

  • Event: Saturday, Breakfast Breakout Session 1, Big Weather: A Guide to Explaining Extreme Weather to Your Audience, 7:30 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 6, Wind and Water: TTU’s Tornado and Geospatial Labs, 2:15 p.m.
  • Nancy Gaarder has been a print journalist her entire career. She worked as an editor or reporter since the early 1980s at one of two newspapers, the Omaha World-Herald (1995 to present) and the St. Joseph, Mo., News-Press/Gazette, from the early 1980s to 1995. Her beats have ranged from City Hall to the environment and energy. She now covers weather full time. Nancy is a graduate of University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism and a community development volunteer, Cameroon, Peace Corps.

 

Kate Galbraith
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Wind Power's Past, Present and Future, 6:00 a.m.
  • Kate Galbraith has covered energy and environment for the Texas Tribune since 2010. Prior to that she reported on clean energy for the New York Times and the Times' Green blog. She was a 2008 Nieman Fellow in journalism at Harvard University and has also worked at The Economist. She has co-authored a book, The Great Texas Wind Rush, forthcoming in 2013 from University of Texas Press, and she has written four feature stories for Texas Monthly.

 

Melissa Gaskill
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE ECONOMY: Nanotech Update: Economic Boon or Environmental Bane? 10:45 a.m.
  • Melissa Gaskill has degrees in zoology and journalism and writes about science, nature, and travel, primarily the outdoor and sustainable type. Her articles have appeared in Nature News, Scientific American, Men's Journal, The New York Times, Wildflower, Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine, American Way, Texas Highways, Cure, and many other publications. She was a 2009 Ocean Science Journalism Fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a 2012 fellow at the Scripps Howard Institute on Science and the Environment, and wrote Best Hikes with Dogs: Texas Hill Country and Gulf Coast (Mountaineers Books).

 

Christy George
 

  • Event: Friday, Opening Plenary, Land, Water and People: It's the Food, Stupid! 9:00 a.m.
  • Christy George is an independent television producer. She's been covering climate change and the environment for 15 years, most recently for "Oregon Field Guide" and the PBS show "History Detectives." Hour-long TV documentaries she has produced include "Columbia Gorge: the Fight for Paradise," and "Forecast Cloudy," about climate skeptics in the ranks of weather forecasters. She is a member of SEJ's board of directors.

 

John Gerlach
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE NATION: People, Polls, Politics and the Environment, 9:00 a.m.
  • Dr. John Gerlach is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University. He joined the TTU faculty in fall 2009 and primarily teaches in the department's graduate program in public administration (MPA). Gerlach teaches environmental policy courses, including a graduate-level overview course as well as water policy. Gerlach also oversees the MPA program's Nonprofit Management track, within which he teaches an overview course in nonprofit management and a course in nonprofit grantwriting and fundraising. Gerlach's research focuses on the environmental and natural resource policy processes. His most recent work accepted for publication (Science of the Total Environment, with Jiafan Wang, George Cobb, and Nora Savage) describes the practical need for detailed regulatory policy in the United States related to nanomaterials. Gerlach has also conducted research related to American public opinion on environmental issues (Politics and Policy, with Cindy Rugeley) and how U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field offices select data for use in making biodiversity management decisions (Administration and Society, with Laron Williams and Colleen Forcina). Gerlach's work also appears in the Journal of Extension. Currently, he is examining how aspects of diffusion theory lead to the use of specific sources of data in making natural resource policy.

 

Emily Gertz
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop: The Craft and Commerce of Successful Freelancing, 8:00 a.m.
  • Emily Gertz is a freelance journalist and editor covering the environment, technology, and science. Her work has appeared both online and in print, in Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, Whole Living, Dwell, Talking Points Memo Idea Lab, OnEarth Magazine, Grist, and more. She is also co-author of the O'Reilly title Environmental Monitoring With Arduino. She was among the founding contributors to Worldchanging.com, the award-winning blog covering solutions to global environmental, social, political, and economic challenges, and wrote several sections of the Abrams book Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century. She’s been online since 1989, and in addition to online journalism and blogging, has worked extensively as a digital content strategist, social media manager, online community host, and web producer. She’s based in her hometown of New York City.

 

James Gillespie
 

 

George Gray
 

 

Elizabeth Grossman
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE GLOBE: Women, Water and Health: From Dirty Wells to Endocrine Disruptors, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout 2, Poisons in the News: Toxicology and the Media, 12:15 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Breakfast Breakout Session 2, Book-Writing in the New Media Landscape, 7:30 a.m.
  • Event: Sunday, Book Author Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Elizabeth Grossman is a freelance journalist and writer specializing in environmental and science issues. She's the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry; High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health; Watershed: The Undamming of America; Adventuring Along the Lewis & Clark Trail; and Shadow Cat: Encountering the American Mountain Lion, co-edited with Susan Ewing. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic.com, Chemical Watch, Earth Island Journal, InsideClimate News, Mother Jones, The Nation, The Pump Handle, Salon, Scientific American, The Washington Post, Yale e360, and other publications. She's been a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a science journalism fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Wood Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. A native of New York City and graduate of Yale University, she writes from Portland, Oregon. More.

 

H

 

Al Halvorsen
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE ECONOMY: Green Businesses: The Bottom Line on Tackling Sustainability, 9:00 a.m.
  • As the Sr. Director of Environmental Sustainability for PepsiCo, Al Halvorsen is responsible for coordinating and reporting corporate-wide Sustainability initiatives across all PepsiCo Divisions with specific focus on energy, water and packaging sustainability. Al has over twenty-four years of Operations experience with PepsiCo. He has held various Technology and Financial Planning Leadership Positions at the Casa Grande Arizona, Honolulu Hawaii and Denver Colorado snack food manufacturing plants. In 2004, he transferred to Frito-Lay Corporate Headquarters in Dallas Texas to help lead the environmental sustainability and compliance programs for Frito-Lay North America. PepsiCo's Energy Management Program has been recognized as an EPA ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year in 2007 and as a Sustained Excellence Winner in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. Also in 2010, Frito-Lay reached its US EPA Climate Leaders GHG Reduction Goal and recently obtained its 13th LEED Gold Certification for its headquarters, manufacturing and distribution buildings. Al holds degrees in Electrical Engineering and a Master Business Administration from Arizona State University.

 

Amy Hardberger
 

 

Greg Harman
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 4, "Clean" Coal and Environmental Justice in a West Texas Town, 7:00 a.m.
  • From radwaste salt domes under New Mexico's deserts to the ravaged oil patch of West Texas and the lingering fallout of Agent Orange exposure in Mississippi, Greg Harman has been writing about the state of our environment since his high-school fanzine days. Since joining the San Antonio Current as a staff writer in 2007 (after stints at weekly and daily papers in Houston, Las Vegas, Biloxi, Odessa, Pecos, and Alpine), he has been named a print journalist of the year by the Houston Press Club for his series on the border wall ("Muro del Odio"); his work on CPS Energy — particularly worker safety issues — earned him a national public service award from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies; and his three-part series on the nuclear fuel chain that ran between 2009 and 2010, starting with "Nukes Mean Mines," was selected among the best environmental reporting of the year in 2010 by the Natural Resources Defense Council's OnEarth magazine. He was named editor of the Current in January of 2011, but promises to quit the news-writing business just as soon as victimization and despair cease to be a natural outflow of economic progress. He wants you to be happy and not drive so blinkin' fast.

 

Dean Hawkins
 

 

Thomas Hayden
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop: The Craft and Commerce of Successful Freelancing, 8:00 a.m.
  • Thomas Hayden writes about science, the environment and culture, defined as broadly as his imagination will allow. Formerly a staffer at Newsweek and a senior writer at US News & World Report, he has worked freelance since 2005. His cover stories have appeared in magazines ranging from National Geographic, Wired and Smithsonian to Analytical Chemistry. He has co-authored two books, including the national bestseller On Call in Hell, and was lead writer for the 2010 9th edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World. Hayden spent five years pursuing a Ph.D. in biological oceanography before starting in journalism as an AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Newsweek in New York. Since 2009 he has been a full-time lecturer in the School of Earth Sciences and graduate journalism program at Stanford University, where he teaches science and environmental writing, journalism and communication. He blogs, with friends, at www.thelastwordonnothing.com.

 

Casey Hayes
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Wind Power's Past, Present and Future, 6:00 a.m.
  • Casey Hayes, plant manager at Duke Energy Corporation, is responsible for complete oversight of the 96 (Vestas 1.65 MW; GE 1.5 SLE) turbine Notrees windfarm in West Tx. (153.6 MW). Prior to his position at Notrees, Hayes was the plant manager at the Ocotillo Windfarm, located south of Big Spring, Tx. (28 2.1 MW Suzlon S88). As the site manager of both sites, his responsibilities included full responsibility for profit/loss, hiring/managing service contractors, managing land owner relationships, building yearly business plans, forecasting, building yearly site budget, hiring, safety compliance/promotion, procedure(s) compliance with regulatory commissions (ERCOT/TRE/FERC/NERC), inventory control, purchasing, maintenance scheduling, high voltage operations, legal contract management and employee supervision (40 employees). As a senior manager within the organization, Hayes has also been tasked with supporting the company’s existing wind farms in the fleet as well as those being built, as an advisor to cover all aspects of wind farm operations and construction. He has been extensively involved in developing/implementing the company’s High Voltage program; Lock out Tag out program (LOTO); Drop Tool Prevention Program; Near Miss Reporting Program and Confined Space Program.

 

Katharine Hayhoe
 

 

Ed Hellman
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Wind Power's Past, Present and Future, 6:00 a.m.
  • Dr. Edward Hellman is Professor of Viticulture in the Department of Plant and Soil Science at Texas Tech University and holds a joint appointment as Viticulture Extension Specialist with Texas AgriLife Extension. Hellman teaches Viticulture II: Grape Production for the Viticulture & Enology specialization within the Horticulture degree program at Texas Tech University. He also advises graduate students at both Texas Tech and Texas A&M. His research program studies the physiology of grapevine adaptation to climate, variety and rootstock evaluation, the use of GIS for vineyard site selection, and vineyard management to avoid frost and hail damage. Hellman's Extension activities include leadership of the statewide Viticulture Extension Team, development of the Texas Winegrape Network website, and establishment of the Texas Viticulture Certificate Program. More.

 

Clem Henriksen
 

 

Wendy Hessler
 

  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 2, Epigenetics: Rewriting Nature vs. Nurture, 2:15 p.m.
  • Wendy Hessler, science writer at Environmental Health Sciences, manages the Science Communication Fellows program, a year-long training fellowship for early career researchers in the fields of environmental health and green chemistry. She works closely with the researchers to write and then publish on EnvironmentalHealthNews.org hundreds of research summaries each year. Through the program, almost 60 scientists have been trained to translate and explain complicated science findings — and their context — to the public and the media. Prior to EHS, she maintained the e.hormone web site, managing content and writing about endocrine disruption policy and research. She holds a MA in journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a BS degree in biology from Oregon State University.

 

Hannah Hoag
 

 

Elgie Holstein
 

 

Don Hopey
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Oil and Gas and Lizards: Hydraulic Fracturing 2.0, 7:30 a.m.
  • Don Hopey has covered the environment for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette since 1992. He has written series about an 80-mile canoe trip through the Wild & Scenic sections of the Allegheny River, the "Wise Use" movement in Pennsylvania and problems with the nation's hazardous waste incinerators. He participated in an end-to-end hike of the Appalachian Trail by five eastern newspapers in 1995, hiking more than 500 miles from Virginia through Pennsylvania. Reports on the hike were reprinted in a book, An Appalachian Adventure. He is co-author of Exploring the Appalachian Trail: Mid-Atlantic States, one of five guide books in a series that highlights the trail's social and natural history. He teaches an environmental issues and policy class at the University of Pittsburgh.

 

Lindsey Hoshaw
 

 

I

 

Erica Irlbeck
 

 

J

 

Darryl James
 

 

Patricia Juárez-Carrillo
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE GLOBE: Environmental Injustice: Industrial Hazards in Border Cities, 10:45 a.m.
  • Dr. Patricia Juárez-Carrillo is a native of the US-Mexico border region raised in Ciudad Juarez and now living in El Paso, TX. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences with focus on environmental health issues from the University of Texas at El Paso and a Master of Public Health with emphasis in community health from the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health in El Paso. She worked as project coordinator at the Center for Environmental Resource Management at UTEP for over 13 years. Juárez-Carrillo coordinated numerous environmental health and justice interventions along the US-Mexico border. She has experience in implementing and evaluating community interventions. Juárez-Carrillo teaches the “environmental justice” course for the Chicano Studies Programs at the College of Liberal Arts in UTEP. She provides consultation services to Migrant Clinicians Network, Border Environment Cooperation Commission, and NIOSH/CDC, and is coauthor of numerous educational materials and training curriculums related to environmental health and justice intended for Spanish-speaking communities living in the border. She co-authored a chapter titled "Environmental Injustices in the US-Mexico border region" for the book Social Justice in the US-Mexico Border Region with various chapters by experienced and committed scholars devoted to justice in the border.

 

K

 

Ronald Kendall
 

 

Bob Kiker
 

 

Tigga Kingston
 

 

Jane Kleeb
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE ECONOMY: Great Plains Perspectives on Transboundary Tar, 2:00 p.m.
  • Jane Kleeb, editor and founder of Bold Nebraska, is on the front lines of the pipeline fight coordinating activities, allied groups, citizens and landowners statewide. Using creativity and grassroots citizen organizing, Jane has brought the pipeline issue from just a few knowing about it to a dominant issue at the local, state and federal level. She was a reporter for MTV, frequent guest on FOX and MSNBC and key adviser for "Thin," a documentary on eating disorders. She led a statewide organizing campaign on health care reform, served as the national executive director of the Young Democrats of America, was the foundation director for Renfrew mental health facility and headed up an AmeriCorps program. She lives in Hastings with her husband Scott, an energy efficiency entrepreneur, and their three little girls.

 

David Klein
 

 

Kim Knowlton
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE GLOBE: Going to Extremes: Human Health on a Warmer Planet, 2:00 p.m.
  • Kim Knowlton, Dr.P.H., is a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council's public health program. She focuses on the health effects of climate change, including the connections between climate change, pollen, allergies and asthma, as well as infectious diseases. She is an assistant clinical professor of environmental health sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University; and chair of the Global Climate Change and Health Topic Committee of the American Public Health Association'’s Environment Section. She is co-convening lead author for the human health chapter of the 2013 National Climate Assessment; and was among the researchers who participated in the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. Knowlton holds a master's degree in environmental and occupational health sciences from Hunter College, and received her doctorate in public health from Columbia University.

 

Michael Kodas
 

 

Bill Kovarik
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Wind Power's Past, Present and Future, 6:00 a.m.
  • Event: Sunday, Book Author Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Bill Kovarik is a Professor of Communication at Radford University in the Blue Ridge mountains of southwestern Virginia. He has taught environmental journalism there and at Virginia Tech and the University of Western Ontario. He is a veteran of the Charleston Post, the Baltimore Sun, the AP, Jack Anderson and other news organizations. He also served on the SEJ board for six years. His most recent book is Revolutions in Communication: Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age, and he is currently working on Brilliant: Exploring the History of Renewable Energy.

 

Elizabeth Kronk
 

 

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Carol Lee
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 9, Wintering Cranes and Raptors at Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge, 9:30 a.m.
  • Carol Lee was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and has a background as a registered nurse. Carol founded South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, Inc. in Lubbock, Texas, in 1988 and served as executive director until semi-retirement in 2008. She organized an Internship Program with Texas Tech University in 1990 for students to get hands-on wildlife experience and receive college credit. This program continues today. In 2006 Carol organized and executed a national "Raptors on the Prairie" Conference for wildlife rehabilitators. Since retiring she serves on the SPWRC Board of Directors and writes their 12-page quarterly newsletters, since 1995. From 1999 to 2009 Lee wrote a weekly wildlife/nature-themed column for the local newspaper, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. She is a former member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and Women in Communication.

 

Robert Lee
 

 

Sharlene Leurig
 

 

Randy Lee Loftis
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE LAND: The "Fabric of Our Lives" and the Life of the Land, 9:00 a.m.
  • Event: Sunday, October 21 - Thursday, October 25, Post-Conference Tour: Big Bend National Park
  • Randy Lee Loftis, chair of SEJ's 22nd Annual Conference in Lubbock, has been The Dallas Morning News' environmental writer since he joined the newspaper in 1989. He worked previously for The Miami Herald and a small newspaper in South Carolina. In his 30-year career, he has won numerous national awards, including the Edward J. Meeman Award for environmental reporting and the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and is completing a master's in journalism at the University of North Texas.

 

Brandon Loomis
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE LAND: Coppering Bets Against Climate Change: Facing Uncertainty in Agricultural and Forest Systems, 2:00 p.m.
  • Brandon Loomis is public lands reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, where he won the 2012 Grantham Prize for his series, "Our Dying Forests." Loomis envisioned the stories for "Our Dying Forests" and scouted locations to explore various aspects of the climate-bark beetle connection, then spent most of his summer and fall traveling the Rockies to execute them in 2011. He has twice reported for the Tribune, 1998-2001 and 2007-present. Previously, he reported for the Anchorage Daily News, The Associated Press in Chicago, the Idaho Falls Post Register and the Jackson Hole Guide. Loomis was also a city editor at the Juneau Empire. He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska College of Journalism and was a 1993-94 Ted Scripps Graduate Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Michigan. He grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska, where he worked summers in fish-processing plants and a pulp mill.

 

Aaron Lovell
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE ECONOMY: Nanotech Update: Economic Boon or Environmental Bane? 10:45 a.m.
  • Aaron Lovell is a writer/editor for the Science and Technology Innovation Program (STIP) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Before joining STIP, he worked as a reporter for Inside Washington Publishers, covering Congress, the federal agencies, environmental policy, and nanotechnology. Lovell also reported on international finance in North America, Europe, and Asia, and has covered politics, business, and culture for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites in the United States and abroad.

 

Abrahm Lustgarten
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Oil and Gas and Lizards: Hydraulic Fracturing 2.0, 7:30 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE NATION: Fracking May Divide Your Town Next. But What's the State of the Science? 11:00 a.m.
  • Abrahm Lustgarten writes about energy, water, climate change and anything else having to do with the environment for ProPublica, the non-profit investigative newsroom. Before coming to ProPublica in 2008, he was a staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Wired, Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post and the New York Times. At ProPublica, his 2008 and 2009 investigation into fracking for natural gas was recognized with the George Polk award for environmental reporting, a National Press Foundation award for best energy writing, a Sigma Delta Chi award and was a finalist for Harvard's Goldsmith Prize. He is the author of two books: China’s Great Train: Beijing’s Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet, and most recently, Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster.

 

Francesca Lyman
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE GLOBE: Going to Extremes: Human Health on a Warmer Planet, 2:00 p.m.
  • Francesca Lyman is a free-lance journalist and author of The Greenhouse Trap: What We’re Doing to the Atmosphere and How We Can Slow Global Warming, with World Resources Institute, and Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest, with the American Museum of Natural History. She writes for many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times Green Blog, The Sacramento Bee, Popular Mechanics, Ms. Magazine, MSN channels, Seattle Met, and AOL.com. She wrote the award-winning "Your Environment" column for MSNBC's Health pages for seven years. A native of Chicago and graduate of Bennington College, she writes from Seattle. More.

 

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George Madhavan
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Reusing Wastewater: From Drought Woes to Faucet Flows, 9:00 a.m.
  • George Madhavan is a director at Singapore's Public Utilities Board, the national water agency for the island that captures and reuses every drop of water. He oversees public communications and community relations, including building awareness and trust in NEWater, Singapore's high-grade water purified from wastewater via microfiltration and reverse osmosis. Madhavan has been with PUB for more than 25 years and is a professional engineer.

 

Frank Maisano
 

 

Amy Mall
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Oil and Gas and Lizards: Hydraulic Fracturing 2.0, 7:30 a.m.
  • Amy Mall, Natural Resources Defense Council senior policy analyst, with expertise in policies that protect natural habitats from irresponsible industrial development, will share the latest in research and regulation for hydraulic fracturing. More.

 

Robert Mandel
 

  • Event: Sunday, Book Author Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Robert Mandel has served as director of Texas Tech University Press since 2008. He has also served as director of the University of Alaska Press, the University of Wisconsin Press and Syracuse University Press. Dr. Mandel has been active in publishing non-fiction books about nature and the environment in all of these university publishing houses.

 

Robert McClure
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE COMPUTER: "FOIA" the Bastards! 2:00 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE WATER: The Clean Water Act at 40: Under-enforced and out of Date — and a Story for You! 10:45 a.m.
  • Robert McClure, an SEJ board member, is Executive Director of InvestigateWest, an independent reporting studio in Seattle, WA. A Florida native, he spent a decade on the beat at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where he wrote numerous articles pointing out the need for Everglades restoration in the years leading up to launching of the planet's largest ecosystem restoration there. He also was awarded a prestigious Knight Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he studied environment and economics and concluded that he must move West to tackle the really big environmental stories. That's what he did, taking a job with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In a decade at the P-I, he produced five multi-part projects on mining, endangered species, and the need for environmental restoration of Puget Sound and the Duwamish River. He has covered climate change and other environmental news topics in his blog, Dateline Earth. When the P-I ceased publishing in March 2009, McClure was instrumental in helping launch InvestigateWest, a start-up non-profit news venture, to carry on investigative and narrative reporting on the West. His professional career began at United Press International's Miami and Tallahassee bureaus. McClure is the recipient of numerous state, regional and national journalism awards including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.

 

Colin Meehan
 

 

Matt Mendenhall
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 9, Wintering Cranes and Raptors at Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge, 9:30 a.m.
  • Matt Mendenhall is the associate editor of BirdWatching Magazine. He has written extensively about the endangered whooping crane and efforts to reintroduce it in the eastern U.S. Recent work includes articles about the effects of climate change, drought, and logging on birds, the likelihood that the ivory-billed woodpecker is extinct, and last winter's unprecedented invasion of snowy owls. He has fond memories of the 2009 SEJ tour he led to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge and the International Crane Foundation.

 

Sunshine Menezes
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE LAND: Coppering Bets Against Climate Change: Facing Uncertainty in Agricultural and Forest Systems, 2:00 p.m.
  • Sunshine Menezes is the executive director of Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting and associate director for communication in the University of Rhode Island Office of Marine Programs. Menezes previously worked for the URI Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant, where she led the effort to create an innovative urban coastal management policy for Narragansett Bay in the Providence metro region of Rhode Island. In 2003, she worked as a National Sea Grant Dean John Knauss Marine Policy Fellow in Washington, DC. As a Knauss Fellow, Menezes was responsible for environment and energy issues for Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr., where her duties included preparing written statements, testimony, and briefing materials for Rep. Pallone in his role as Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife, and Oceans. Menezes' doctoral research assessed biodiversity and ecology of single-celled organisms (nanoplankton) in a Rhode Island estuary. Menezes received a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from Michigan State University in 1995 and a Ph.D. in biological oceanography from the URI Graduate School of Oceanography in 2005.

 

Laura Miller
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 4, "Clean" Coal and Environmental Justice in a West Texas Town, 7:00 a.m.
  • Laura Miller joined Summit in 2008 to work on the Texas Clean Energy Project, an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) project, where she is now Director of Projects. She served as Mayor of Dallas from 2002 to 2007. During her tenure, she led the statewide opposition against eighteen old-technology coal plants proposed for Texas, an effort that was memorialized in a documentary film produced and narrated by Robert Redford, entitled "Fighting Goliath: The Texas Coal Wars." She also received a 2008 Climate Protection Award from the EPA for that initiative. Miller has been an advocate for coal gasification, carbon sequestration, renewables, nuclear, conservation, and energy efficiency. As Mayor, she led a real estate development boom in downtown Dallas, leveraging $190 million in city financial incentives to spark $1.3 billion in private investment. She has extensive experience with public finance, including championing the two largest bond packages in the history of Dallas and restructuring Dallas' underfunded pension system with pension obligation bonds and private-sector investment oversight. Prior to becoming Mayor, Miller was a member of the Dallas City Council. Before she began her political career, Miller was an award-winning journalist.

 

Susan Moran
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop: The Craft and Commerce of Successful Freelancing, 8:00 a.m.
  • Susan Moran is a freelance print journalist and a co-host of "How on Earth," a weekly science show on KGNU radio (Denver/Boulder). She writes for The New York Times, The Economist, Nature and several other publications, covering energy development, agriculture, conservation, climate science, environmental health, and business and technology. She has also taught for several years as an adjunct instructor at the University of Colorado-Boulder's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2009-2010. Previously she had been a senior editor at Business 2.0 magazine, a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, and a correspondent at Reuters.

 

Kevin Mulligan
 

 

David Muth
 

 

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Talli Nauman
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE ECONOMY: Great Plains Perspectives on Transboundary Tar, 2:00 p.m.
  • Talli Nauman is a former hard-rock miner at the hemisphere's largest gold mine. She covers that mine and other extractive industries as the Health and Environment Editor for the weekly Native Sun News in her home state of South Dakota. She is a co-founder of the bilingual independent media project Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, initiated in Mexico with a MacArthur grant in 1994, a co-founding member of the Mexican Environmental Journalists Network, and a participant in the Latin American and Caribbean environmental journalists network. She is SEJ's Diversity Program Associate, Latin American Initiative Director, and a First Amendment Task Force member. Her newsletter Meloncoyote.org is the first citizen journalism publication for sustainable development coverage in Mexico. Her background includes more than 35 years reporting mining and other resource issues for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, UPI, and The Associated Press in Los Angeles and Mexico City. She has a master's degree in International Journalism from the University of Southern California and a bachelor's degree in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard-Radcliffe.

 

Randy Neugebauer
 

 

Mark Neuzil
 

 

Timothy Nokken
 

 

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Sharon Oosthoek
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop: The Craft and Commerce of Successful Freelancing, 8:00 a.m.
  • Sharon Oosthoek is a freelance journalist who writes about the environment. Her work has appeared in New Scientist, The Globe and Mail, Canadian Geographic, cbc.ca, Science News for Kids, Defenders magazine, ON Nature and Canadian Wildlife. She is also a board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

 

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Lisa Palmer
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE ECONOMY: Green Businesses: The Bottom Line on Tackling Sustainability, 9:00 a.m.
  • Lisa Palmer is a freelance reporter and editor specializing in environmental and business coverage. Her reporting has appeared in Nature Climate Change, Slate Magazine, Scientific American, The Daily Climate, and CNNMoney.com, among many others. She is a regular contributor to The Yale Forum, a news site for scientists, journalists, and communicators that is known for its original reporting, commentary, and analysis of climate change. She has worked as a freelance editor for the National Academy of Sciences and has written reporting guides for journalists covering the sustainability story for the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University. She is a graduate of Boston University and earned her master's degree in communications from Simmons College in Boston. She lives in Maryland.

 

Don Parrish
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE LAND: The New Age of Ag: From Biofuels and GMOs to Sustainability and Supply Chains, 10:45 a.m.
  • Don Parrish is a senior director, Regulatory Relations, for the American Farm Bureau Federation's Public Policy team in Washington, D.C. Don’s area of expertise at the American Farm Bureau is Environmental and Conservation Policy. Don’s work focuses on the Clean Water Act, Wetlands, Water Quality, and the conservation provisions of the Farm Bill. Don works closely with each of the Federation’s 50 state Farm Bureaus, numerous commodity, industry and trade associations and government at all levels. His expertise on these issues has placed him in leadership roles. He currently chairs both the Waters Advocacy Coalition (WAC) and the Agricultural Nutrient Policy council (ANPC). He has also served on numerous Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) and Small Business advisory Committees. Don received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agronomy from Auburn University and a Master of Science Degree in Agricultural Economics from Auburn University. Originally from a crop and livestock farm in Alabama, Don now resides in Virginia with his wife, Dee Dee and they have two grown children, a daughter, Leslie Anne, and son, Austin.

 

Ramit Plushnick-Masti
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 8, Finding Water Where It Ain't, 9:00 a.m.
  • Ramit Plushnick-Masti has been working for the Associated Press for more than 10 years. Her career with the AP began in Jerusalem, where she at times had an opportunity to write about environmental issues, such as pollution in the Jordan River and the rapid shrinking of the Dead Sea. After moving to Pittsburgh, environmental reporting became more of a priority, especially after President Barack Obama chose the city's "green" convention center as the site of the G-20 summit. Nearly three years ago, Ramit was transferred to Houston and took on the environmental beat for Texas and also joined the AP's national environmental beat team.

 

Wayne Polley
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE LAND: Coppering Bets Against Climate Change: Facing Uncertainty in Agricultural and Forest Systems, 2:00 p.m.
  • Wayne Polley has been a Research Ecologist with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS) at the Grassland, Soil and Water Research Laboratory, Temple, Texas since 1988. He received a BS degree in Biology from Baylor University, a MS degree in Botany from the University of Oklahoma, and a PhD degree in Rangeland Science from Colorado State University. His research is directed at clarifying effects of global changes, including atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment and altered precipitation patterns, on ecological processes that regulate the functioning of rangeland ecosystems. Wayne has been a member of the Society for Range Management (SRM) since 1983 and of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) since 1982, and was certified as a Senior Ecologist by ESA in 2001.

 

Angela Posada-Swafford
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 1, From Stones to the Stars at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, 5:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, NASA's Newest Eye-Opening Satellite Imagery, 7:00 p.m.
  • Angela Posada-Swafford has been reporting, writing and producing stories about science, environment and exploration for the past 25 years for all media platforms in Spanish and English. Her work has appeared in WIRED and Astronomy magazines, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio (Living on Earth), Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Angela was the first Hispanic to be accepted into the Knight Fellowship in Science Journalism program at MIT, in 2000. She was also the first Hispanic journalist to receive the National Science Foundation's South Pole travel grant. Angela is the author of a collection of seven novels of science and adventure for readers ages 9 through 15, titled "Los Aventureros de la Ciencia" (The Adventurers of Science). She is co-director of the Logan Polar Program for Journalists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Ma. Angela currently serves as Senior Science US Correspondent for the popular MUY INTERESANTE magazine (www.muyinteresante.es), the largest science publication for the general reader in Spanish language today, with a monthly readership of 3 million. Angela's website.

 

David Poulson
 

  • Event: Friday, Breakfast Plenary, Is Communicating Climate Change a Lost Cause? 7:00 a.m.
  • David Poulson is the associate director of Michigan State University's Knight Center for Environmental Journalism where he teaches environmental, investigative and computer-assisted reporting to graduate and undergraduate students and organizes workshops for professional journalists. He is also the founder and editor of Great Lakes Echo, a non-profit environmental news service now serving the Great Lakes region. Prior to arriving at MSU in 2003, he was a reporter and editor for 22 years, covering the environment for several news organizations.

 

Steve Presley
 

 

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Ken Rainwater
 

 

Janet Raloff
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT: Freelance Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout 2, Poisons in the News: Toxicology and the Media, 12:15 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 2, Epigenetics: Rewriting Nature vs. Nurture, 2:15 p.m.
  • For more than three decades, Janet Raloff has been reporting at Science News on the environment, energy, science policy, agriculture and nutrition. She was among the first to give national visibility to such issues as electromagnetic pulse weaponry and hormone-mimicking pollutants, and was the first anywhere to report on the widespread tainting of streams and groundwater sources with pharmaceuticals. Her writing has won awards from the National Association of Science Writers, International Free Press Association, and the Institute of Food Technologists. Since 2007, she has also been the editor of Science News for Kids, an online magazine reaching 1.5 million unique visitors per year. Aimed at a middle school audience, it covers all fields of science and engineering (and of course math). Recent environmental features have included pieces on fracking, giant snakes, coastal dead zones, US forestry threats from exotic earthworms, climate change, ocean acidification and ocean trash gyres. Over the years, Janet has been an occasional commentator on NPR's "Living on Earth" and her work has appeared in several dozen publications. She is also a founding board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Initially an astronomy major, she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (with an elective major in physics).

 

Seshadri Ramkumar
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE ECONOMY: Nanotech Update: Economic Boon or Environmental Bane? 10:45 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 5, Sustainable Ag and Crops of the Future, 2:15 p.m.
  • Seshadri Ramkumar, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology at Texas Tech University. His research on developing value-added materials using nonwoven and nanotechnology involves nanofibers and materials and developing nanomaterials for defense and advanced applications. His lab is also interested in toxicity aspects of nanofibers and materials. Ramkumar supervises the Nonwoven and Advanced Materials Laboratory at The Institute of Environmental and Human Health, TTU, is editor of a comprehensive magazine on technical textiles: Nonwoven and Technical Textiles, and is editorial board chairman of Nonwoven and Technical Textiles Journal as well as on the editorial boards of three international peer-reviewed journals. He has successfully organized four international conferences on advances in fibrous materials. To date, he has graduated 13 MS and PhD students at Texas Tech University. His research on nonwoven decontamination wipe has resulted in technology transfer and will be commercialized very soon. More.

 

Sallie Randolph
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop: The Craft and Commerce of Successful Freelancing, Lunch Break: Session on Contracts and Copyright, 11:30 a.m.
  • Sallie Randolph is a practicing attorney who represents authors, and is also a freelance writer. She has taught law, writing and journalism, including several years at UB Law School, where she developed a copyright compliance program and directed a publishing and copyright clinic. She has also taught media law for journalism majors at Buffalo State College. She is the lead author of Author Law A to Z and co-contributor of the legal chapter for The ASJA Guide to Freelance Writing: A Professional Guide to the Business, for Nonfiction Writers of All Experience Levels. More.

 

Jerry Redfern
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT: Using Imagery To Tell Environmental Stories, 2:00 p.m.
  • Jerry Redfern has worked as a professional photojournalist for 20 years. He began his career as a staff photographer at newspapers in the American West, at a time when papers still had darkrooms and photographers still processed their own film. In 1998, he and his wife, author Karen Coates, moved to Cambodia. There, Redfern shot news, features and investigative stories for Agence France-Presse, The New York Times, The Cambodia Daily and other publications. He and Coates have since combined their talents on numerous projects examining under-reported stories across Asia and beyond, with particular focus on environment, health and social issues. For the past six years, they have documented the widespread effects of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Laos. Their book, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos, is scheduled for publication by ThingsAsian Press in 2011. Redfern and Coates have given several public presentations on this issue. Jerry's work can be seen here.

 

James Redford
 

 

Judy Reeves
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Reading Our Future in the Sands of Canyon Country, 8:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: Squeezing Blood from a Desert: Western Water Management, 11:00 a.m.
  • Judy A. Reeves, Ph.D.,P.G., of Grapevine, TX is a board-certified professional geoscientist and geologist, and a senior hydrogeologist at Cirrus Associates LLC. She is a member of the American Institute of Professional Geologists, National Groundwater Association, Geological Society of America, and Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers. She is also water committee chair of the Industry Council on the Environment. Reeves received a bachelor's degree, a master's degree in geology, and a doctorate degree in geosciences from Texas Tech University. Dr. Reeves has over 22 years of experience performing environmental and water resource management projects. She is an expert on the Ogallala aquifer and is a coauthor of The Ogallala Aquifer (of the Southern High Plains). Her combined experience in assessing both aquifer water quality and water quantity, and serving both private industry and government, provides a unique, well-rounded experience base for solving hydrogeologic problems.

 

Brenda Rodgers
 

  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 2, Epigenetics: Rewriting Nature vs. Nurture, 2:15 p.m.
  • Brenda Rodgers is a member of Texas Tech's Departments of Biology and Family Medicine. She joined the Chernobyl Research Team in 1997, where she began studying the impacts of radiation exposures on native animals and caged rodents in the woods outside the accident site. Her research continues to focus on the effects of chronic exposure to low-dose radiation. Current projects include employing genetic tests to assess chromosomal damage in transgenic mice chronically exposed to radiation. She is also planning a collaborative project with the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences for continued monitoring of the health effects of chronic exposures of humans to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident. The proposed project will expand their previous study of scientists and liquidators occupationally exposed to radiation and will also include re-settlers of the 30 km Exclusion Zone.

 

Joe Roman
 

 

S

 

David Sandino
 

 

Jennifer Sass
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE GLOBE: Women, Water and Health: From Dirty Wells to Endocrine Disruptors, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE ECONOMY: Nanotech Update: Economic Boon or Environmental Bane? 10:45 a.m.
  • Dr. Jennifer Sass is a senior scientist in the Health and Environment program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental non-profit organization, and a professorial lecturer at George Washington University, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. She is an expert in US chemical policy and regulations. Sass has degrees in Anatomy and Cell Biology from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and Toxicology from the University of Maryland. In her work with NRDC she reviews the science underpinning the regulation of toxic chemicals, and advocates for health-protective regulations consistent with the environmental laws. Sass publishes in peer-reviewed journals on the regulation of toxic chemicals and emerging contaminants such as nanomaterials. She provides testimony and scientific briefings for the U.S. Congress and regularly participates in stakeholder and expert scientific federal advisory committees.

 

Karen Schaefer
 

  • Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout 3, Sound Reporting: Using Audio to Enhance Your Environmental Storytelling, 12:15 p.m.
  • Karen Schaefer is a freelance journalist and independent radio producer based in the Great Lakes region near Cleveland, Ohio. She has worked in public radio for more than 20 years, more than half of them as a reporter at NPR member stations in Ohio, where she created an environmental beat focusing on Great Lakes issues. Her environmental stories range from Lake Erie algae blooms and the search for invasive Asian carp to childhood lead poisoning and steel mill clean-up. You can hear her latest work on WCPN-Cleveland, WBEZ-Chicago, Only A Game, The Allegheny Front, In The Fray, and Great Lakes Echo.

 

April 19, 2011, a year after the oil spill, thick liquid oil still lies just below the surface of marshgrasses in Pass a Loutre Wildlife Management Area near the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Photo by Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.

Mark Schleifstein
 

  • Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout 1, BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill at Two, 12:15 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE WATER: The Clean Water Act at 40: Under-enforced and out of Date — and a Story for You! 10:45 a.m.
  • Environment reporter Mark Schleifstein has worked at The Times-Picayune since 1984. On Oct. 1, 2012, he joined the newly-formed NOLA Media Group, which provides content for NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune, as a lead news reporter. In 2011, the Press Club of New Orleans honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. His stories on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil spill were among The Times-Picayune work honored with the 2010 Edward J. Meeman Award for environmental reporting from the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Awards program, and with a second place award in the 2011 John B. Oakes Awards program. His reporting during and after Hurricane Katrina was among the newspaper's stories honored with 2006 Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service and Breaking News Reporting and the George Polk Award for Metropolitan Reporting. More.

 

Andrew Sharpless
 

  • Event: Friday, Opening Plenary, Land, Water and People: It's the Food, Stupid! 9:00 a.m.
  • Since September 2003, Andrew F. Sharpless has been the chief executive officer for Oceana. During his tenure, the organisation has grown to over 500,000 supporters and has scored dozens of victories for the ocean, including the protection of over 1.4m square miles of seafloor protected from bottom trawling. Sharpless has held numerous positions at prestigious firms, including at McKinsey & Co, serving the needs of a variety of corporate, non-profit and governmental clients. Then, as Vice President of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, he helped transform that unique facility when it opened its new building in 1991. Sharpless subsequently became one of the founding managers of RealNetworks, the Seattle-based pioneer in the field of online music and video playback technology. Sharpless has also led Discovery.com, the online division of the Discovery Channel. Sharpless is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School and the London School of Economics.

 

Sara Shipley Hiles
 

  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 5, Sustainable Ag and Crops of the Future, 2:15 p.m.
  • Sara Shipley Hiles is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Missouri. She grew up on a hog farm, which probably helped spur her interest in agriculture, science and the environment. She has reported for newspapers, magazines and a book.

 

Peter Sinclair
 

  • Event: Friday, Breakfast Plenary, Is Communicating Climate Change a Lost Cause? 7:00 a.m.
  • Peter Sinclair is a videographer and blogger specializing in climate and energy issues. His regular video series and blog, "Climate Denial Crock of the Week," takes regular satirical and fact-based aim at climate disinformation. He now produces a second series on climate, "This is Not Cool," for the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. Grist Magazine has called Mr. Sinclair "The sharpest climate denier debunker on YouTube."

 

Kamaleshwar Singh
 

  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 2, Epigenetics: Rewriting Nature vs. Nurture, 2:15 p.m.
  • Dr. Kamaleshwar Singh is an assistant professor of Environmental Genomics and Molecular Carcinogenesis, part of the Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University. He studies how environmental agents can affect genetics — specifically the ways these gene-environment interactions cause mutations and epigenetic changes that may lead to cancer and other diseases. One area of his research focuses on the molecular paths metals and environmental estrogens take to alter the epigenome. Another project explores how space — microgravity and radiation — affects the epigenome. In this work, Singh's lab studies how the space conditions can affect physiology and lead to known changes to the immune system, muscles and bone.

 

Jonathan Sleeman
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE GLOBE: Going to Extremes: Human Health on a Warmer Planet, 2:00 p.m.
  • Jonathan Sleeman is the director of the US Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC). The NWHC's mission is to provide national leadership to safeguard wildlife and ecosystem through dynamic partnerships and exceptional science, and its research on topics as diverse as avian influenza and white nose syndrome is international recognized. Dr. Sleeman is a wildlife veterinarian and a board certified specialist in wildlife diseases. He has presented and published widely on a variety of topics including human disease threats to great apes, wildlife as indicators of ecosystem health, and climate change and wildlife health.

 

Tom "Smitty" Smith
 

 

William Souder
 

  • Event: Sunday, Silent Spring at 50: Rachel Carson and Environmental Reporting Today, 8:30 a.m.
  • William Souder's work has appeared in many publications, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Harper’s. He is the author of three books. A Plague of Frogs (2000) followed the investigation into outbreaks of deformed frogs across North America. Under a Wild Sky (2004), which told the story of pioneer and bird artist John James Audubon, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson will be published in September 2012 on the 50th anniversary of Carson’s Silent Spring. Souder lives in Grant, Minnesota.

 

Alan Spears
 

  • Event: Sunday, October 21 - Thursday, October 25, Post-Conference Tour: Big Bend National Park
  • Alan Spears currently works for NPCA's Government Affairs Department as a legislative representative and historian with a primary focus on cultural resource preservation. In 2011, Alan co-led the legislative and grassroots campaign to successfully establish Fort Monroe (near Hampton Roads, Virginia) as the 396th unit of the National Park System. Previous campaign successes include passage of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Funding Reauthorization Act, which raised the authorized funding level for this NPS managed program from $500,000 to $2.5 million annually; a critical first step towards erasing the program’s crippling funding deficit. Alan has a B.A. in American History with a concentration in Women's Studies from Clark University (Worcester, MA) and an M.A. in American History from Howard University (Washington, DC) where he wrote a thesis on the "Washington, DC Race Riot of 1919." Alan was born and raised in Washington, DC.

 

Kenneth Starcher
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Wind Power's Past, Present and Future, 6:00 a.m.
  • Ken Starcher has worked at the Alternative Energy Institute since 1977. His main focus has been maintenance and operation of wind turbines at the AEI/Wind Test Center; operation of the Renewable Energy Demonstration Project (Solar Building); and coordination of all AEI wind/solar data sites scattered throughout Texas and New Mexico. Ken has had experience in installing and operating more than 65 renewable systems from less than 1 kilowatt to 300 kilowatts. As Associate Director of AEI he continues its focus on data collection, turbine testing, information dissemination, consulting and teaching/training. He has earned two degrees from West Texas A&M University, a B.S. in Physics (1980) and a M.S. in Engineering Technology (1995).

 

Mark Stoll
 

  • Event: Sunday, Silent Spring at 50: Rachel Carson and Environmental Reporting Today, 8:30 a.m.
  • Associate professor of environmental history at Texas Tech University, Mark Stoll earned a B.A. from Rice University in 1977 and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Stoll is interested in the influence of religion on American ideas about nature and the environment, which he has explored in Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America as well as in many articles, chapters, papers, and lectures. He also edited a book series on world environmental history for ABC-Clio and, with Dianne Glave, co-edited To Love the Wind and the Rain: Essays in African American Environmental History. His essay "Rachel Carson: The Presbyterian Genesis of a Nature Writer" was published in 2009. For Silent Spring's 50th anniversary, Stoll authored a Website on its international reception and impact, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a Book that Changed the World. He is at work on a major book entitled Nature in the Colors of the Spirit: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. More.

 

Lana Straub
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Reading Our Future in the Sands of Canyon Country, 8:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: Squeezing Blood from a Desert: Western Water Management, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 1, Climate Change Through History, 2:15 p.m.
  • Lana Straub of Stanton, TX is a freelance journalist focusing her efforts on water issues with particular interest in groundwater conservation and contamination. She is trained Paralegal with a bachelor's degree in political science, emphasis in legal assistant studies from Texas A&M University-Commerce. She is an associate member of SEJ, a member of IRE and has written for publications for the National Ground Water Association. Lana spent ten years in the legal profession before turning to journalism in 2002. She was honored in 2002 with a first place contest win for one of her short stories and 2005 with an Honorable Mention from MarCom Creative Awards for one of her magazine articles. Lana has had a bi-monthly column, All in the Family, in the Water Well Journal since 2003. She has had several short stories published in anthologies and magazines. Lana is also a singer/songwriter with the duo Von Straub who released their freshman album "Summer by the Lake Acoustic Tour" in 2011. She holds a membership in BMI and the Paralegal Division of the State Bar of Texas. Lana blogs at Water Tells.

 

Vickie Sutton
 

 

Anthony Swift
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE ECONOMY: Great Plains Perspectives on Transboundary Tar, 2:00 p.m.
  • Anthony Swift, International Program Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is a native West Texan from a family with four generations in the oil industry, and continues the family tradition in the energy industry by advocating for the development of clean and sustainable fuels. He works on NRDC's Campaign to Stop Dirty Fuels. He also works with U.S. and international coalitions opposing the expansion of tar sands production and proposals to build the Keystone XL, Northern Gateway and Trailbreaker tar sands pipelines. Anthony is an attorney with expertise in fossil fuel subsidies, energy markets, energy security, federal environmental review processes and pipeline regulatory issues. He has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on pipeline safety oversight. Prior to working at NRDC, Anthony worked as a policy analyst for the Department of Transportation where he worked on alternative fuels, efficiency standards and the National Environmental Policy Act review process. He has a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Biology and Political Science from Austin College. He blogs on NRDC's Switchboard.

 

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Clayton Thomas-Muller
 

 

Peter Thomson
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT: Freelance Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • As "The World's" environment editor, Peter Thomson works with the program's reporters and hosts to bring clear and compelling coverage and analysis of global environmental issues to the program's 2.5 million listeners. Peter got hooked on radio journalism listening to (and interning with) Danny Schechter the News Dissector while in high school outside of Boston. After failing in careers as a housepainter, waiter, bike messenger, oyster shucker and DJ, he eventually found his way back to radio news at WFCR in Amherst, Mass., where he was lucky enough to be taught and mentored by some of the best in the business. A lifelong interest in environmental issues took full flower when Peter was hired on as the founding editor and producer of NPR's new environmental news program Living on Earth, in 1991. In nearly 10 years at the program, Peter helped establish Living on Earth as the preeminent broadcast source for environmental news and helped the program earn numerous awards and honors. He also reported for the program on issues from oil and natives on Alaska's North Slope to solar power development in rural Morocco.

 

Compton Tucker
 

 

V

 

George Veni
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 1, From Stones to the Stars at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, 5:00 a.m.
  • Dr. Veni is an internationally recognized hydrogeologist specializing in caves and karst terrains. Prior to National Cave and Karst Research Institute, he owned and served as principal investigator of George Veni and Associates for >20 years. Much of his work has been in Texas, but he has also conducted extensive karst research throughout the United States and in several other countries. He served as the Executive Secretary of the National Speleological Society’s Section of Cave Geology and Geography for 11 years and President of the Texas Speleological Survey for 13 years. He was the Chairman of the 15th International Congress of Speleology, a member of the governing board of the International Union of Speleology from 2002-2009, and the Union’s Vice President of Administration from 2009 to the present. He has served as a doctoral committee advisor for geological, geographical, and biological dissertations for multiple universities and taught karst geoscience courses as an adjunct professor for Western Kentucky University for 12 years. Three cave-dwelling species have been named in his honor. He has published and presented nearly 170 papers, including four books, on hydrogeology, biology, and environmental management in karst terrains.

 

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Bernard Weinstein
 

 

Len Wert
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 3, From Nuclear Enrichment to Nuclear Waste, 6:30 a.m.
  • Len Wert began serving as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Deputy Regional Administrator for Operations in January, 2011. Immediately previous to his current assignment, he was the Director, Division of Reactor Projects, Region II. Wert joined the NRC in 1987, as the Resident Inspector at Oconee Nuclear Station. He completed 12 years of service in onsite inspection positions, including Senior Resident Inspector at the Hatch Nuclear Plant and Senior Resident Inspector at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant. Wert received the Meritorious Service Award in 1997 for his work during the Brown Ferry Unit 3 restart. He then completed several Branch Chief assignments in the Division of Reactor Projects and the Division of Fuel Facility Inspections, and acted as Deputy Division Director in the Division of Reactor Projects. He is a graduate of the 2002 NRC Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program. From May 2005 to May 2008, Wert served as Director, Division of Nuclear Materials Safety, in the NRC Region IV office in Arlington, Texas. Prior to joining the NRC, Wert served for seven years on active duty as a submarine officer and an instructor in the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program. He holds a B.S. degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Florida.

 

Philip Wexler
 

 

Nadia White
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT: Academics and College Newspapers, 10:45 a.m.
  • Event: Sunday, October 21 - Thursday, October 25, Post-Conference Tour: Big Bend National Park
  • Nadia White teaches journalism at the University of Montana. She has worked as a reporter and editor at various newspapers including the Boulder Daily Camera in Colorado and the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming. She is currently working on an adventure journalism textbook and biographic travelogue that covers the people and places between the Oklahoma Panhandle and the Klondike goldfields.

 

Clint Wilder
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE ECONOMY: Green Businesses: The Bottom Line on Tackling Sustainability, 9:00 a.m.
  • Clint Wilder is senior editor at clean-tech research and advisory firm Clean Edge and the coauthor of two books on clean-tech business and innovation, Clean Tech Nation (HarperCollins, 2012) and The Clean Tech Revolution (HarperCollins, 2007). He is an award-winning business journalist who has covered the high-tech and clean-tech industries since 1985. He coauthors reports and writes columns on industry trends for Clean Edge and has been a facilitator at the Clinton Global Initiative. He is a frequent speaker at clean-energy and green business events in the U.S. and overseas, and a regular blogger for the Huffington Post. Clint has attended every SEJ Annual Conference since 2002.

 

Ron Wildermuth
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Reusing Wastewater: From Drought Woes to Faucet Flows, 9:00 a.m.
  • Ron Wildermuth is public and governmental affairs manager for the West Basin Municipal Water District, which sells five different types of "designer" waters made from recycled sewage to cities and private industry in southwestern Los Angeles. Prior to West Basin, he spent 10 years at the Orange County Water District leading the public-outreach effort for the Groundwater Replenishment System, the largest indirect sewage-to-drinking water project in the world.

 

Loretta Williams
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 3, From Nuclear Enrichment to Nuclear Waste, 6:30 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout 3, Sound Reporting: Using Audio to Enhance Your Environmental Storytelling, 12:15 p.m.
  • Loretta Williams is an independent public radio journalist based in the Los Angeles area. She has worked as a producer and editor for NPR off and on since 1983. Between NPR stints she worked for two award-winning public radio producers: SoundPrint and SoundVision Productions, creating documentaries that range from wildlife conflict to cochlear implants to the mysteries and promise of genetic science. Her most recent work can be heard on Burn: An Energy Journal hosted by veteran public radio host and correspondent Alex Chadwick.

 

Roger Witherspoon
 

 

Paul Wood
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Oil and Gas and Lizards: Hydraulic Fracturing 2.0, 7:30 a.m.
  • Paul Wood, a local businessman and pilot with Gardendale Accountability Project, will give aerial tours of oil and gas fields to show impacts on people where property has been affected by new developments in hydraulic fracturing.

 

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Daniel Yeh
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Reusing Wastewater: From Drought Woes to Faucet Flows, 9:00 a.m.
  • Daniel Yeh is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he works on sustainable urban water infrastructure, including wastewater reuse and recovery and bioenergy. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding Dr. Yeh's research on a resource-recovery machine to harvest nutrients, energy and water from human wastes. Dr. Yeh is also working on a National Science Foundation grant to cultivate biofuel-producing microalgae from wastewater. More.

 

Helene York
 

 

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John Zak
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Reading Our Future in the Sands of Canyon Country, 8:00 a.m.
  • Event: Sunday, October 21 - Thursday, October 25, Post-Conference Tour: Big Bend National Park
  • Dr. John Zak, a soil microbial ecologist has been a faculty member at Texas Tech University for 26 years in the Department of Biological Sciences. He was Chair of Biological Sciences for 8 years and has been Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Sciences for the past three years. In addition to his academic and administrative duties John is the Co-Director of the TTU-Climate Science Center and is the "Principle Investigator" for the TTU component of the South Central Climate Science Center consortium which includes the University of Oklahoma, Texas Tech University, Oklahoma State University, Louisiana State University and the Tribal nations in Oklahoma as one of the eight regional USGS-funded Climate Science Centers in the United States. John's research seeks to understand how climate variability and human disturbances regulate soil microbial diversity and activity at the level of the ecosystem and landscape; from the cotton fields of west-Texas, to the Chihuahuan Desert at Big Bend National Park, to the piney woods of Ft. Benning, Georgia, and back to the watersheds of the Texas Hill Country at Junction, TX. More.

 

 

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