Here are biographies of speakers for SEJ's 19th Annual Conference, October 7-11, 2009, in Madison, Wisconsin.
DRAFT: All Information Subject to Change

Lake Mendota sunset.         Photo © Jeff Miller/UW-Madison.

Back to Madison conference home.

Alphabetical Speaker List
(a work-in-progress)
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

 

 

 

 

A

 

Frank Ackerman
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE ECONOMY: The Economics of Climate Change: Can We Afford To Respond? Can We Afford Not To? 11:15 a.m.

Economist and Tufts University professor Frank Ackerman, Ph.D, has written extensively about the economics of climate change and other environmental problems. His books include Can We Afford the Future? Economics for a Warming World (fall 2008); Poisoned for Pennies: The Economics of Toxics and Precaution (2008); Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing (2004); and Why Do We Recycle? Markets, Values, and Public Policy (1997). Since 2007, he has worked jointly with GDAE and the Stockholm Environment Institute, a research program on climate economics. Ackerman, who received his Ph.D in economics from Harvard, is a founder and member of the steering committee of Economists for Equity and Environment (the E3 Network), and a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform.

 

Don Albinger
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Future Energy Choices, 7:00 a.m.

As vice president of renewable energy for Johnson Controls Power Solutions, Don Albinger heads up a team of energy experts who are responsible for developing and deploying the technologies and expertise surrounding a variety of renewable sources — wind, solar, landfill gas, biomass, and photovoltaic. A major focus of the team is the development of customized deal structures and project implementation of customer renewable energy opportunities. Since joining the company in 1984, Albinger's experience includes the technical development of building automation systems and the advancement of environmental control methods for buildings and programming technologies. Albinger is a member of the American Council of Renewable Energy and the Product Development Management Association. He obtained his bachelor's of science degree in education from the University of Wisconsin at Platteville, and a bachelor's of science degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in engineering management from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

 

Frank Allen
 

Events:

Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT: Telling Environment Stories Better — Especially Now That Times Are Worse, 2:15 p.m.
Sunday-Wednesday, Post-Conference Tour: The Other Side of Wisconsin

Frank Edward Allen spent 14 years at The Wall Street Journal without winning a single Pulitzer Prize. As a younger man, he was a Cajun impersonator, navy intelligence officer, little league coach, horse-stall cleaner and poorly paid picker of hazelnuts. He also reported and edited for dailies and newswires in Oregon, Arizona and Minnesota. In 1997, after a miserable stint as dean of a journalism school, Frank became founding president of the Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources (IJNR), a non-profit group that encourages and supports journalists of all kinds at all career stages — whether they be exhilarated, disillusioned or merely disoriented. Frank is principal author of Matching the Scenery: Journalism's Duty to the North American West, a disturbingly prophetic analysis of challenges facing the region's newsrooms. He has a bachelor's degree in English and creative writing from Stanford University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Oregon.

 

Kara Allison
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT: Green PR in the Blogosphere: How PR Practitioners Are End-Running Professional Journalists and How We Should Respond, 9:00 a.m.

Kara Allison directs Hull's Government and Community Relations initiatives; she specializes in state and federal environmental policy and legislative issues, media strategy, and crisis communications. As part of Hull's funding team, she has assisted in securing more than $122 million in grants for brownfields and green development projects. A journalism graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University, Allison has 14 years' experience in public and media relations. She is an associate in the firm, an accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America and a registered lobbyist in Ohio and Indiana. Allison works with developers and communities in public-private partnerships to help foster creative redevelopment and funding strategies for brownfield sites, and has been directly responsible for developing public relations and community outreach strategies for a number of high-profile, large-scale national redevelopment projects. Allison is a former media relations coordinator for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, a former reporter, and author of several environmental articles and papers.

 

Todd Ambs
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE WATER: Water Supplies, Diversion and The Great Lakes Compact, 10:45 a.m.

Todd Ambs was appointed administrator of the Wisconsin DNR Water Division in January 2003. He guides the activities of 675 employees in Watershed Management, water quality management of state water bodies; Fisheries Management and Habitat Protection, managing and monitoring aquatic ecosystems and habitat, managing commercial and sport fisheries; and Drinking and Groundwater Management, which includes assuring the safety, quality and availability of drinking water and groundwater. Prior to his appointment, he served as executive director of the River Alliance of Wisconsin, a non-profit statewide conservation group. Ambs has more than 25 years of experience in public policy and environmental protection work for nonprofit organizations and state agencies. He has served as a senior policy analyst for then Attorney General Jim Doyle. executive director of Ohio's Rivers Unlimited, policy director for the Ohio Attorney General, and communications director for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Ambs serves on a number of water related boards and commission.

 

Paul Anastas
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Green Chemistry, Nanotech and More: The Promise and Perils, 2:15 p.m.

Paul T. Anastas is the director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University, and a professor in the Practice of Green Chemistry in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. President Obama nominated Anastas to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development. Previously, he served as director of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. and assistant director for the environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and worked as an industrial consultant. He received his M.A. in chemistry from Brandeis and his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He is credited with establishing the field of green chemistry while working for the U.S. EPA as the chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch and as director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program. Anastas authored the books Benign by Design, Designing Safer Polymers, Green Engineering, and co-authored Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice.

 

Peter Annin
 

Events:

Wednesday, Opening Reception and Dinner at the Concourse Hotel, 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, Lunch and Plenary — Water: The 21st Century's Most Valuable Resource? 12:00 p.m. (noon)
Sunday-Wednesday, Post-Conference Tour: The Other Side of Wisconsin

Peter Annin, the architect and leader of the Lake Country Institute/SEJ's Post-Conference Tour, is associate director of the Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources and a former Chicago-based correspondent for Newsweek. He is also the author of The Great Lakes Water Wars, an award-winning book published in 2006 about water conflicts in the Great Lakes region, and co-chair of SEJ's 19th Annual Conference.

 

B

 

Maude Barlow
 

Event: Saturday, Lunch and Plenary — Water: The 21st Century's Most Valuable Resource? 12:00 p.m. (noon)

Maude Barlow is the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians and senior advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly. She also chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and is a councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Barlow is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates as well as many awards, including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the "Alternative Nobel"), the Citation of Lifetime Achievement at the 2008 Canadian Environment Award, and the 2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award. She is also the best selling author or co-author of 16 books, including the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and The Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

 

Nancy Bazilchuk
 

Events:

Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CLIMATE: From the Equator to the Poles: Forests Under Siege, 11:15 a.m.
Friday, Network Lunch, Prelude to Copenhagen: Final Report on International Polar Year Research, 12:30 p.m.

Nancy Bazilchuk is a freelance science and environmental writer based in Trondheim, Norway. Her work has appeared in Audubon, New Scientist, Conservation, Environmental Health Perspectives, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment and Sea Kayaker. Before moving to Norway, she worked for nearly 15 years as the environmental writer for the Burlington (VT) Free Press.

 

Wendell Berry
 

Event: Sunday, Aldo Leopold's Changing Legacy, 9:15 a.m.

Wendell Berry is a southerner of varied interests, including farming, conservation and creative writing. He has written more than 30 novels and books of poetry and essays. He has won numerous honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. He lives on a farm in Kentucky and has been called the "prophet of rural America" by The New York Times.

 

Paul Bertram
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 3, Cruising Lake Michigan, 7:15 a.m.

Dr. Paul Bertram is a Great Lakes scientist. He is the U.S. lead for Great Lakes environmental indicators assessment and reporting, through the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference (SOLEC) process, and he shares responsibilities with his Canadian counterpart for the preparation of the binational State of the Great Lakes report series. During his career of over 20 years with U.S. EPA, Dr. Bertram has authored several scientific papers, and he still serves on occasion as a senior scientist on board the research vessel R/V Lake Guardian.

 

David Biello
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT: Freelance Pitch Slam, 10:45 a.m.

David Biello, associate editor of Earth and Environment, joined Scientific American in November 2005 and has written on subjects ranging from astronomy to zoology for both the Web site and magazine. He is the host of the 60-Second Earth podcast, named one of the best of 2008 by Apple, as well as the author of the children's book Bullet Trains from Rosen Publishing. He has been reporting on the environment and energy since 1999 (long enough to be cynical but not long enough to be depressed). His work has appeared everywhere from Elle to Environmental Finance and he thinks Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species is a surprisingly good read.

 

Spencer Black
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 7, Canoe the Wisconsin River, 9:30 a.m.

Representative Spencer Black (D-Madison, WI) has represented the 77th Assembly District since 1984. He is the chair of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. He previously served as Assembly Minority Leader and Assistant Minority Leader. Representative Black is generally considered to be the Legislature's leading environmental advocate, authoring numerous environmental laws including the Stewardship Fund, the largest conservation effort in Wisconsin's history, the Mining Moratorium Bill, the Lower Wisconsin Riverway, the statewide recycling program, and the endangered species match grant. Representative Black attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has two graduate degrees — Masters of Science in Urban and Regional Planning and a Masters of Arts in Public Policy and Administration.

 

Doug Boucher
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CLIMATE: From the Equator to the Poles: Forests Under Siege, 11:15 a.m.

Dr. Douglas Boucher is director of the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has held various academic positions at McGill University, the University of Québec and Hood College. Boucher was also the Washington Office Director of U.S. Representative Bernard Sanders (VT, At Large). He earned a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Michigan and has published about 75 scientific peer-reviewed articles and books. Boucher currently works on the issue of tropical deforestation and its relation to global warming. He is the coordinator of the Tropical Forest and Climate Coalition, which has brought together about two dozen environmental NGOs and major business to promote funding to reduce deforestation in U.S. climate legislation. Boucher has also played a major role in the NGO community's work in the international climate change negotiations.

 

David Brancaccio
 

Event: Friday, Afternoon Plenary — Meet the New Bosses, (Not) the Same as the Old Bosses?, 3:45 p.m.

David Brancaccio is host and senior editor of NOW on PBS, public television's award-winning newsmagazine of investigative reporting and in-depth interviews. Among his beats: the environment/climate change, politics, human rights, national security, and health care. A broadcaster for 33 years, he also served as the long-time host of public radio's acclaimed business program Marketplace, which won two of the top honors in broadcast journalism, the George Foster Peabody and the DuPont-Columbia awards. He and his team at NOW on PBS recently won an Emmy for a feature story about an innovative way to deliver healthcare in Africa and took home the 2009 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Coverage. David is the 2009 recipient of the Sierra Club's David Brower award for environmental journalism. He is author of the book Squandering Aimlessly about money and values in America and has published in newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, and Britain's The Guardian.

 

Philip Brasher
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, AGRICULTURE: Climate Change and Agriculture: How Are We Going To Feed a Growing Population on a Hotter Planet?, 10:45 a.m.

Philip Brasher is the Washington correspondent for The Des Moines Register, specializing in coverage of agriculture, food, trade, energy and climate policy. While at the Register, he has played a lead role in award-winning Register projects that have delved into issues of biofuels, land use, child obesity and, last year, the potential impact of climate change on Iowa. Brasher joined the Register in 2002 from The Associated Press, where he was the news service's national reporter on farm and food policy. He is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and a native of Lubbock, Texas.

 

Alex Bratty
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT: Quiz the Pollster: Energy and the Environment in the Public Eye, 11:15 a.m.

Alex Bratty is a vice president at Public Opinion Strategies, a leading national political and public affairs survey research firm. She has worked on polls and focus groups on river and land conservation, global warming, increased fuel efficiency, green or clean energy jobs, and cap and trade for numerous clients that include the Centers for Disease Control and the United Nations Foundation. With Hart Research, Bratty is also part of the team that works on the NBC News/Wall Street Journal National Poll. Since joining POS in September 2003, she has managed hundreds of qualitative and quantitative projects. Prior to joining POS, Bratty was an audience research and business development manager for the cable news channel, MSNBC. She also has significant international experience. Bratty is originally from Northern Ireland, receiving her Bachelors degree at Edinburgh University, Scotland for dual honors in Business Studies and French in 1997, followed by her Masters of Business Administration from Villanova, PA in 2001.

 

James Bruce
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CLIMATE: Taking Some Temperatures: What Will Climate Change Mean for the Great Lakes? 10:45 a.m.

Jim Bruce is co-chair of the International Joint Commission's public interest advisory group overseeing the ongoing Upper Great Lakes study. He was founding Director of Canada's largest water research institute, in Burlington, Ontario and assisted in drafting the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements of 1972 and 1978.  As Deputy Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, Bruce convened, with UNEP, the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He later was co-chair of the Economic and Social Dimensions Working Group (Working Group 3) of IPCC and was a member of the IPCC delegation which received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Dec. 2007. In the past decade Bruce has served as a consultant in Canada and abroad on adaptation to climate variability and change, especially on water issues and on natural disaster mitigation. Bruce has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from University of Waterloo and McMaster University.

 

James Bruggers
 

Events:

Friday, Network Lunch, SEJ "Big Sky" 2010 — University of Montana, Missoula, 12:30 p.m.
Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Measure it Again: Air Pollution and the EPA Toxics Program, 10:45 a.m.

SEJ board member James Bruggers covers the environment for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal and courier-journal.com in Kentucky and served as SEJ president from October 2000 through October 2002. He's worked as a journalist since 1982, also in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California, and has been an SEJ board member since 1997. In 1998-99, he was awarded a year on the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus as Knight Wallace Journalism Fellow. In 2004, he won the Thomas Stokes Award, the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation's Excellence in Journalism Award, and two Best-of-Gannett awards for the series, "Toxic Air: Lingering Health Menace." Bruggers is a graduate of the forestry and journalism programs at the University of Montana, where he also earned an M.S. in environmental studies, and is co-chair of the 2010 SEJ conference hosted by the University of Montana. He also writes a blog, Watchdog Earth.

 

Mark Brush
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE WATER: Great Lakes in Rehab: What Can a Few Billion Dollars Do? 2:15 p.m.

Mark Brush is The Environment Report's senior producer. He oversees the overall editorial direction and day-to-day operations of the national environmental news service along with senior editor Lester Graham. Mark also gets out in the field where he loves to gather voices and sounds that help transport listeners to unique places. In 2000, he earned his M.S. degree in Environmental Public Policy and Planning from the University of Michigan. Mark has worked in public radio since 1998; prior to that he was an admitted public radio junkie. "I get a deeper understanding of an issue when I listen to a good radio report. Radio is personal in a way that no other media is."

 

Brian Bull
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Fishing for Clean Fish and Hunting for Safe Treaty Resources, 10:45 a.m.

Brian Bull is the assistant news director for Wisconsin Public Radio, and an award-winning reporter. He helps cover issues important to the state, including education, business, and cultural issues. A member of the Nez Perce tribe, Bull has reported on a variety of Native American issues for local and national public radio programs. He produced a feature on preserving ancient Indian effigy and burial mounds for WPR and the Environment Report. Bull has also recently participated in a joint radio/TV project for PBS's recent "We Shall Remain" mini-series, including two long features on NPR which examined the issues of Indian stereotypes and cultural identity. His interests include history, psychology, art, and his tribe's history of oral tradition and storytelling, which figures heavily in his broadcast journalism career.

 

Jeff Burnside
 

Events:

Wednesday, SEJ Awards for Reporting on the Environment, 8:00 p.m.
Friday, Network Lunch, SEJ 2011: Miami, Florida, 12:30 p.m.

Jeff Burnside is an SEJ board member, and part of the Special Projects Unit at WTVJ in Miami. Jeff broke the story regarding harm to marine mammals from low frequency active Navy sonar, documented concerns over rock mining threats to Miami-Dade wellheads where a million people get their drinking water, has traveled extensively to cover the decline of the world's coral reefs, and ventured to the bottom of the ocean aboard a scientific submersible during bioprospecting and chronicling the damage from bottom trawling. Burnside's investigative reporting recently won a national IRE certificate, a National Press Club award, and a Clarion award.

 

C

 

Michael Cain
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Clean Water Act: Still Violated After All These Years, 9:00 a.m.

Michael Cain recently retired from his position as an attorney for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. His work, over the course of 33 years, has involved enforcement, policy and regulatory work protecting Wisconsin's surface waters and wetlands. He continues to work on issues associated with Wisconsin's waters resources. Cain was the lead attorney in the development of Wisconsin's wetland regulatory program, which developed the first set of water quality standards for wetlands in the nation; statutes which assured continued protection of state wetlands after the erosion of federal jurisdiction in the SWANNC and subsequent federal decisions; and the development and enforcement of a wetland regulatory program which stands as a national model for protection of wetlands and associated aquatic resources. He is a member of Wisconsin's Wetland Team. Cain has a Bachelors Degree from the University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point in Biology, and obtained a J.D. from the University of WI Law School in 1976.

 

Amy Cannon
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Green Chemistry, Nanotech and More: The Promise and Perils, 2:15 p.m.

Amy Cannon is the executive director of Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to green chemistry education and outreach. She holds the world's first Ph.D. in Green Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts where her research involved the environmentally benign synthesis of photoactive materials. She received her M.S. in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Boston and her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. Previously, Cannon worked as an assistant professor of Green Chemistry and director of Outreach and Community Education at the Center for Green Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, as an analytical chemist for the Gillette Company and as a scientist for Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials. She was awarded the Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Award in Green Chemistry in 2004 for her work on titanium dioxide semiconductors and their application in dye-sensitized solar cells. Cannon serves on the Editorial board of the new journal Green Chemistry: Letters and Reviews.

 

John Carey
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE ECONOMY: The Economics of Climate Change: Can We Afford To Respond? Can We Afford Not To? 11:15 a.m.

John Carey, Business Week Senior Correspondent, has covered energy, environment, science, technology, medicine, and health since joining the magazine in 1989. After a year as an editor of The Scientist and previous experience with Newsweek and National and International Wildlife magazines, he has covered issues ranging from global warming to tobacco regulation, election technology, and human genome sequencing. His reporting has been honored with awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Wistar Institute, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Deadline Club, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the Overseas Press Club. A National Magazine Award finalist, Carey earned his B.S. degree in biochemistry from Yale University, his M.Sc. in marine biology from the University College of North Wales, and his M.F.S. in forest ecology from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

 

Marcia Caton Campbell
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Feeding Cities: Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Justice, 9:00 a.m.

Marcia Caton Campbell is a social scientist at the Center for Resilient Cities, which helps urban communities create green landscapes and adapt to environmental, economic and social stressors. Caton Campbell is a former assistant professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin, where her research and teaching focused on consensus building, community-based planning, and increasing inner-city residents' access to healthy food.

 

Jeffrey Crawford
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Fishing for Clean Fish and Hunting for Safe Treaty Resources, 10:45 a.m.

Jeff Crawford is a member of and the attorney general for the Forest County Potawatomi Community, whose reservation is located in Wisconsin. In his role as attorney general, Crawford has been responsible for all legal matters affecting the Tribe, including the Tribe's several significant environmental initiatives. He served as the only tribal representative on Governor Doyle's Global Warming Task Force, and now oversees the Tribe's government and public relations efforts to help ensure passage of the legislative proposals that are being drafted based on the Task Force's report. Crawford also oversees the Tribe's energy and carbon reduction program, called "Project Green Fire." This effort includes energy audits of the Tribe's major facilities and implementation of significant energy efficiency measures. It also includes the development of renewable energy projects to help ensure the Tribe's long term goal of carbon free energy self sufficiency.

 

Steve Curwood
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE ECONOMY: Grading Green Jobs, Energy Independence and the Stimulus Package, 2:15 p.m.

Steve Curwood is executive producer and host of Living on Earth. He created the first pilot of Living on Earth in the Spring of 1990, and the show has run continuously since April 1991. Today, Living on Earth with Steve Curwood is aired on more than 300 National Public Radio affiliates in the USA. Curwood's relationship with NPR goes back to 1979 when he began as a reporter and host of Weekend All Things Considered. He has been a journalist for more than 30 years with experience at NPR, CBS News, the Boston Globe, WBUR-FM/Boston and WGBH-TV/Boston. Curwood shared the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of the Boston Globe's education team. He is also the recipient of the 2003 Global Green Award for Media Design, the 2003 David A. Brower Award from the Sierra Club for excellence in environmental reporting and the 1992 New England Environmental Leadership Award from Tufts University for his work on promoting environmental awareness.

 

Brian Czech
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE ECONOMY: Big Think: Energy Policy in a New Economy, 9:00 a.m.

Brian Czech has a Ph.D. in renewable natural resources from the University of Arizona and is a certified wildlife biologist. He applies his training and experience to economic issues, especially macroeconomic policy. He has 20 years of experience in federal, state, and tribal governments with duties ranging from firefighting to managing elk herds to developing national conservation policies. Czech is also a visiting professor at Virginia Tech University, where he teaches ecological economics and endangered species policy. A prolific author, Czech wrote the book Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train, which calls for an end to reckless economic growth.

 

D

 

Geoffrey Dabelko
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CLIMATE: Come to Attention: Climate Change and National Security, 2:15 p.m.

Geoffrey D. Dabelko is director of the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He is also an adjunct professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and has held prior positions with the Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Policy and served as a lecturer at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Dabelko's current research focuses on climate change and security with recent articles in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and Climatic Change. He is co-editor of Environmental Peacemaking and Green Planet Blues: Four Decades of Global Environmental Politics; a regular blogger on Gristmill and New Security Beat; member of UN Environment Programme's Expert Advisory Group on Environment, Conflict, and Peacebuilding; co-vice chair of the Scientific Committee of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change; member of the Board of Experts, Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California, Irvine; and more. Dabelko received a Ph.D. in government and politics from the University of Maryland and an AB in political science from Duke University.

 

Joseph Davis
 

Event: Friday, Craft Breakfast Breakout Session, Meet EPA's Senior Communicators, 7:30 a.m.

Joseph A. Davis is SEJ WatchDog Project director, EJToday editor, TipSheet editor and a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. He directs the WatchDog Project, an activity of SEJ's Freedom of Information Task Force that reports on secrecy trends and supports reporters' efforts to make better use of FOIA. He also edits EJToday, SEJ's daily selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, and TipSheet, a biweekly electronic newsletter of story ideas and sources co-published by SEJ and the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation. Davis also helps shape SEJ's new Web site.

 

Rob Davis
 

Event: Saturday, Morning Plenary — Non-profit News: A Sustainable Survival Strategy for Environmental Journalism? 7:30 a.m.

Rob Davis is a staff writer for voiceofsandiego.org. He writes about the environment and politics. Rob grew up on Maryland's Eastern Shore and graduated from the University of Richmond. He worked at two newspapers in Virginia before moving to San Diego in 2005. His coverage regularly examines everything from endangered species to air and water pollution to climate change's local impacts. He has written extensively about the precariousness of San Diego's water supply and the region's fitful efforts to preserve habitat.

 

Peter Desbarats
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, ENERGY: Tales From the Oilpatch: From Canada to the Midwest, 2:15 p.m.

Canadian journalist Peter Desbarats, a Loyola College graduate and former professor and dean of the University of Western Ontario's Graduate School of Journalism, has served for over 56 years in various positions with print publications and television productions including, but not limited to, The (Montreal) Gazette, Reuters, The Winnipeg Tribune, The Montreal Star, Parallel Magazine, "Hourglass" nightly public affairs show, CBC-TV, Toronto Star, Global Television (Ottawa bureau chief), Royal Commission on Newspapers, Global CanWest Fellow at UWO's Faculty of Information & Media Studies, London Magazine, Media Critic (Eye on the Media), the Financial Post, London Free Press, The Globe and Mail, CanWest Global, Maclean Hunter Chair of Communications Ethics at Ryerson Polytechnic University, and the Canadian Journalism Foundation. Desbarats is author and/or editor of several books, films, publications and plays; a freelance contributor to numerous magazines; and recipient of an Actra Award for Best News Broadcaster.

 

Calvin DeWitt
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Feeding Cities: Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Justice, 9:00 a.m.

Calvin DeWitt, a professor at UWM's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, is an environmental scientist whose specialties include land stewardship, sustainable agriculture, and the interface of ethics and faith with environmental issues. He is a co-founder of the International Evangelical Environmental Network and a founding member and chair of the American Society of the Green Cross. DeWitt is a former chairman of the town of Dunn, where he led an award-winning stewardship program.

 

Mary Ann Dickinson
 

Event: Saturday, Lunch and Plenary — Water: The 21st Century's Most Valuable Resource? 12:00 p.m. (noon)

Mary Ann Dickinson is the founder and executive director of the Alliance for Water Efficiency, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the efficient and sustainable use of water in the United States and Canada. She has over 35 years of experience, having previously served as executive director of the California Urban Water Conservation Council, and worked at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority, and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. A graduate of the University of Connecticut with a degree in environmental planning, Dickinson has authored numerous publications on water conservation, land use planning, and natural resources management, and has co-produced two films. She is a fellow at the Water Resources Center at the University of California at Santa Cruz, a trustee and past chair of the American Water Works Association National Water Conservation Division, and has presented papers on water conservation in many countries around the world.

 

Dennis Dimick
 

Events:

Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CLIMATE: Come to Attention: Climate Change and National Security, 2:15 p.m.
Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, AGRICULTURE: A Capitol Idea, Squared: Madison's Local-food Movement and Beyond, 9:00 a.m.

Dennis Dimick, executive editor of National Geographic magazine, was its environment editor and he continues to lead the magazine's coverage of energy and climate issues. An Oregon native, Dimick grew up on a Willamette Valley farm and holds degrees in agriculture and agricultural journalism from Oregon State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

Michael Dombeck
 

Events:

Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CLIMATE: From the Equator to the Poles: Forests Under Siege, 11:15 a.m.
Sunday, Aldo Leopold's Changing Legacy, 9:15 a.m.

Mike Dombeck is among the most renowned and respected of contemporary conservationists, having dedicated a quarter of a century to managing federal lands and natural resources in the long-term public interest. His leadership in the Bureau of Land Management and as former chief of the Forest Service impacted nearly 500 million acres. In his new role in the University of Wisconsin System, Dr. Dombeck has delivered keynote addresses to numerous conservation groups across the country, including University of California-Berkeley, Environmental Grantmakers Association, Aldo Leopold Foundation, Friends of the Boundary Waters, National Audubon Society, and others. Dombeck is the recipient of the highest award in federal service, the Presidential Rank – Distinguished Executive Award, as well as the prestigious Audubon Medal and the Lady Bird Johnson Conservation Award. He has authored, co-authored, and edited over 200 popular and scholarly publications, including the book Watershed Restoration: Principles and Practices, and most recently the book From Conquest to Conservation: Our Public Lands Legacy.

 

Jaimi Dowdell
 

Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop 2: Computer Assisted Reporting for the Environment, 8:00 a.m.

Jaimi Dowdell joined Investigative Reporters and Editors as training director in October 2008. Before that she was computer-assisted reporting editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for more than three years. Her duties included obtaining and analyzing data for daily and long-term stories; training staff on CAR and investigative techniques; and maintaining the newspaper's online data center. In addition to her work at the Post-Dispatch, she taught a CAR course for Washington University in St. Louis. Previously she worked at IRE and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting in the Database Library and Resource Center while completing her master's degree at the University of Missouri.

 

Sharon Dunwoody
 

Events:

Friday, Craft Breakfast Breakout Session, Training the Next Generation of Environmental Journalists: A Roundtable Discussion, 7:30 a.m.
Friday, Lunch Breakout Session, Rational Ignorance, Media Hybrids, and the Economics of Climate Change Coverage, 12:30 p.m.
Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Measure it Again: Air Pollution and the EPA Toxics Program, 10:45 a.m.

Sharon Dunwoody is Evjue-Bascom Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as Associate Dean for Social Studies in the Graduate School. She serves on the Governance Faculty of the university's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and is affiliated with the Program in Science and Technology Studies. She studies public understanding of science issues and has authored/coauthored numerous research articles, books and book chapters. A former science writer, she earned the BA in journalism at Indiana University in 1969, the MA in mass communication from Temple University in 1975, and the Ph.D. in mass communication from Indiana University in 1978. Before joining the UW-Madison faculty in 1981, she was on the faculty of the Ohio State University School of Journalism.

 

E

 

Tracey Easthope
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Green Chemistry, Nanotech and More: The Promise and Perils, 2:15 p.m.

Tracey Easthope has spent twenty years providing technical assistance to hundreds of grassroots toxics groups throughout Michigan and the Great Lakes region. She currently directs the Ecology Center's chemical industry initiatives and the Healthy Food in Healthcare Initiative. In her home state of Michigan, Easthope chairs a state-based group focused on Dow Chemical accountability, and serves on the Governor-appointed State of Michigan Green Chemistry Roundtable. She helped launch and serves on the Michigan Healthy Hospital Task Force and spearheaded the founding of the Michigan Network for Children's Environmental Health. A founding member of the international Health Care Without Harm, Easthope directs its work on chemicals policy and co-chairs the Safer Materials workgroup. She is also an active member of the Business NGO Working Group, a member of the Investor Environmental Health Network, and an editor of the New Solutions journal. Easthope holds a Masters Degree in Public Health from the University of Michigan.

 

Paul Ehrlich
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: 6.8 Billion Reasons to Ask: Population, Pollution and Human Health, 11:15 a.m.

Paul Ehrlich is Bing Professor of Population Studies and president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. He does research in population biology, which includes ecology, evolutionary biology, behavior, and human ecology and cultural evolution. Ehrlich has carried out field, laboratory and theoretical research on problems ranging from the dynamics and genetics of insect populations, studies of the ecological and evolutionary interactions of plants and herbivores, and the behavioral ecology of birds and reef fishes, to experimental investigations of the effects of crowding on human beings and studies of rates of cultural evolution. He collaborates with colleagues in biology and in the disciplines of economics, psychology, political science, and the law, in policy research on the human predicament. Ehrlich is author and coauthor of some 950 scientific papers and articles in the popular press and over 40 books. He has appeared on hundreds of TV and radio programs, and has been a correspondent for NBC News.

 

Lisa Evans
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, ENERGY: Remember Roanoke: Mountaintop Removal, Coal Ash and Climate Change, 11:15 a.m.

Lisa Evans is an attorney specializing in hazardous waste law. She has been active in hazardous waste litigation and advocacy for over 25 years. Evans has been a project attorney for Earthjustice since 2006. She is an expert on coal ash issues and testified before Congress in 2008 and before the National Academies of Science in 2005. Prior to Earthjustice, Evans worked on toxic coal waste issues for the Boston-based nonprofit Clean Air Task Force. She began her legal career as an assistant regional counsel at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region I. Evans is also the author of six nonfiction books, including one children's book.

 

Richard Everett
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: Hitching a Ride: Aquatic Invasives and the Bad Ballast that Brought Them, 11:15 a.m.

Richard Everett coordinates the U.S. Coast Guard's research activities on the prevention of biological invasions via the operations of ships, provides technical assistance in developing and implementing environmental regulations applicable to ships, and is technical advisor on ballast water management and biofouling to the U.S. delegation to the International Maritime Organization's Marine Environment Protection Committee.

 

F

 

Dan Fagin
 

Event: Saturday, Morning Plenary — Non-profit News: A Sustainable Survival Strategy for Environmental Journalism? 7:30 a.m.

Dan Fagin, a writer specializing in environmental health issues is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University. For 14 years he was the environment writer at Newsday, where he was a principal member of two reporting teams that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. His stories on cancer epidemiology in 2003 won both of the best-known science journalism prizes in the United States. The co-author of the book Toxic Deception, Dan is working on a book for Random House that intertwines three related story lines: the history of environmental cancer epidemiology, the half-century saga of the Toms River, N.J., childhood cancer cluster, and current research into gene-environment interactions in cancer. His work appears in Scientific American and many other magazines, and he is a former president and proud member of SEJ.

 

Peter Fairley
 

Event: Friday, Network Lunch, A Freelance Agenda for SEJ, 12:30 p.m.

Peter Fairley, an SEJ board member, is a ground-breaking energy and technology journalist based in Victoria, British Columbia. He is a contributing writer with Technology Review magazine, contributing editor with Spectrum, and author of the webjournal Carbon-Nation, covering developments in renewable energy, nuclear power, the sustainable use of fossil fuels and clean transportation technologies. An experienced foreign correspondent, Fairley has worked on assignment on four continents, from Bolivia to China and throughout Europe. Other publications where Peter's byline can be found include The Sunday Times of London, Canadian Business, Architectural Record and Popular Mechanics. Prior to freelancing Fairley served as Washington bureau chief and senior managing editor for Chemical Week, chronicling the global chemical industry's collision with the environment and its struggle to change. Fairley holds a master's degree from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and a B.Sc. in molecular biology from McGill University.

 

Diane Farsetta
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT: Green PR in the Blogosphere: How PR Practitioners Are End-Running Professional Journalists and How We Should Respond, 9:00 a.m.

Diane Farsetta, the Center for Media and Democracy's senior researcher, co-authored CMD's three groundbreaking reports on video news releases (VNRs) and submitted formal comments to the Federal Communications Commission, on VNR disclosure and embedded advertisements in news programming. Her work led to the FCC's first-ever investigation of VNRs. Diane has been interviewed on NPR, ABC, PBS and Pacifica's "Democracy Now!," among other national news outlets. Her reporting has been published in The Progressive and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazines, and run on the Nieman Watchdog, AlterNet, CommonDreams and CounterPunch websites. Farsetta has contributed chapters to the two-volume academic review "Battleground: The Media," and "The Bottom Line or Public Health: Corporate Strategies to Influence Health Policy and What We Can Do To Counter Them." She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cellular and Molecular Biology Program in 2000, and has a background in radio reporting.

 

Leslie Fields
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CLIMATE: Climate Change, Human Health and Environmental Justice, 9:00 a.m.

Leslie Fields is National Environmental Justice and Community Partnerships Director for the Sierra Club, offering 20 years of international, federal, state and local environmental justice and environmental law and policy experience. She also serves on the Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies' Commission to Engage African Americans on Climate Change. She has worked with community groups, nonprofit organizations, the private sector and all levels of government and is particularly interested in the intersection of environmental justice, democracy, corporate and civic governance and globalization.

 

Laurie Fischer
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 8, A Different Kind of CAFO, 10:00 a.m.

Laurie Fischer is executive director of the Dairy Business Association of Wisconsin and a registered lobbyist. In her role with DBA, Laurie is an active voice speaking for the modernization of the dairy industry at the State and Federal Capitols. DBA is a 9-year-old organization of dairy producers, corporate sponsors and industry professionals dedicated to creating a favorable business climate.

 

Jason Fleener
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Bambi's Insatiable Appetite: Can a Forest Lie? 9:00 a.m.

Jason Fleener is the assistant deer and elk specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He obtained a B.S. in Wildlife Management and Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 2005. Fleener has worked with the department since 2005. He previously worked as a Chronic Wasting Disease technician, State Game Farm technician, and as assistant conservation biologist with the Karner Blue Butterfly program. Fleener has been in his current position for 2 years and is actively involved in the deer management and deer hunting issues within the Bureau of Wildlife Management. He has published an article on the effects of deer baiting and feeding in Wisconsin, in Natural Resources Magazine. In his spare time, Fleener is an avid hunter and fisherman.

 

Ernst-Ulrich Franzen
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE WATER: Water Supplies, Diversion and The Great Lakes Compact, 10:45 a.m.

Ernst-Ulrich Franzen grew up and was educated in Wisconsin, and has spent a fair amount of time enjoying the state's parks, lakes and other natural areas. He has worked at the Sentinel and then the Journal Sentinel since 1982 as a reporter, editor, some-time columnist and editorial writer. Franzen has covered environmental issues for the Editorial Board for the better part of a decade. In that capacity, he has written extensively on Great Lakes issues and the Great Lakes Compact.

 

Lisa Friedman
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CLIMATE: Come to Attention: Climate Change and National Security, 2:15 p.m.

Lisa Friedman is the deputy editor of ClimateWire (part of E&E News) helping to lead a team of 10 reporters covering the business and politics of climate change. She also is the lead international reporter for ClimateWire, covering the United Nations global warming negotiations and most recently, the relationship between China and the U.S. on climate policy. Prior to joining E&E, Lisa was the Washington D.C. bureau chief for a number of California daily newspapers, including the Oakland Tribune and the Los Angeles Daily News. A newspaper reporter for more than 15 years, Lisa also has worked for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Bakersfield Californian. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

 

G

 

Nancy Gaarder
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, AGRICULTURE: Conservation Reserve Program Under Threat? 11:15 a.m.

Nancy Gaarder is the climate and weather reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, where she has worked since 1995 in various capacities, including city editor, education editor, and energy/environment reporter. She is a 1980 graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism. For many years, she worked at her hometown paper, the St. Joseph, Mo., News-Press first as a reporter and then as an editor. She was that paper's first female city editor, news editor and twice filled in as acting executive editor. Before beginning in St. Joseph, she served as a community development volunteer in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, Africa.

 

Marc Gagnon
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: Hitching a Ride: Aquatic Invasives and the Bad Ballast that Brought Them, 11:15 a.m.

Marc Gagnon is director of Government Affairs and Regulatory Compliance at Fednav Limited, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Fednav is the largest international marine bulk carrier in Canada. Prior to that post, he was for 23 years executive director of the St. Lawrence Economic Development Council (SODES), a Quebec City-based association that represents the St. Lawrence marine community. He holds a M.Sc. degree in Geography from Université de Montréal and a B.A. from Université Laval.

 

Christy George
 

Event: Friday, Network Lunch, The FAQs on SEJ's New Fund for Environmental Reporting, 12:30 p.m.

Christy George, SEJ board president, produces documentaries at Oregon Public Broadcasting. She started at OPB in 1997, creating a bureau covering the intersection of business and the environment for the Los-Angeles based national business show, "Marketplace". Before that, George edited foreign and national news for The Boston Herald and covered politics for WGBH-TV, where she won a New England Emmy for an investigative documentary about Massachusetts political corruption. She started out in 1976, covering noise and air pollution and neighborhood encroachment by Logan Airport for The East Boston Community News — a dream beat that led to jobs in print, radio and television. George shared in "Marketplace's" Peabody Award in 2001 and her special "Liquid Gold," on how water is being bought, sold and marketed like any other commodity, was part of "Marketplace's" 1998 winning submission for a Columbia-DuPont Silver Baton award. A high school graduate, she was a 1990-91 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

 

Tony Goldberg
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 9, CSI Madison: Wildlife Forensics, 1:00 p.m.

Dr. Tony Goldberg's research and teaching focus on the ecology, epidemiology and evolution of infectious disease, combining field and laboratory studies to understand how pathogens in dynamic ecosystems are transmitted among hosts, across complex landscapes, and over time. Goldberg has conducted numerous projects around the world that use molecular epidemiological methods to track the movement of pathogens, from viruses to bacteria to protozoa, including the Kibale EcoHealth Project, a long-term investigation of infectious disease ecology and epidemiology in the region of Kibale National Park, Uganda, and studies of West Nile virus ecology in suburban Chicago. Goldberg earned his doctorate from Harvard University, where he studied the biogeography, genetics, and conservation of chimpanzees, and he earned his DVM and MS in Epidemiology from University of Illinois. He holds appointments in the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies and the Center for Global Health at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and as Honourary Lecturer in Zoology at Makerere University, Uganda.

 

Emily Green
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CLIMATE: Taking Some Temperatures: What Will Climate Change Mean for the Great Lakes? 10:45 a.m.

Emily Green runs the Great Lakes program for the Sierra Club, America's oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization.

 

Tim Griswold
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 8, A Different Kind of CAFO, 10:00 a.m.

Tim Griswold is director of business development at the Dairy Business Association of Wisconsin. He worked from 2005 to 2008 for Monsanto and Eli Lilly Co. marketing Posilac, also known as rBGH or bovine growth hormone to large dairy farmers in southern Wisconsin. From 1998 to 2005, Griswold was executive director of the Dairy 202020program, which provides business assistance to farmers. The program is a part of the Wisconsin Department of Commerce. He has a degree in agriculture journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and grew up on a 50-cow herd in Ixonia, Wis. His family farm now milks 1,000 cows.

 

Elizabeth Grossman
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Green Chemistry, Nanotech and More: The Promise and Perils, 2:15 p.m.

Elizabeth Grossman is a freelance journalist and writer based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, The Nation, Salon, The Washington Post and other publications. Her books include Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health and Watershed: The Undamming of America.

 

H

 

James Hamilton
 

Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout Session, Rational Ignorance, Media Hybrids, and the Economics of Climate Change Coverage, 12:30 p.m.

James T. (Jay) Hamilton, Ph.D, is Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy Studies and Professor of Political Science and Economics at Duke University. His 2004 book, All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information Into News (Princeton University Press, 2004), won the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha Journalism and Mass Communication Research Award. Hamilton researches information provisions on climate change and on environmental policy issues such as environmental justice, the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program, and the Toxics Release Inventory program. He is currently working extensively on computer-assisted and computational journalism. Hamilton is the author also of Regulation through Revelation: The Origin, Politics, and Impacts of the Toxics Release Inventory Program (Cambridge University Press).

 

Katherine Hamilton
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE ECONOMY: Big Think: Energy Policy in a New Economy, 9:00 a.m.

Katherine Hamilton is the president of the GridWise Alliance, and she has been in that position since in the fall of 2008. Previously, she was policy advisor for Good Energies, Inc., a private investment company with a current portfolio in clean energy technologies of more than $6 Billion. Hamilton also co-directed the American Bioenergy Association, where she worked with entrepreneurs, universities and utilities developing biomass technologies. As president of her company, The Hamilton Group, Hamilton worked with the Union of Concerned Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council, Midwest Research Institute and other organizations to lobby Congress and statehouses, including Maryland, on various clean energy policies and funding. Her other projects include working for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to put into place several programs mandated in the Energy Policy Act of 1992, including federal energy audit and water conservation programs. Hamilton has degrees from Cornell University and the University of Paris, Sorbonne.

 

Pat Hastings
 

Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop 1: Producing Video for the Web, 8:00 a.m.

Pat Hastings joined the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism & Mass Communication as a faculty associate in 2000. Hastings is also an independent television producer, focusing on corporate and commercial television projects. She spent 10 years as a commercial television reporter, producer and photographer in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and Milwaukee. She then spent more than a decade as a university instructor. Hastings is the instructor for The Badger Report, a live student newscast that is streamed over the Internet, and its companion Web site. Hastings earned her M.A. from the UW School of Journalism & Mass Communication and her B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

 

Diane Hawkins-Cox
 

Events:

Thursday, Tour 6, Feeding Cities: Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Justice, 9:00 a.m.
Saturday, Mini-Tour, Biking and Urban Green Space, 2:15 p.m.

Diane Hawkins-Cox is a former senior producer with the CNN Science and Technology Unit, which was disbanded in December 2008. In her 28 ½ years with the company (she is one of CNN's original employees), she wrote and edited copy in the newsroom, produced segments for the TBS environment magazine Network Earth, and produced the CNN magazines Earth Matters, CNNdotCOM, and NEXT@CNN. She is now available for freelance producing, writing, and copyediting for broadcast, print, and web outlets. Diane is on the Board of Trustees of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources, and is a juror for the Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment. She volunteers with the adult literacy program Literacy Action, and is a corporal in the Georgia State Defense Force, where she plays flute and piccolo in the band. She also plays flute in the Metropolitan Atlanta Community Band.

 

Stephanie Hemphill
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Wolf Delisting and the ESA in a New Administration, 11:15 a.m.

Stephanie Hemphill has been a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio since 2000. She reported from Duluth for seven years; in 2007 she was transferred to St. Paul to take on the environment beat. She covers resource issues, water quality, and climate change, with a concentration on energy policy. She has reported for National Public Radio, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, and other regional and national outlets. She has received numerous awards from state and regional journalism organizations.

 

Henry Henderson
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, ENERGY: Tales From the Oilpatch: From Canada to the Midwest, 2:15 p.m.

Henry Henderson joined the Natural Resources Defense Council as director of the new Midwest Program in January 2007. Prior to joining NRDC, he was a partner with Policy Solutions Ltd. in Chicago, where he provided consulting and counseling to governments, not-for-profits, and others on environmental matters including water policy and Great Lakes governance. Henderson was Chicago's first Commissioner of the Environment from 1992 to 1998. He developed the mission and goals of the Department and created policies, budgets, and regulations related to solid waste regulation, water quality protection, and more. Since 1998, Henderson has been a lecturer in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Chicago. He was also a senior attorney in the Environmental Control Division of the Office of Attorney General of the State of Illinois, and has worked in private practice. He attained his J.D. from Washington University School of Law in 1982 and his B.A. from Kenyon College in 1974.

 

Michael Hendryx
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, ENERGY: Remember Roanoke: Mountaintop Removal, Coal Ash and Climate Change, 11:15 a.m.

Dr. Michael Hendryx is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Medicine, West Virginia University. He is also the Director of the federally-funded West Virginia Rural Health Research Center. Michael earned his PhD in Psychology from Northwestern University in 1986, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Methodology at the University of Chicago. He previously served on the faculty at the University of Iowa, and at Washington State University. His research interests focus on public health disparities, especially as they relate to coal mining in Appalachia. He has published about 85 peer reviewed research articles. Michael teaches the Health Policy course in the Master of Public Health program.

 

Tom Henry
 

Events:

Thursday, Tour 1, Ultralight Delivery: Crane Conservation on Our Fractured Landscape, 5:00 a.m.
Friday, Lunch Breakout Session, Have You Heard the One About...? Using Humor To Help Tell Environmental Stories, 12:30 p.m.
Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Deadly Beetles and The Fab Four: Biological Helter Skelter, 2:15 p.m.
Friday, Beat Dinner, Nuke McNuggets: A Top 10 Look at What's Hot and What's Not in the Nuclear Industry, 7:00 p.m.

Tom Henry, The (Toledo, OH) Blade's environmental writer-columnist, is one of the nation's most experienced newspaper writers covering the Great Lakes and energy issues, especially nuclear power. He spent 10 days in Greenland in July 2008, researching a four-day series on climate change and taking more than 3,000 photographs. Tom began writing a weekly column for The Blade's Sunday news analysis section in April 2007. He also freelances articles on a variety of subjects for his newspaper and other publications, including SEJournal. He has had essays about environmental journalism appear in Harvard University's Nieman Reports and Michigan State University's EJ Magazine, as well as the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.

 

Dan Herms
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Emerald Ash Borer and Other Terrestrial Invaders, 2:15 p.m.

Dan Herms is a Professor in the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster and a State Specialist with Ohio State University Extension. His research and outreach programs focus on the ecology and management of insects in forests, urban forests, ornamental landscapes, and nurseries. He holds a B.S. in Horticulture from Ohio State University, M.S. degrees in both Horticulture and Entomology from Ohio State University, and a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Michigan State University. He serves on the USDA APHIS National Emerald Ash Borer Science Advisory Panel and the Ohio Emerald Ash Borer Task Force.

 

Bob Hidell
 

Event: Saturday, Lunch and Plenary — Water: The 21st Century's Most Valuable Resource? 12:00 p.m. (noon)

Bob Hidell is the founder and chairman of Hidell-Eyster International, which focuses on drinking water with particular emphasis on bottled water and water-based beverages in general. The company's clients included Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Nestle, Danone, The World Bank, USIA, and more. Hidell's expertise includes business, technical and educational services provided by the firm. He is a member and/or board member of several international water organizations. Hidell has spoken at water congresses including the United Nations regarding the future of international boundary waters; in Dubai, UAE, about the future of enhanced beverages as a part of the "new approach to human health;" to the Canadian Bottled Water Association on the "Future of Bottled Water;" and at the Yale Water Symposium. He has published hundreds of articles in professional and trade journals, and contributed to various chapters in books addressing water and beverage related issues. Hidell's training includes an undergraduate degree in Geology/Hydrogeology/Geography from West Chester University and a graduate degree in Land-use Planning and International Economic development from Southern Illinois University.

 

Charlie Higley
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, ENERGY: Getting Green Power to the People: Transmission Lines and the Environment, 10:45 a.m.

Charlie Higley is executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, a member-supported nonprofit organization that represents the interests of residential customers of electric, natural gas, and telecommunication utilities before regulatory agencies, the legislature, and the courts. Previously, he worked as program director for the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation, where he managed the Focus on Energy program that provides energy efficiency and renewable energy services to residents and businesses in Wisconsin. Between 1996 and 2001, Higley worked as energy research director and lobbyist for Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader. Prior to that, he managed energy efficiency programs for the Energy Center of Wisconsin and its predecessors. Higley has a master's degree in business administration, a master's degree in urban and regional planning with certificate in energy analysis and policy, all from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also has a bachelor's degree in engineering physics from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

 

Jeff Holmstead
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, ENERGY: Remember Roanoke: Mountaintop Removal, Coal Ash and Climate Change, 11:15 a.m.

Jeff Holmstead, former assistant administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Air and Radiation, is one of the nation's leading air-quality lawyers and heads the Environmental Strategies Group (ESG) at Bracewell & Giuliani. He has worked with clients on issues related to climate change, Clean Air Act policy and enforcement, and energy policy — including the development of new coal-fired power plants, refineries, renewable energy sources, and electric transmission infrastructure. At EPA, Holmstead was the architect of the Clean Air Interstate Rule, the Clean Air Diesel Rule, the Mercury Rule for power plants and the reform of the New Source Review program. He oversaw development of the Bush Administration's Clear Skies Legislation and key parts of its Global Climate Change Initiative. Previously, Holmstead was a partner in the Environmental Group of Latham & Watkins and served as associate counsel to former President George H.W. Bush. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, 1987, and B.A. from Brigham Young University, 1984.

 

Don Hopey
 

Events:

Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, ENERGY: Remember Roanoke: Mountaintop Removal, Coal Ash and Climate Change, 11:15 a.m.
Friday, Network Lunch, The Midlife Crisis of the Wilderness Act, 12:30 p.m.

Don Hopey, an SEJ board member, 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.

 

Paul Horvatin
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 3, Cruising Lake Michigan, 7:15 a.m.

Paul Horvatin is the program manager responsible for indicator development and monitoring programs for USEPA in the Great Lakes including: open lakes monitoring, Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network (IADN), contaminated fish monitoring, biological monitoring (phytoplankton, zooplankton and benthic), Research Vessel Lake Guardian management, and health and safety management for GLNPO. Major areas of responsibility include: supervising team of scientists, grantees and contractors; managing multi-million dollar budget; identifying and initiating projects in areas requiring methods development or research; coordinating GLNPO program areas with other Canadian and U.S. federal, state, provincial, academic, tribal and non-governmental organizations.

 

I

 

Hon Ip
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 9, CSI Madison: Wildlife Forensics, 1:00 p.m.

Dr. Hon S. Ip is a virologist and currently directs the Diagnostic Virology Laboratory at the U.S. Geological Survey — National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC). In this role he directs a research team into studies of viruses that cause disease in the nation's wild animals. Ip was previously research assistant professor at the University of Chicago, Department of Medicine, and vice president of Research and Development of Third Wave Technologies, a biotechnology company which develops and sells nucleic acid-based clinical tests for genetic and infectious diseases. He has performed research in parasitology of fresh water vertebrates and invertebrates, the molecular biology of mRNA trans-splicing, the genetics of cardiac development, and in the molecular detection of bacterial and viral infectious agents. Ip is an author of over twenty papers and a holder of seven US and international patents. Education: B.S. (University of Toronto), Microbiology and Parasitology.; M.S. (University of Toronto), Zoology; Ph.D. (Rockefeller University), Molecular Parasitology.

 

Robert Irvin
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Wolf Delisting and the ESA in a New Administration, 11:15 a.m.

Robert Irvin leads Defenders of Wildlife's conservation programs, overseeing a staff of more than 60 policy experts, scientists, and lawyers. He is an expert in biodiversity conservation, wildlife law, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), marine conservation, international wildlife conservation, and global warming and wildlife. Irvin is co-editor, with Donald C. Baur, of the American Bar Association's deskbook ESA: Law, Policy, and Perspectives (2002). He co-authored, with Michael J. Bean, the chapter on the ESA and marine species in Ocean and Coastal Law and Policy (2008). He was a member of the IUCN's Red List Criteria Review Working Group which revised the standards for listing threatened species globally. Irvin teaches Biodiversity Protection at Vermont Law School and has taught at the University of Maryland School of Law. He earned a B.S. degree in Forest Science from Utah State University in 1980 and a J.D. in 1983 from the University of Oregon School of Law. He has served as co-chair of the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Section of the District of Columbia Bar and is on the board of directors of the Environmental Law Institute.

 

Robert Israel
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Green Chemistry, Nanotech and More: The Promise and Perils, 2:15 p.m.

Dr. Robert Israel has nearly 25 years of experience in product safety, regulatory affairs and environmental sustainability. He leads JohnsonDiversey's environmental sustainability and regulatory affairs programs ensuring that JohnsonDiversey products help customers improve their efforts to be more sustainable enterprises. Additionally, Israel ensures that JohnsonDiversey products meet or exceed regulatory requirements in countries throughout the world. He also develops initiatives to ensure JohnsonDiversey is a leader in environmental sustainability. Previously, Israel held management positions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. Subsequently, he served as a regulatory consultant to the chemical industry. Israel was formerly the chair of the Pollution Prevention Workgroup and National Pollution Prevention and Toxics Advisory Committee, and is currently a co-chair in the Green Chemistry in Commerce Council (GC3), the Product Sustainability Rountable and many other groups focused on environmental sustainability. He holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Delaware.

 

J

 

Lisa Jackson
 

Event: Friday, Afternoon Plenary — Meet the New Bosses, (Not) the Same as the Old Bosses?, 3:45 p.m.

Lisa P. Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, leads EPA's efforts to protect the health and environment for all Americans. She and a staff of more than 17,000 professionals are working across the nation to usher in a green economy, address health threats from toxins and pollution, and renew public trust in EPA's work. As administrator, Jackson has pledged to focus on core issues of protecting air and water quality, preventing exposure to toxic contamination in our communities, and reducing greenhouse gases. She has promised that all of EPA's efforts will follow the best science, adhere to the rule of law, and be implemented with unparalleled transparency. Jackson is the first African-American to serve as EPA administrator. She has made it a priority to focus on vulnerable groups including children, the elderly, and low-income communities that are particularly susceptible to environmental and health threats. In addressing these and other issues, she has promised all stakeholders a place at the decision-making table. Before becoming EPA's administrator, Jackson served as chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine and commissioner of the state's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Prior to joining DEP, she worked for 16 years as an employee of the U.S. EPA.

 

Brian Jennings
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, AGRICULTURE: Conservation Reserve Program Under Threat? 11:15 a.m.

Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol since 2004, directs ACE's public policy efforts at the federal and state levels and guides the day-to-day operations of the organization. ACE has more than 1600 members nationwide and promotes the production and use of ethanol through public policies, education, promotion, and market development. Prior to joining ACE, Jennings was education director and lobbyist for the South Dakota Farmer's Union and served on the staff of U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (S.D.) for six years working on agriculture, energy, rural development and trade issues. He graduated from South Dakota State University with a degree in political science and a minor in agricultural business.

 

Paul Johnson
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, AGRICULTURE: Conservation Reserve Program Under Threat? 11:15 a.m.

Paul Johnson and his family have owned and operated Oneota Slopes Farm near Decorah, Iowa since 1974. Their operation has involved dairy, corn, soybeans, hay, beef cattle, sheep, and Christmas trees. Johnson served three terms in the Iowa State Legislature from 1984-1990, and was chief of the Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service) at USDA from 1993-1997. He served as the director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources from 1999-2000. Johnson earned a B.S. (1966) and M.S. (1969) in Forestry from the University of Michigan and conducted doctoral research in tropical forest ecology in Costa Rica. Johnson served two terms on the National Research Council's Board on Agriculture from 1988-1993 where he reviewed the NRC report on Alternative Agriculture and took part in the development of the National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program. Johnson served as an ex-officio member on the Committee on Long Range Soil and Water Conservation Policy from 1990-93 and helped implement many of its recommendations while chief of NRCS.

 

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Julie Kinzelman
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 4, Roiling the Waters, 7:30 a.m.

Dr. Julie Kinzelman is a research scientist and the Director of the Health Department Laboratory for the City of Racine, WI. She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Surrey where she earned her Ph.D. in public health microbiology. Kinzelman is currently on the Board of Directors for the Great Lakes Beach Association, a member of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside Environmental Studies Steering Committee, and holds academic appointments at two US universities where she teaches courses on Great Lakes water resources and environmental studies. Kinzelman's current research interests focus on applied science solutions to improve surface water quality, recently working with the US EPA to develop a standardized beach sanitary survey tool for the Great Lakes. Her publications have appeared in Applied & Environmental Microbiology, Journal of Water and Health, Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management, Lake & Reservoir Management, Current: Journal of Marine Education, and Canadian Journal of Microbiology.

 

Eileen Kirsch
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Wetlands, Wildlife, and Wind, 8:30 a.m.

Eileen Kirsch is a research wildlife biologist with the USGS, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center in La Crosse, WI. She holds B.S. and M.A. degrees in Biology from the University of Nebraska - Omaha, and a Ph.D. in Zoology from University of Montana. She has worked on and published papers about a wide variety of avian species and research issues in riparian ecosystems of the Midwest from least terns and piping plovers on the Platte River in Nebraska to double-crested cormorants, herons and songbirds on the Upper Mississippi River. Dr. Kirsch has been involved in getting the work at Horic on going for 2 years. She is working on also developing a program to assess risk to birds and bats from near- and off-shore wind power development in the Great Lakes.

 

Chad Kniss
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT: Quiz the Pollster: Energy and the Environment in the Public Eye, 11:15 a.m.

Chad Kniss has been the project director for the UW Badger Poll since 2006 when he joined the University of Wisconsin Survey Center (UWSC). In addition to the UW Badger Poll, Kniss is also the project director at the UWSC Wisconsin PRAMS survey and the Wisconsin Department of Health's Family Health Survey. He has nine years experience in designing, implementing, and managing survey projects, including: designing sampling schemes, designing questionnaires, training interviewers, managing telephone interviewers, as well as data coding, cleaning, and analysis. Before joining the UWSC, Kniss worked in survey centers at Northern Illinois University and the University of Kansas. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science with minors in urban studies and history from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a master's degree in political science from the University of Kansas (with concentrations in American politics, public policy and federalism). Among Chad's personal research interests is public attitudes toward conservation.

 

Cindy Kolar
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: Hitching a Ride: Aquatic Invasives and the Bad Ballast that Brought Them, 11:15 a.m.

Dr. Cindy Kolar is assistant program coordinator of the U.S. Geological Survey's Invasive Species Program in Reston, Virginia. She is also chair of a joint working group on risk analysis serving the National Invasive Species Council and the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force.

 

Bill Kovarik
 

Event: Friday, Network Lunch, The FAQs on SEJ's New Fund for Environmental Reporting, 12:30 p.m.

Bill Kovarik, SEJ's representative for the academic membership, is a professor of Communication at Radford University in southwestern Virginia where he teaches science and environment writing, media history, media law and web design. He has also served on the faculty at Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland. Kovarik's professional experience includes reporting and editing for Jack Anderson, the Associated Press, The Charleston (S.C.) Courier, The Baltimore Sun, Time-Life Books, Latin American Energy Report and Appropriate Technology Times. His books include The Forbidden Fuel (1982), Mass Media and Environmental Conflict (with Mark Neuzil, 1996), and Web Design for the Mass Media (2001). He is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University (1974), the University of South Carolina (M.A., 1983) and the University of Maryland (Ph.D., 1993).

 

Margaret Krome
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, AGRICULTURE: A Capitol Idea, Squared: Madison's Local-food Movement and Beyond, 9:00 a.m.

Margaret Krome oversees Michael Fields Agricultural Institute's policy program. In this capacity, she coordinates the annual national grassroots campaign to fund federal programs supported by the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. Over a number of years, she has helped create and sustain funding for a number of state initiatives supporting environmentally sound, profitable, and socially responsible agriculture, including the UW-Madison's Center for Integrated Agriculture and the Pesticide Use and Risk Reduction project. In addition to policy work, she conducts workshops nationwide on grant writing and using federal programs to support sustainable agriculture. Ms. Krome served Wisconsin Rural Development Center for 9 years before joining MFAI in 1995. She serves on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Appropriate Technology and sits on the Wisconsin Board of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Ms. Krome writes a bi-weekly editorial column for the evening daily paper, The Capital Times, in Madison.

 

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Jonathan Lash
 

Event: Friday, Craft Breakfast Breakout Session, Breakfast on a Finite Planet 7:30 a.m.

Jonathan Lash serves as president of the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington D.C. and is a leading figure and influential voice in the US and international environmental community. Under his leadership, WRI's research and policy analysis have provided innovative, practical solutions to global sustainability challenges. Lash is a recognized expert on climate change, energy security, and environment and development policies. In 2005, he was named one of the world's Top 100 Most Influential People in Finance in Treasury & Risk Management magazine, the only leader of a non-profit environmental organization to make the list. The same year Rolling Stone included him among "Twenty-five leaders who are fighting to stave off planet-wide catastrophe." The article concluded that Lash "has arguably done more than any other environmentalist to bridge the bitter divide between industry interests and green groups determined to halt global warming." A former co-chair of President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development, Secretary of Natural Resources for the State of Vermont, Federal Prosecutor, law professor, and Peace Corps volunteer, Lash serves on the Advisory Board of Generation Investment Management.

 

Howard Learner
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE ECONOMY: Grading Green Jobs, Energy Independence and the Stimulus Package, 2:15 p.m.

Howard A. Learner is an experienced attorney serving as the president and executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. He is responsible for the overall strategic policy direction, development and leadership of this public interest organization. Before founding ELPC, Learner was the general counsel of Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, a public interest law center, specializing in complex civil litigation and policy development. He is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, teaching an advanced environmental law seminar. Learner earned his J.D. at Harvard Law School, 1980; B.A., Political Science, University of Michigan, 1976.

 

Nina Leopold Bradley
 

Event: Sunday, Aldo Leopold's Changing Legacy, 9:15 a.m.

Nina Leopold Bradley, a well-known and highly respected researcher and naturalist, has written, taught courses and lectured extensively about her father Aldo Leopold, the land ethic and various other conservation-related issues and topics. Nina earned a degree in geography from the University of Wisconsin. Her early research with her first husband, William Elder, included lead poisoning of waterfowl in the 1940s, the biology of Nene geese in Hawaii in the 1950s, and the behavior of waterbuck in Botswana in the 1960s. In more recent years, she has been observing and recording the behavior of wildlife and changes in the landscape in Wisconsin, adding to her father's records and establishing a long-term research record of the area. She was the senior author of a 1999 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that analyzed these phenological records and demonstrated that climate change was affecting the region and its native ecosystems. In 1971, Nina married geologist Charles Bradley, and the couple lived on the Leopold Memorial Reserve in Wisconsin, and continued the work Aldo Leopold and his family began, restoring the landscape and maintaining detailed ecological observations and records. In 1982, when the Leopold children established the Aldo Leopold Foundation, Nina and her husband helped establish many of the educational and landscape restoration and conservation initiatives that have become the cornerstone of the Foundation's work. Nina remains an active member of the Foundation's board of directors. She played a key role in envisioning and fundraising for the construction of the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, a highly-acclaimed green building complex that opened in 2007 and serves as the Foundation's headquarters, the base of its educational programs, and a center for Leopold scholars. Nina has received many awards and recognitions, including an honorary doctorate in environmental sciences from the University of Wisconsin (UW) and an Award of Distinction from the UW College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. She also is the recipient of the Wilderness Society's Bob Marshall Award and, on behalf of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, the Society of Conservation Biology's Distinguished Service Award.

 

Jane Lubchenco
 

Events:

Friday, Craft Breakfast Breakout Session, Breakfast on a Finite Planet 7:30 a.m.
Friday, Opening Plenary — Countdown to Copenhagen, 8:45 a.m.

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist and environmental scientist, is the ninth Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her scientific expertise includes oceans around the world, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being. She received a B.A. in biology from Colorado College, a M.S. in zoology from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in ecology from Harvard University. A former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Council for Science and the Ecological Society of America, Lubchenco served 10 years on the Board of Directors for the National Science Foundation. She has been widely published, received numerous awards, provided scientific input to multiple U.S. Administrations and Congress on climate, fisheries, marine ecosystems, and biodiversity, and co-founded three organizations that communicate scientific knowledge to the public, policy makers, the media and industry: The Leopold Leadership Program, COMPASS and Climate Central.

 

Abrahm Lustgarten
 

Events:

Saturday, Morning Plenary — Non-profit News: A Sustainable Survival Strategy for Environmental Journalism? 7:30 a.m.
Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE ECONOMY: Big Think: Energy Policy in a New Economy, 9:00 a.m.

ProPublica energy reporter Abrahm Lustgarten is a former staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post and the New York Times since receiving his master's in journalism from Columbia University in 2003. He is the author of the book China's Great Train: Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet, a project that was funded in part by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

 

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John Magnuson
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CLIMATE: Taking Some Temperatures: What Will Climate Change Mean for the Great Lakes? 10:45 a.m.

John Magnuson is an expert on aquatic systems and climate change. The former director of the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he worked on the aquatic impacts chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in both 1995 and 2001.

 

Linda Mathews
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Measure it Again: Air Pollution and the EPA Toxics Program, 10:45 a.m.

Linda Mathews oversees investigative projects for USA TODAY. A journalist for 40 years, she covered the U.S. Supreme Court for the Los Angeles Times and established its Beijing bureau in 1979. She has also worked as national editor of the New York Times, senior foreign producer for ABC News' "World News Tonight" and USA TODAY's cover story editor. Stories she has edited have won the Pulitzer Prize, the Grantham Prize, the Casey Medal and an award from the Society of Environmental Journalists. She has co-authored two books on China.

 

Peter McAvoy
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE WATER: Water Supplies, Diversion and The Great Lakes Compact, 10:45 a.m.

Peter McAvoy has held several senior management and consulting positions with governments and the private sector on air, land and water quality issues over the past thirty years, including Great Lakes and Pacific regional administrator for the U.S. Coastal Management Program; on the U.S. EPA/State Department's international negotiating team that resulted in major revisions in the U.S. / Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement; and more. Currently, McAvoy serves as vice president of the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center's Department of Environmental Health that administers projects reducing health risks for children exposed to environmental hazards in Milwaukee's south side. He's also working with private, government and academic partners on new water resource policies and programs for Wisconsin and the Great Lakes Region, including the recent adoption of the Great Lakes Compact. McAvoy earned his J.D. from Marquette University, a M.S. in Environmental Studies/Urban & Regional Planning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a B.S. in Resource Development from Michigan State University.

 

Robert McClure
 

Events:

Friday, Network Lunch, How State Open-records Laws Can Be a Journalist's Best Friend, 12:30 p.m.
Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CLIMATE: Climate Change, Human Health and Environmental Justice, 9:00 a.m.

Robert McClure, an SEJ board member and Florida native, spent ten years at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, writing 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, producing over a decade five multi-part projects on mining, endangered species, and the need for environmental restoration of Puget Sound and the Duwamish River. He covers climate change and other environmental news topics regularly in his blog, Dateline Earth. When the P-I ceased publishing in March 2009, McClure was instrumental in helping launch a start-up non-profit news venture called InvestigateWest 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.

 

Jerry McGeorge
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, AGRICULTURE: A Capitol Idea, Squared: Madison's Local-food Movement and Beyond, 9:00 a.m.

Jerry McGeorge is a lifelong organic consumer who has been with the Organic Valley Family of Farms for the past twelve years. He has held numerous positions within the cooperative; currently McGeorge holds the title of Director of Cooperative Affairs and is a member of the Management Team. Duties include strategic planning of cooperative structure and development, creation of cooperative policies, and oversight of the government affairs, legal affairs, investor relations and human resources functions. Of particular interest to McGeorge is the start up and development of cooperatives. He has consulted with several co-ops during their start-up phase. Additionally, he sits on the Board of Directors of the National Cooperative Business Association. McGeorge earned a Bachelor's of Social Work degree from Middle Tennessee State University.

 

Dennis McGinn
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CLIMATE: Come to Attention: Climate Change and National Security, 2:15 p.m.

Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, USN (Ret.) became chairman and CEO of RemoteReality in January 2008, after five years with Battelle Memorial Institute, the world's largest nonprofit independent research and development organization. At Battelle, he was a corporate officer and led the energy, transportation, and environment division. Previously, Admiral McGinn served 35 years with the U.S. Navy as a naval aviator, test pilot, aircraft carrier commanding officer, and national security strategist. His last assignment was deputy chief of naval operations for warfare requirements and programs at the Pentagon where he led the development of the U.S. Navy's future strategic capabilities.

 

Kris McKinney
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE ECONOMY: The Economics of Climate Change: Can We Afford To Respond? Can We Afford Not To? 11:15 a.m.

Kris McKinney has over thirty years' experience as an environmental professional working in the electric utility industry and as a consultant and regulator. He has been with We Energies since 1994 and currently is involved in developing the company's global climate change strategy, is the environmental coordinator for a project to add emission control equipment at one of We Energies power plants, and manages the company's research and development activities. In support of the Governor's Global Warming Task Force, he served as a member of the Cap and Trade Workgroup. McKinney also was responsible for environmental permitting of 145 megawatts of new wind power, supported public outreach activities for licensing two new coal power plants, and served as the environmental lead for renewing the license of a nuclear power plant. Earlier in his career he completed the first two sulfur dioxide allowance trades under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's national acid rain program. McKinney graduated in 1978 with a degree in Atmospheric Science from Purdue University.

 

Scott McLeod
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, AGRICULTURE: Conservation Reserve Program Under Threat? 11:15 a.m.

Scott McLeod, a trained wildlife biologist, has been employed with Ducks Unlimited for 12 years. He currently serves as a Governmental Affairs Representative for Ducks Unlimited's Great Plains Regional Office in Bismarck, North Dakota. DU's Great Plains Regional Office is responsible for program delivery in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa. McLeod works primarily on public policy issues and is focused on issues that relate to agricultural conservation and/or biofuels. He is an avid hunter, passionate about wetland and grassland habitats, and feels very fortunate to work for the world's premier waterfowl and wetlands conservation organization.

 

John Mecklin
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT: Freelance Pitch Slam, 10:45 a.m.

John Mecklin is the editor in chief of Miller-McCune magazine. Over the last 15 years, he has also been the editor of High Country News, a nationally acclaimed magazine that reports on the American West; the consulting executive editor for the launch of Key West, a city/regional magazine; and the top editor for award-winning newsweeklies in San Francisco and Phoenix that specialized in narrative journalism. In an earlier incarnation, he was an investigative reporter at the Houston Post and covered the Persian Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Iraq for the paper. He holds a Master in Public Administration degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

 

Tom Meersman
 

Events:

Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: Hitching a Ride: Aquatic Invasives and the Bad Ballast that Brought Them, 11:15 a.m.
Saturday, Mini-Tour, Military and the Environment: Badger Ammo Depot, 2:15 p.m.

Tom Meersman has covered environmental and natural resource issues for the Minneapolis Star Tribune since 1993, and before that with Minnesota Public Radio. His work includes investigative and enterprise stories, and recent topics have included all-terrain vehicles, invasive species, 3M pollution problems, environmental health, wind energy and impaired waters. He has a B.A. from the University of San Francisco, an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and serves on the advisory board for the Ted Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He is a founding board member and former vice president of SEJ.

 

Curt Meine
 

Events:

Friday, Network Lunch, Do We Need a High Country News for the Midwest? 12:30 p.m.
Sunday, Aldo Leopold's Changing Legacy, 9:15 a.m.

Dr. Curt Meine is director for Conservation Biology and History with the Chicago-based Center for Humans and Nature; senior fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin; research associate with the International Crane Foundation, also located in Baraboo; and associate adjunct professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Wildlife Ecology. Meine's books include the biography Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (1988) and Correction Lines: Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation (2004). Meine has served on the board of governors of the Society for Conservation Biology and on the editorial boards of the journals Conservation Biology and Environmental Ethics. In 2004 he was named one of six recipients of the Bay Foundation's Biodiversity Leadership Award. He has worked on conservation projects with a wide range of agencies and organizations throughout North America, Asia, and Europe, and in his home territory of Wisconsin.

 

Mark Mellman
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT: Quiz the Pollster: Energy and the Environment in the Public Eye, 11:15 a.m.

Mark Mellman is one of the nation's leading public opinion researchers and communication strategists. He is CEO of The Mellman Group, a polling and consulting firm whose clients include leading political figures, Fortune 500 companies, and some of the country's most important public interest groups. Mellman worked on a poll for the Pew Environment Group released last June on the public's attitudes about greenhouse gases. He has helped guide the campaigns of some sixteen U.S. Senators, eight Governors and over two dozen Members of Congress, as well as numerous state and local officials. Mellman received his undergraduate degree from Princeton, and graduate degrees from Yale University, where he taught in the Political Science department. He has served as a consultant on politics to CBS News, a presidential debate analyst for PBS, and on the faculty of The George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management.

 

Sunshine Menezes
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE ECONOMY: The Economics of Climate Change: Can We Afford To Respond? Can We Afford Not To? 11:15 a.m.

Sunshine Menezes is the executive director of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting at the University of Rhode Island. She also serves as associate director for communication in the URI Office of Marine Programs. She was previously a Research Associate at the URI Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant, where she developed an innovative urban coastal management policy for the northern Narragansett Bay region of Rhode Island. In 2003, she was selected to be one of ten Legislative Dean John Knauss/Sea Grant Marine Policy Fellows in Washington, DC, and worked as a Senior Legislative Assistant responsible for environment and energy issues for Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. Menezes' doctoral research assessed biodiversity of single-celled organisms (nanoplankton) in a small southern Rhode Island estuary. Menezes received a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from Michigan State University in 1995 and a PhD in biological oceanography from the URI Graduate School of Oceanography in 2005.

 

Carol Meteyer
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 9, CSI Madison: Wildlife Forensics, 1:00 p.m.

Carol Meteyer, DVM and Diplomate A.C.V.P, has been one of the wildlife pathologists at the USGS — National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) in Madison, Wisconsin, for the past seventeen years. She is the forensic pathologist at the NWHC, providing pathology support for legal cases with the USFWS Division of Law Enforcement, as well as a diagnostic pathologist determining cause of morbidity and mortality in wildlife. Meteyer has been involved in special investigations on migratory birds, endangered species, and species of concern, including causes of population declines in the S. sea otter, causes of amphibian malformations, mortality in American crows associated with a reovirus, the pathology of monkey pox in rodents, pathogenesis of plague in prairie dogs, the pathology of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 in kestrels and shore birds, and more. She has also been part of a team to define pathologic changes associated with diseases in coral and the lead pathologist at the NWHC investigating white-nose syndrome in bats.

 

Dan Miller
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE ECONOMY: Grading Green Jobs, Energy Independence and the Stimulus Package, 2:15 p.m.

Dan Miller is executive vice president and publisher of The Heartland Institute. He oversees Heartland's research and education programs and presents Heartland's ideas to audiences including academics, civic and business leaders, educators, and media. From 1999 until March 2008, Miller was business editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. From 1994 to 1998, he served as chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. Previously, Miller worked for various newspapers in Michigan, as well as the Chicago Daily News and Crain Communications, where he served as editor for 10 years as the weekly newspaper earned local and national honors for general excellence in business reporting, commentary, and design. Miller was named Illinois Journalist of the Year by the Northern Illinois University faculty in 1981 and was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 2005. He is a frequent guest on WTTW Chicago Tonight and other television and radio public affairs programs.

 

Phil Moy
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: Hitching a Ride: Aquatic Invasives and the Bad Ballast that Brought Them, 11:15 a.m.

Phil Moy has been with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant program since 1999. He provides information and statewide support on issues related to fisheries and aquatic invasive species. Moy works with commercial and sport anglers, monitors the spread of invasive species in Wisconsin waters and produces a wide range of outreach materials, including television programs, public service announcements, educational materials, publications and exhibits. He is also actively involved in the Chicago Dispersal Barrier Project. Moy holds a Ph.D. in Zoology from Southern Illinois University.

 

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Todd Neeley
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, ENERGY: Ethanol: Greenhouse Gas Reducer or Contributor? 9:00 a.m.

DTN staff reporter Todd Neeley is a lifelong resident of Lincoln, Neb., and a 1994 graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he earned a bachelor's degree in news editorial. Neeley worked as a reporter and photographer with the weekly newspaper The Milford Times in southeast Nebraska until 2002. He then went to work as the city and government reporter for The Hastings Tribune in central Nebraska. Neeley was hired as a staff reporter at DTN in August 2004, where he has worked on numerous in-depth reporting projects as well as covering the ethanol and crop insurance beats. During his 15-year career Neeley has earned more than 40 state and national awards for reporting and writing.

 

Katie Nekola
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, ENERGY: Getting Green Power to the People: Transmission Lines and the Environment, 10:45 a.m.

Katie Nekola is energy program director and staff attorney for Clean Wisconsin, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization that was founded in 1970. Katie earned her master's degree and law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is responsible for managing Clean Wisconsin's Clean Air and Energy campaigns, including litigation, lobbying, grassroots organizing and media. Katie grew up in northwestern Wisconsin, where there are still lakes and forests, and lives in Madison.

 

Clay Nesler
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Future Energy Choices, 7:00 a.m.

Clay Nesler is vice president of Global Energy and Sustainability for the Building Efficiency business of Johnson Controls. He is responsible for overall energy and sustainability strategy, policy, programs, innovation and communications on a global basis. He is also a member of the Johnson Controls sustainability leadership team. Since joining the company in 1983, Nesler has held leadership positions in technology, new product development, marketing and strategy in the U.S. and Europe. He has been active in ASHRAE on the Wisconsin Governor's Task Force on Global Warming, the Energy Efficiency Forum Executive Council, the Leadership Group of the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency and the Advisory Committee for the Climate Registry. Nesler received his BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the inventor of the award-winning Solutions Navigator™ collaborative planning tool used around the world to support sustainability, technology and infrastructure planning efforts.

 

Andrew Nikiforuk
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, ENERGY: Tales From the Oilpatch: From Canada to the Midwest, 2:15 p.m.

Andrew Nikiforuk has written for the last two decades about energy, economics and the West for a variety of Canadian publications including The Walrus, Maclean's, Canadian Business, The Globe and Mail's Report on Business, Chatelaine, Georgia Straight, Equinox and Harrowsmith. In the late 1990s, he investigated the social and ecological impacts of intensive livestock industries and the legacy of northern uranium mining for the Calgary Herald. He's authored public policy position papers on water diversion in the Great Lakes (2004) and water, energy and North American integration (2007) for the Program on Water Issues at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre. Nikiforuk's journalism has won seven National Magazine Awards since 1989 and top honours for investigative writing from the Canadian Association of Journalists. His Alberta-based book, Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil, won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction in 2002. His latest book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent, examines the world's largest energy project, and is a national best seller. It won SEJ's 2009 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award and was a finalist for the Grantham Prize for Excellence In Reporting on the Environment.

 

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Lisa Palmer
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE ECONOMY: Big Think: Energy Policy in a New Economy, 9:00 a.m.

Lisa Palmer is an independent writer specializing in business, environment and climate change. She is also a contributing writer to The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. Since becoming a freelance writer in 2000, Palmer has written on everything from biotechnology and dramatic medical narratives to green tech and sustainable agri-business for more than 30 magazines, newspapers, and online media outlets, including Fortune, Fortune Small Business, CNNMoney.com and Popular Mechanics. She earned her master's degree at Simmons College in Boston and is a graduate of Boston University.

 

Jonathan Patz
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CLIMATE: Climate Change, Human Health and Environmental Justice, 9:00 a.m.

Jonathan Patz, director of environmental health at the University of Wisconsin, co-chaired the health expert panel of the US National Assessment on Climate Change and was a Convening Lead Author for the United Nations/World Bank Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. For the past 15 years, Dr. Patz has been a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) — the organization that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. He is President of the International Association for Ecology and Health and co-editor of the association's journal EcoHealth. He has written over 90 peer-reviewed papers and a textbook addressing the health effects of global environmental change. He has been invited to brief both houses of Congress, served on several scientific committees of the National Academy of Sciences, and currently serves on science advisory boards for both CDC and EPA.

 

Amol Pavangadkar
 

Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop 1: Producing Video for the Web, 8:00 a.m.

Amol Pavangadkar is the senior producer with Michigan State University's Communication Arts and Sciences Media and the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. He teaches media production and management and leads the college's professional media production unit. That gives students experience with an actual client and with producing professional media for their portfolios. When not producing rap videos on high energy physics and rare isotopes, he covers environmental issues and green energy initiatives.

 

Nick Penniman
 

Event: Saturday, Morning Plenary — Non-profit News: A Sustainable Survival Strategy for Environmental Journalism? 7:30 a.m.

Nick Penniman is the executive director of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. He is also founder of the American News Project. He previously served as the Washington Director of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the publisher of The Washington Monthly, the editor of TomPaine.com, the program director of the Campaign for America's Future, the associate editor of the American Prospect magazine, the director of the Alliance for Democracy and the editor of the Lincoln Journal. Over the course of his career, he has focused primarily on exposing political corruption, exploring the power and impact of corporate globalization, heralding the rise of independent media, challenging the decline of civic mindedness, and bringing attention to the intersection of public health and the environment. He graduated from St. Lawrence University with a degree in philosophy.

 

James Pew
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Measure it Again: Air Pollution and the EPA Toxics Program, 10:45 a.m.

Jim Pew is a staff attorney in Earthjustice's Washington, D.C. office. He received a B.A. in history from Stanford University, a M.A. in law from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Pew practiced at a private law firm in Philadelphia for three years, at the Natural Resources Defense Council for two years, and at Earthjustice for the last eight years. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and cat, and still spends as much time as possible on a bicycle.

 

Mai Phillips
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Feeding Cities: Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Justice, 9:00 a.m.

Dr. Mai M. Phillips is the Program Coordinator of the Conservation and Environmental Sciences Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has earned a BS degree in mathematics at the University of Iowa and an M.A. degree in ecology at the University of Colorado. After obtaining her M.A, she was an assistant professor in the Agricultural University of Malaysia, Sarawak (Borneo). She completed her PhD degree at the Department of Horticulture, College of Tropical Agriculture, University of Hawaii. She then worked as an assistant professor at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), and was active in the conservation of crop genetic resources. She worked as a Senior Scientist within the Global Environmental Management (GEM) Education Center, College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for ten years prior to her current position at the CES Program at UWM. Her expertise includes permaculture, international watershed management, ethnobotany and natural and crop genetic resources conservation.

 

John Pineau
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CLIMATE: From the Equator to the Poles: Forests Under Siege, 11:15 a.m.

John Pineau has been executive director of the Canadian Institute of Forestry since September 2006. Prior to that time, he worked as a full-time consultant to the Canadian Ecology Centre — Forestry Research Partnership as Extension Manager, and with the Lake Abititi Model Forest on a variety of projects including four years as chair of the Education and Public Awareness committee. During his career, Pineau has worked for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in a variety of locations and capacities including as park naturalist, communications officer, park planner and G.I.S. specialist. He was employed by Millar Western Forest Products Ltd. in Alberta as G.I.S. manager and biologist from 1994-2000. Pineau has a degree in Biology from Trent University (1983) and a diploma in G.I.S. Application Development from Fleming College (1991). In his spare time, he is an enthusiastic wilderness canoeist who also enjoys golf, tennis, fishing, hunting and music.

 

Craig Pittman
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Clean Water Act: Still Violated After All These Years, 9:00 a.m.

Craig Pittman in a native Floridian. He graduated in 1981 from Troy State University in Alabama, where his muckraking work for the student paper prompted an agitated dean to label him "the most destructive force on campus." Since then he has covered a variety of beats and quite a few disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires and the Florida Legislature. Since 1998 he has reported on environmental issues for Florida's largest paper, the St. Petersburg Times. In 2004, he won the Waldo Proffitt Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism in Florida for revealing a secret plan by business leaders to transfer water from sleepy North Florida to booming South Florida. Pittman and co-writer Matthew Waite shared the 2006 and 2007 Proffitt Awards for their series "Vanishing Wetlands," which also won SEJ's 2006 and 2007 Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting. They turned the series into a book, Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss, published in March 2009. Pittman's second book, a solo effort titled Manatee Insanity: Inside the War Over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species, will hit stores in 2010.

 

Nina Plaushin
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, ENERGY: Getting Green Power to the People: Transmission Lines and the Environment, 10:45 a.m.

Nina Plaushin joined ITC Holdings Corporation as director of Federal and Legislative Affairs in December 2008. She has 20 years' experience in federal policy with a focus on utility, energy and environmental issues. Her professional experience includes vice president of External Affairs at Wisconsin Public Power, director of Government and Regulatory Affairs at American Transmission Company, manager of Federal Affairs at PP&L, vice president of Hill & Knowlton and federal consultant for Van Ness, Feldman & Curtis law firm. Plaushin has worked on every major energy bill in the past decade beginning with the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and implementing regulations at FERC. She has testified before FERC, the Wisconsin legislature, and local governmental boards; served as legislative director for Congressman C. Thomas McMillen (D-MD); and worked on the staffs of Sen. Spark Matsunaga (D-HI) and Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-CT). She graduated from Drew University, Madison, N.J. with a bachelor's degree in political science.

 

Catherine Porter
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CLIMATE: Taking Some Temperatures: What Will Climate Change Mean for the Great Lakes? 10:45 a.m.

Catherine Porter is an environment reporter at The Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. On her beat, she has driven tractors with local farmers unpacking the reasons behind Ontario's disappearing farmland; flown over mountaintop removal mines in West Virginia to look at where Ontario gets its energy; unwittingly exposed Canada's new shaky energy retrofit program while trying to install more insulation in her attic and zoomed around Georgian Bay in a dingy, documenting lowering lake levels. She's won the country's top journalism prize — Canada's version of the Pulitzer called the National Newspaper Award — for a story on water and been nominated for another one on mountaintop removal mining. For her latest exploit, she followed one $2 box of strawberries from Watsonville, California to a family party in Toronto, documenting the dizzying industrial processes involved in a growing and delivering a simple fruit picked wild by Romans.

 

David Poulson
 

Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop 2: Computer Assisted Reporting for the Environment, 8:00 a.m.

David Poulson is the associate director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. He teaches environmental, investigative and computer-assisted reporting and organizes and teaches workshops that help professional reporters better cover the environment. He also experiments with alternative media, including an environmental news effort nationally recognized by the Knight-Batten awards for innovations in journalism. He is editor of the center's environmental news service, GreatLakesEcho.org. Poulson came to MSU in 2003 after a 21-year career as a newspaper reporter and editor, mostly covering the environment.

 

Q

 

Chuck Quirmbach
 

Events:

Wednesday, Opening Reception and Dinner at the Concourse Hotel, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, Breakfast Session: Arboretum History and Orientation, 8:00 a.m.

Chuck Quirmbach, co-chair of SEJ's 19th Annual Conference, is a Milwaukee-based reporter who covers energy and environmental issues for Wisconsin Public Radio. During his 20 years on the beat, he also filed many "green" related stories for NPR, The Environment Report, Great Lakes Radio Consortium and the Voice of America. Since 1986, he has also covered Milwaukee-based news of statewide interest for WPR, focusing on elections, welfare-to-work and many other topics. During his career, he has won several awards from the Northwest Broadcast News Association, Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, the Associated Press and the Milwaukee Press Club. Since 1991, he has been a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and has helped out at several SEJ conferences. In 2008, he chaired the SEJ Elections Committee, which just means he basically watched Chris Rigel (SEJ's associate director) do the heavy lifting.

 

R

 

David Radaich
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Wolf Delisting and the ESA in a New Administration, 11:15 a.m.

David Radaich and his family run 300 Angus cows on the 9R Ranch in N.E. Minnesota, which also holds the largest concentration of wolves in the lower 48 states. When David took over the farm from his parents, along with the property deed came the wolves. David said, "Dad would shoot the wolves without hesitation. I felt I needed to handle them a bit different."

 

Andrew Revkin
 

Events:

Friday, Craft Breakfast Breakout Session, Breakfast on a Finite Planet 7:30 a.m.
Friday, Opening Plenary — Countdown to Copenhagen, 8:45 a.m.

A prize-winning journalist and author, Andrew Revkin has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1995, mainly covering environmental issues in their social and political context. His 20-plus years of coverage of global warming won one of journalism's top honors in 2008 — a John Chancellor Award. His blog, Dot Earth, engages the public in a discussion of strategies for balancing human activity with the planet's finite resources. He has written books on the Amazon, Arctic, and global warming and two book chapters on the media and the environment. Revkin has taught graduate-level communication courses at Columbia University and Bard College. In spare moments, he is a songwriter and performs in the roots band Uncle Wade.

 

Sue Robinson
 

Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop 1: Producing Video for the Web, 8:00 a.m.

After a dozen years as a reporter, Sue Robinson attained her PhD from Temple University in 2007 and is now an assistant professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She researches and teaches online journalism and helps coordinate the School's MA professional-track program.

 

James Rogers
 

Events:

Friday, Opening Plenary — Countdown to Copenhagen, 8:45 a.m.
Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE ECONOMY: Big Think: Energy Policy in a New Economy, 9:00 a.m.

Jim Rogers became chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy in 2007, having served as chairman and CEO of Cinergy since 1994 and PSI Energy since 1988. He chairs the Institute for Electric Efficiency and the Edison Foundation, and serves as co-chair of the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency and the Alliance to Save Energy. He is a director of Cigna Corp. and Applied Materials Inc. He serves on the boards and Executive Committees of the Nuclear Energy Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. He is a board member of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and Business Roundtable and he is a member of the Honorary Committee of the Joint U.S.-China Cooperation on Clean Energy. Newsweek named him to The Global Elite list, "The 50 Most Powerful People in the World in 2008.”

 

William Ryerson
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: 6.8 Billion Reasons to Ask: Population, Pollution and Human Health, 11:15 a.m.

William Ryerson, Population Media Center's founder and president, has a 40-year history of working in the field of reproductive health, including two decades of experience adapting the Sabido methodology for behavior change communications to various cultural settings worldwide. He has been involved in the design of research to measure the effects of such projects in a number of countries. He also serves as president of the Population Institute, which works in partnership with Population Media Center. Previously, he served as director of the Population Institute's Youth and Student Division, development director of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania, associate director of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and executive vice president of Population Communications International. In 2006, he was awarded the Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage from the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development. Ryerson received a B.A. in Biology from Amherst College and an M.Phil. in Biology from Yale University (with specialization in Ecology and Evolution).

 

S

 

Debra Schwartz
 

Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout Session, Have You Heard the One About...? Using Humor To Help Tell Environmental Stories, 12:30 p.m.

Debra Schwartz began adding humor techniques to her articles about the environment and science in the late 1990s after taking a master's class in writing funny. Most editors had a favorable reaction. The style helped her build relationships with her audiences and editors. Learning humor techniques gave her an artist's kit full of choices that through storytelling methods guided the level of comedic sensitivity she used, and also taught her narrative timing. Skill with the techniques was honed at Chemical Innovation, Appalachian Voices, Playgirl and other publications. Schwartz believes the next generation of journalism must weed fear-mongering, shame and blame out of news messages. She has found that writing about the environment lends itself to reporting the literal truth, which is the name of a humor technique. Schwartz is currently working on a "chick lit" book, a history of the U.S. government's involvement with the environment prior to 1960 and writing about the role of the teacher in different cultures. She recently returned from teaching science journalism at Waseda University in Tokyo.

 

Peter Seidel
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: 6.8 Billion Reasons to Ask: Population, Pollution and Human Health, 11:15 a.m.

Peter Seidel has worked as a farmhand, factory worker, Alaska salmon fisherman, and carpenter. In 1957, he read a book that showed how his lifestyle was damaging the planet so he became an environmental architect and builder. He earned a BS Arch. Engineering from the University of Colorado and an MS Arch. from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Seidel has practiced architecture and planning in Milwaukee, Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Cincinnati. He was chief planner for an environmentally sound new town to have been built outside Cincinnati. He has taught at five schools of higher learning, including in China and India. Frustrated with public disinterest in environmental architecture, Seidel turned to writing around 1990 — most recently writing 2045, a novel about the future.

 

James Sensenbrenner
 

Event: Friday, Opening Plenary — Countdown to Copenhagen, 8:45 a.m.

F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. represents the Fifth Congressional District of Wisconsin. He did his undergraduate studies at Stanford University, where he majored in political science, then earned his law degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968. After ten years in the Wisconsin State Legislature, Sensenbrenner successfully ran for a U.S. House seat and has been reelected since. He currently serves on the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Science and Technology. He's the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, as well as the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Sensenbrenner is the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and as a long-serving committee member, he has established a strong record on crime, intellectual property and constitutional issues. Previously, Sensenbrenner was chairman of the House Committee on Science, where he solidified his reputation as an independent leader on science issues, as well as oversight.

 

Dale Shaver
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE WATER: Water Supplies, Diversion and The Great Lakes Compact, 10:45 a.m.

Dale Shaver has served with the Waukesha Department of Parks and Land Use since 1987 and as director since 1999. He holds a Masters Degree in Land Use and Environmental Planning from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He holds affiliations and recognitions from a variety of professional associations, including the American Planning Association, National Recreation and Park Association, Wisconsin Land Information Association and the Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association. As director, Shaver is responsible for a comprehensive range of county-wide services and functions in the areas of land use planning, private wells, septic systems, restaurant licensing, land use planning and zoning, recycling, natural resource management, a county-wide park system, ice arenas, golf courses and an exposition center.

 

Bob Sipchen
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT: Freelance Pitch Slam, 10:45 a.m.

Bob Sipchen is the editor-in-chief of the Sierra Club's Sierra magazine. Before joining Sierra, Sipchen had worked at the Los Angeles Times, where he edited the Opinion section, led the team that created the late Outdoors section, wrote a column about education, shared in the Times Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots and, with Alex Raksin, won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize and Sigma Delta Chi prize for Editorial Writing with a series about people living with mental illness and addiction on Los Angeles' streets. Sipchen paid his way through UC Santa Barbara as a Hot Shot firefighter and patrolman for the U.S. Forest Service. He is the author of Baby Insane and the Buddha, a book about street gangs, freelances for national magazines and since 1997 has been an adjunct professor at Occidental College. In addition to editing Sierra magazine, Sipchen is the Communications Director for the Sierra Club.

 

Paul Smith
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Bambi's Insatiable Appetite: Can a Forest Lie? 9:00 a.m.

Paul Smith holds a B.A. in biology, natural science and conservation from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. After working in field and laboratory positions as a forester, chemist and biotech researcher, he began journalism and photojournalism studies at Marquette University. Since 1993 he has since covered environment and outdoors topics for Wisconsin newspapers. He is currently outdoors editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

 

Dawn Stover
 

Events:

Friday, Lunch Breakout Session, Get a Mentor, Be a Mentor, 12:30 p.m.
Saturday, Mini-Tour, Baraboo River and Dam Removal, 2:15 p.m.

Dawn Stover is a freelance magazine reporter and editor who writes about science, technology and the environment. She lives and works in a log cabin on 20 acres outside White Salmon, Washington. She is editor at large for Popular Science, where she was a staffer for 19 years. Previously, she worked at Harper's and Science Digest. Her freelance clients include Scientific American, Conservation, Earth 3.0, New Scientist, and MSN.com. Dawn has been a volunteer co-coordinator of SEJ's Mentor Program since its founding in 2001.

 

Claire Strader
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, AGRICULTURE: A Capitol Idea, Squared: Madison's Local-food Movement and Beyond, 9:00 a.m.

Claire Strader has worked in small-scale organic agriculture for 15 years, including 8 years at Troy Community Farm in Madison, WI where she turned a 5-acre parcel of weedy urban landscape into a highly productive and wonderfully beautiful vegetable farm. Not only does Claire produce food for CSA, market, and wholesale on this small urban farm, she also educates college students, high-school youth, and adult volunteers through the farm's internship programs. Claire's farm is part of a larger non-profit that also runs a 5-acre community garden, a restored prairie, and several kids' gardening programs on 26 open acres. Community GroundWorks at Troy Gardens not only feeds people, it also teaches people to feed themselves.

 

Nancy Sutley
 

Events:

Friday, Opening Plenary — Countdown to Copenhagen, 8:45 a.m.
Friday, Afternoon Plenary — Meet the New Bosses, (Not) the Same as the Old Bosses?, 3:45 p.m.

Nancy Sutley is chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). In this role, she serves as the principal environmental policy adviser to the President. The CEQ coordinates federal environmental efforts and works closely with agencies and other White House offices in the development of environmental policies and initiatives. Previously, Sutley was the Deputy Mayor for Energy and Environment for the city of Los Angeles, California; represented Los Angeles on the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California; served on the California State Water Resources Control Board from 2003-2005; worked for California Governor Gray Davis as Energy Advisor; served as Deputy Secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations in the California EPA from 1999-2003; and during the Clinton administration, she worked for the EPA as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Regional Administrator in San Francisco and special assistant to the Administrator in Washington, D.C. Sutley received her Bachelors degree from Cornell University and her Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University.

 

T

 

Tyghe Trimble
 

Events:

Friday, Network Lunch, Appropriate Environmental Technology for Developing Countries, 12:30 p.m.
Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT: Freelance Pitch Slam, 10:45 a.m.

Tyghe Trimble is the online editor for PopularMechanics.com, the official website for Popular Mechanics magazine. There he assigns, edits and writes science and technology news stories on topics like geoengineering, rainwater capture laws and climate modeling via scientific balloons and ocean cores. Trimble's personal and professional interests include wind turbine design, beer making, smart matter, bicycle maintenance, barefoot running and raw food desserts. Tyghe was previously the news editor at Discover magazine.

 

Bijal Trivedi
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT: Freelance Pitch Slam, 10:45 a.m.

Bijal Trivedi is the coordinator of Bench Press, a program that sends second-semester SHERP students into laboratories across the New York University campus to cover cutting-edge research. Trivedi is a SHERP graduate and an award-winning freelance writer specializing in science. Prior to her freelance career, she was an editor for the National Geographic News Service, a wire service that she helped launch in collaboration with the New York Times Syndicate. Trivedi is a former staff writer for the Genome News Network, a website covering genetics and genomics news for the layperson. Her work has appeared in New Scientist, Wired, The Economist, National Geographic, Discover, New York, and Air & Space among others. Trivedi has a BA in biochemistry from Oberlin College, an MS in biology from University of California, Los Angeles, and an MA in science journalism from New York University. Trivedi won the 2006 Wistar Institute Science Journalism Award and was a recipient of the 2005-2006 Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award.

 

V

 

Tom Vilsack
 

Event: Friday, Afternoon Plenary — Meet the New Bosses, (Not) the Same as the Old Bosses?, 3:45 p.m.

Tom Vilsack was sworn in as the 30th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on January 21, 2009. Appointed by President Barack Obama, Vilsack received unanimous support for his confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Secretary Vilsack has served in the public sector at nearly every level of government, beginning as mayor of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa in 1987, and then as state senator in 1992. In 1998, he was the first Democrat elected Governor of Iowa in more than 30 years, an office he held for two terms. As Secretary of Agriculture, Vilsack has been candid and direct about the challenges and opportunities facing USDA, and the importance of fulfilling the vast missions of the Department as a champion of rural America, a steward of the environment and a protector of our food supply.

 

W

 

Mark Wagner
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE ECONOMY: Grading Green Jobs, Energy Independence and the Stimulus Package, 2:15 p.m.

Mark Wagner is vice president of Government Relations for Johnson Controls, Inc., a global leader in energy efficiency for buildings, building automation systems, advanced automotive batteries, and automotive interiors. His areas of expertise include energy policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy, advanced battery technology for hybrid electric vehicles and federal procurement. Wagner has been instrumental in developing Johnson Controls programs with the federal government, including Energy Savings Performance Contracting and other public-private partnerships. Previously, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Economic Security, working on defense policy matters involving base closings. Prior to his work at DOD, he was the executive director of the Wisconsin Procurement Institute. Wagner also has served as a Congressional staff member for Representative Les Aspin, U.S. Senator Birch Bayh, and Representative John Brademas. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Indiana University in 1975 and his law degree from the Indiana University School of Law at Bloomington in 1983.

 

Frank Walter
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT: Green PR in the Blogosphere: How PR Practitioners Are End-Running Professional Journalists and How We Should Respond, 9:00 a.m.

Frank J. Walter has more than 25 years of communications and marketing experience working with Fortune 500 and start-up businesses, and advancing the missions of nonprofit and advocacy organizations. He is also an adjunct professor of environmental communications and media relations at Georgetown University in Washington. At Environics Communications, Frank leads the Sustainability & Clean Energy Practice, working on issues including global warming, renewable energy, corporate social responsibility related to environmental and sustainability efforts, electric vehicle technology, and green product marketing. His expertise includes work with the Electric Drive Transportation Association; the Water Design-Build Council, which promotes clean water infrastructure investment, and the World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour climate change project. He earned an MBA in information technology from Fordham University in New York City and holds a BA degree in journalism/public relations from Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

 

Bud Ward
 

Event: Friday, Lunch Breakout Session, Rational Ignorance, Media Hybrids, and the Economics of Climate Change Coverage, 12:30 p.m.

Freelancer Bud Ward is editor of The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media and president of Morris A. Ward, Inc., a consulting firm in northern Virginia. Ward started in environmental journalism in 1974 and in 1982 founded The Environmental Forum magazine. In 1988, he launched Environment Writer, a newsletter for journalists covering environmental issues. A co-founder of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), he has written two books and more than 1,000 articles on environmental issues. The founder of the Central European Environmental Journalism Program, Ward has been a member of the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation's Environmental Journalism Advisory Committee. He now is advisory editor for the Oxford University Second Edition of Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather, and an advisor for the United Nations Human Development Report, Climate Change and Human Development. Ward is prize administrator for the Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment, at $75,000 the richest prize in journalism. He lectures and speaks often on environmental journalism and on challenges facing journalists and the news business.

 

Glenn Warren
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 3, Cruising Lake Michigan, 7:15 a.m.

Dr. Glenn Warren began working on the Great Lakes in 1975. He received a B.S. in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin, M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Limnology). His current responsibilities include chemical and biological monitoring of the Great Lakes as part of the long-term U.S. EPA-Great Lakes National Program Office monitoring effort, including sampling and other operations from the R/V Lake Guardian. He has managed the Lake Michigan Mass Balance Program and is currently involved with the Coordinated Science and Monitoring Initiative with U.S. and Canadian federal agencies.

 

Richard Wayland
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Measure it Again: Air Pollution and the EPA Toxics Program, 10:45 a.m.

Richard A. "Chet" Wayland has over 20 years of experience in information management, air quality modeling and data analysis. He has been employed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 1991 and currently serves as the Director for the Air Quality Assessment Division within the EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards (OAQPS) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He is responsible for the overall management of the technical programs for modeling, monitoring, emissions and data analysis that support all OAQPS regulatory programs and policies and also serves on various EPA oversight groups related to information management and technology. He has B.A. and M.S. degrees in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia.

 

Jennifer Weeks
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Wetlands, Wildlife, and Wind, 8:30 a.m.

Jennifer Weeks is an independent writer specializing in nature, energy and environmental issues. She has written for more than 40 newspapers, magazines, and web sites, including the Washington Post, Boston Globe Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Audubon, National Wildlife, Grist, Daily Climate, National Geographic Kids, Plenty, Backpacker, Environment, High Country News, Preservation, New Scientist, Columbia Journalism Review, and Newsweek. She also has fifteen years of experience as a Congressional aide, lobbyist, and public policy analyst. Weeks graduated from Williams College and holds master's degrees from the University of North Carolina (political science) and Harvard University (environmental policy).  

 

Tim Wheeler
 

Events:

Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: 6.8 Billion Reasons to Ask: Population, Pollution and Human Health, 11:15 a.m.
Friday, Network Lunch, Beyond the Smell: Farm Air Pollution, 12:30 p.m.

Tim Wheeler, an SEJ board member and previous president, covers the environment for The Baltimore Sun. He has written about the environment frequently in his 30-year journalistic career, which included a decade as the beat reporter for The Evening Sun and then The Sun after the two papers merged. He spent two years as an editor helping to coordinate The Sun's medical, science, religion and environmental coverage, during which reporters for the paper won an SEJ award for spot-news coverage of a chemical-laden train fire in downtown Baltimore. His reporting on the Chesapeake Bay, childhood lead poisoning and other environmental topics also has won multiple awards. Before coming to Baltimore, he worked for newspapers in Richmond and Norfolk, VA., and for Media General News Service in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, with a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.

 

Carolyn Whetzel
 

Event: Friday, Network Lunch, Carbon Trading: Risky Business or Viable Opportunity to Cut Greenhouse Gases? 12:30 p.m.

Carolyn Whetzel, an SEJ board member, is an environmental reporter for BNA, a private publisher headquartered in Washington, D.C. that covers legislative developments, federal and state laws and regulations, court decisions, and economic trends. Whetzel is based in California and covers a variety of state environmental issues including air and water quality, hazardous wastes, chemicals, and energy since 1992. Her work appears primarily in BNA's Daily Environment Report, Environment Reporter, Toxics Law Reporter, Chemical Regulation Reporter, Occupational Safety & Health Reporter, and Daily Report for Executives. Whetzel joined BNA in 1970 while attending George Washington University, but left four years later to travel and move to California. Before rejoining BNA, she wrote for in-house publications for several companies and institutions and was a freelance writer in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Dallas.

 

Melinda Wittstock
 

Event: Saturday, Morning Plenary — Non-profit News: A Sustainable Survival Strategy for Environmental Journalism? 7:30 a.m.

Melinda Wittstock is an award-winning broadcast and print journalist with 18 years' reporting and hosting experience in the highly competitive New York, Washington, and London media markets. Her work spans BBC Radio and TV News, ABC News, National Public Radio (NPR), MSNBC/CNBC, as well as London's Times, Guardian, and Observer newspapers. After covering U.S. national politics for more than a decade, Wittstock founded Capitol News Connection (CNC), which covers Congress from a local perspective for public radio stations nationwide. In two years, Wittstock built CNC from a staff of three serving 10 stations to a staff of 12 serving 230 stations. CNC's daily audience is now 1.86 million (Arbitron: Spring 2006). Brought up in New York and Toronto, Wittstock graduated with an Honors B.A. in political science from McGill University (American Government, International Relations, and Political Philosophy).

 

Christine Woodside
 

Events:

Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT: Quiz the Pollster: Energy and the Environment in the Public Eye, 11:15 a.m.
Friday, Beat Dinner, Renegade Ways to Cover the Energy Independence Beat, 7:00 p.m.

Christine Woodside is a writer and editor from Connecticut. She is the author of Energy Independence: Your Everyday Guide to Reducing Fuel Consumption (Lyons Press, 2009). This is the second edition of her book first published in 2006. She has specialized in environmental topics since going freelance in 2000 after many years in newspapers. Woodside has written many articles for The New York Times, The Hartford Courant, The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, and several relatively unknown magazines like New England Watershed and the Hog River Journal. Chris edits Appalachia journal and the quarterly Connecticut Woodlands. She serves on the advisory board of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting at the University of Rhode Island, where she was a fellow in 1999. She hiked the entire Appalachian Trail with her husband Nat Eddy and two friends some years back. She is hoping that her Web site chriswoodside.com will be online soon.

 

Mary Ann Wright
 

Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Future Energy Choices, 7:00 a.m.

As Vice President and General Manager, Hybrid Systems, Johnson Controls Power Solutions and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson Controls-Saft, Mary Ann Wright is responsible for hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle battery programs. Previously, Ms. Wright served as Executive Vice President Engineering, Product Development, Commercial and Program Management for Collins & Aikman Corporation; as Director, Sustainable Mobility Technologies and Hybrid Vehicle Programs at Ford Motor Company; as Chief Engineer of the 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid, and led the launch of Ford's first hydrogen-powered fuel cell fleet program. She began her career at Ford in 1988. Wright earned a bachelor's degree in Economics and International Business from the University of Michigan, a Master of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Master of Business Administration degree from Wayne State University. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Electric Drive Transportation Association, Washington DC.

 

Changhua Wu
 

Event: Friday, Opening Plenary — Countdown to Copenhagen, 8:45 a.m.

Changhua Wu, based in Beijing, is The Climate Group's Greater China Director. Previously, she was the Executive Director of China Operations of ENSR. A China specialist for ~15 years, Wu is involved in major regional initiatives. She leads a world-wide professional network, Professional Association for China's Environment. She also serves on the Board of the Asia-Pacific Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production, the Standing Committee of Environmental Education Committee of Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences, and the Advisory Committee of Clean Air Initiative-China. Prior to returning to China, Wu directed the Program for China Studies at the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC. She's consulted for multinational organizations like the World Bank, UNEP, and UNDP. She was the 2004 Fellow of the Temple Law School's High-level US-China Roundtable on Environmental Law and Policy. Wu holds two graduate degrees: Law from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Environmental Policy from University of Maryland.

 

Adrian Wydeven
 

Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, NATURAL RESOURCES AND WILDLIFE: Wolf Delisting and the ESA in a New Administration, 11:15 a.m.

Adrian P. Wydeven grew up in Kimberly, Wisconsin. He obtained a B.S. in Biology and Wildlife Management at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 1976, and a M.S. degree in Wildlife Ecology from Iowa State University at Ames in 1979. Wydeven's M.S. research focused on elk ecology in South Dakota. From 1980 through 1982, he worked as an assistant wildlife area manager in Missouri. In 1982, he joined the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as a wildlife manager, working at stations in Oshkosh, Appleton, and Shawano. In 1990, Wydeven began work as a mammal ecologist in Park Falls, heading up the state wolf recovery program, and other programs on mammals. He has been involved with monitoring and management of American martens, surveys for lynx, investigations of cougar observations, surveys of other carnivores, and serving on various state and federal wildlife advisory committees. Wydeven has published many articles in scientific and poplar literature, and recently co-edited and co-authored a book on wolf recovery in the Great Lakes region.

 

Z

 

Joy Zedler
 

Events:

Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Clean Water Act: Still Violated After All These Years, 9:00 a.m.
Sunday, Arboretum and Prairie Restoration Tour 1, 10:45 a.m.

Dr. Joy Zedler, who in addition to being professor of botany and Aldo Leopold Chair of Restoration Ecology, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, served as chair of the National Research Council panel that wrote the 2001 report, "Compensating for Wetland Losses Under the Clean Water Act."

 

Lewis Ziska
 

Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CLIMATE: Climate Change, Human Health and Environmental Justice, 9:00 a.m.

Lewis Ziska is a plant physiologist with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service. He began his career as a Smithsonian fellow, then took up residence as the project leader for global climate change at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines before joining USDA. Dr. Ziska has published numerous papers on carbon dioxide and climate change impacts on agriculture, weed biology and public health. At present he is investigating the role of rising carbon dioxide and changing climate on food security, invasive species and aerobiology.