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SEJ's 23rd Annual Conference Speaker Information

 

 

 

Here's who's speaking at which sessions.

 

 

 

 

 

Agenda Registration Lodging/Travel Advertise/Exhibit Environmental News About Chattanooga

 

Below are biographies (or links thereto) of speakers for SEJ's 23rd Annual Conference, October 2-6, 2013, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as well as the sessions they're participating in. Chattanooga conference home.

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

 

 

 

A

 

Imelda Abano
 

  • Event: Wednesday, From Chattanooga to Chennai: Reporting on Population and Sustainability in an Urbanizing World, Cities, Coasts, and Climate Change: Case Studies, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Wednesday, Meet & Greet, SEJ and the World: International Stories, Global Audiences, 4:00 p.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CLIMATE: All Impacts Are Local: Bringing Climate Change Close to Home, 2:00 p.m.
  • Imelda Abano, an SEJ board member, has been in the journalism profession since 1998. She is the Founder and President of the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists, Inc. (PNEJ) which was created in 2010, aiming to increase the quality and quantity of environmental reporting. Abano is the first Filipino to receive the 2009 Developing Asia Journalist of the Year award for her climate change story "Scorched Earth," which was organized by the Asian Development Bank Institute based in Tokyo, Japan. She is also the first Filipino journalist to receive the prestigious United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) Award for excellence in reporting on environment, humanitarian and development affairs in 2008. In 2002, Abano received the Asian Winner of the Global Awards on Environmental Reporting organized by Reuters and IUCN in Washington DC. She has been covering environmental and science issues for the UK-based Science and Development Network (scidevnet), the BusinessMirror and InterAksyon. Abano was among the first batch of journalists who launched the Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) in 2007 to cover the United Nations-backed climate change conferences. She then became a United Nations Framework of Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) fellow covering series of climate change negotiations from 2008 to present.

 

Ashley Ahearn
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT 2: Sound Storytelling: Using Audio to Cover Science and the Environment, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT 3: Who's the Expert? 2:00 p.m.
  • Ashley Ahearn is the environment reporter at KUOW — National Public Radio in Seattle — and part of the regional multimedia collaborative project EarthFix. Before joining KUOW Ashley was a producer and reporter for Living on Earth, a nationally aired environment program from Public Radio International. She has a masters in science journalism from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California and has completed reporting fellowships with the Vermont Law School, the Metcalf Institute at the University of Rhode Island and the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources. She also serves on the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists. In her spare time Ashley enjoys riding vintage motorcycles, snowboarding and hiking in the Olympics and the Cascade mountain ranges of the Northwest.

 

Moetasim Ashfaq
 

 

Emilia Askari
 

  • Event: Saturday, Game On! Breakfast, Environmental Games and Journalism, 7:30 a.m.
  • Emilia Askari is a doctoral student at Michigan State University studying the intersection of technology, learning and civic engagement. Before she began her studies at MSU, Emilia spent two decades as a reporter at newspapers such as the Detroit Free Press and the Miami Herald. Over the years, she's won more than 20 prizes and fellowships and served on the national boards of several professional organizations, including the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Emilia has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a master's degree in information studies from the University of Michigan, where she studied human-computer interaction. She co-directs a digital news and entrepreneurship project with Arab American 8th graders in a Dearborn public school and teaches environmental journalism at the University of Michigan. Emilia wants to create a game that will teach digital literacy and content creation in middle schools.

 

 

B

 

Katherine Bagley
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CLIMATE: Climate Change and Media Coverage: Have We Blown It? 11:00 a.m.
  • Katherine Bagley is a reporter for InsideClimate News who covers the intersection of environmental science and politics and policy, with an emphasis on climate change. Her print and multimedia work has appeared in Popular Science, OnEarth, YouBeauty.com, Audubon, The Scientist and Science Illustrated, among others. She holds master's degrees in journalism and earth and environmental sciences from Columbia University. More.

 

Jerad Bales
 

 

Don Barger
 

 

Nancy Baron
 

 

Andy Berke
 

 

Barbara Bernstein
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 9, How Sustainable Ag Feeds Sustainable Cities, 10:00 a.m.
  • Producer and writer Barbara Bernstein is a musician, composer, performance artist, radio and video producer. Her award-winning radio documentaries have been internationally broadcast on public and community radio stations and her features have been heard on NPR, PRI, the BBC, Pacifica Network News, This Way Out and Making Contact. She is currently working on a documentary film on food justice called Gaining Ground. Besides producing radio she plays viola and cuatro in a French Cabaret and Tango band.

 

Jacquelyn Birdsall
 

  • Event: Friday, Breakfast of Alternative Vehicle Champions, Electrifying Cars: The Next Five Years, 7:30 a.m.
  • Jacquelyn Birdsall is an Engineer in the Powertrain System Control – Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle Group (PSC-FCHV) of Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America specializing in codes and standards development, infrastructure deployment and vehicle testing. Prior to joining Toyota she worked at the California Fuel Cell Partnership, General Hydrogen Canada Corporation, New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., and DaimlerChrysler RTNA. Birdsall received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Kettering University (previously General Motors Institute) in 2007 and is a Candidate for a Master of Science degree in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the University of California, Davis.

 

Tripp Boltin
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: The Many Faces of Dam Removal, 11:00 a.m.
  • Tripp Boltin serves as the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s southeast regional coordinator for fish habitat and fish passage programs. The scope of both of these programs is improving aquatic habitat and health for the diverse aquatic fauna inhabiting the streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs of the Southeast, while working closely with a myriad of partners. Tripp joined the USFWS Southeast Region in 2005 after working five years in the Service’s Headquarters Office in Arlington, VA as a biologist within the National Fish Hatchery System. Tripp began his career in fisheries management with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources where he worked various hydroelectric and fish barrier projects. He holds a B.S. in Aquaculture, Fisheries and Wildlife Biology from Clemson University, and an M.S. in Aquaculture, Fisheries and Wildlife Biology with an emphasis in Fisheries Management from Clemson University.

 

John Bonar
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 7, Fracking, Tennessee Style, 9:00 a.m.
  • John Bonar is a registered professional Petroleum Engineer and has been involved with the oil and gas industry for approximately 33 years. He has worked in many states including Wyoming, California, off-shore Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. He has been instrumental in the fracture stimulation of over 1,000 wells. He has been General Manager for Atlas Energy, LP for their Tennessee District since 2005. He currently serves as a Director of the Tennessee Oil and Gas Association and is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

 

David Borowski
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 3, Chattanooga: From Gritty City to Green-Manufacturing Hub, 7:30 a.m.
  • David M. Borowski earned a B.S. from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL, and an M.S. from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. David started working with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. After a few years, he moved over to the Department of Health. For 13 years, David has been part of the Environmental Epidemiology Program which is funded by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. David works to keep the public safe from harmful chemicals in their homes and communities.

 

Jane Braxton Little
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop, Successful Freelancing 201, 8:30 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT 3: Who's the Expert? 2:00 p.m.
  • Jane Braxton Little, an independent writer and photographer, is drawn to places on the edge and the people who live there. She has written about the Great Plains' Ogallala Aquifer for Scientific American, endangered Mexican seabirds for Audubon, and post-nuclear disaster forest management in Chernobyl and Fukushima for Environmental Health Perspectives. After earning a Harvard MA in Japanese cultural history, Braxton Little moved to California’s Sierra Nevada for a summer that has yet to end.

 

Fred Brown
 

 

Bill Browning
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CITY: Biomimicry and Biophilic: What Can Nature Teach Us About Sustainability? 2:00 p.m.
  • William D. Browning received a Bachelor of environmental design from the University of Colorado and a M.S. in real estate development from MIT. In 1991, he founded Rocky Mountain Institute’s Green Development Services, which was awarded the 1999 President’s Council for Sustainable Development/Renew America Prize. In 2006 he became a principal in Terrapin Bright Green LLC, which crafts environmental strategies for corporations, government agencies and large-scale developments. Browning’s clients include Walmart's Eco-mart, Starwood, Yellowstone National Park, Lucasfilm’s Letterman Digital Arts Center, New Songdo City, Bank of America’s One Bryant Park, the White House, and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Village. He coauthored Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate, Green Developments (CD-ROM), A Primer on Sustainable Building, Greening the Building and the Bottom Line, and The Economics of Biophilia. Browning was named one of five people “Making a Difference” by Buildings magazine. He co-founded US Green Building Council’s Board of Directors, and is the Chair of the Greening America Board of Directors. He served on the DoD Defense Science Board Energy Task Force and the State Department’s Industry Advisory Panel.

 

James Bruggers
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Combined Sewer Overflows: The Gift That Keeps on Polluting, 9:00 a.m.
  • James Bruggers has worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington, California and Kentucky. He has covered the environment for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, Kentucky's largest news organization, since December 1999. He was elected five times to the Society of Environmental Journalists board of directors, serving 13 years, including two as vice president and two as president. His report on railroad workers and brain damage was a top-ten finalist, Associated Press Managing Editors, in the public service category, in 2001. 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.” This year his reporting on climate adaptation and other issues won for best beat reporting in the Society of Professional Journalists Louisville Chapter annual competition. His favorite award was a year on the University of Michigan campus as a mid-career Knight Wallace fellow in 1998-99. He is a graduate of the forestry and journalism programs at the University of Montana, where he also earned an M.S. in environmental studies. In 2010, he co-chaired the SEJ annual conference hosted by University of Montana in Missoula.

 

Jeffrey Burnside
 

 

 

C

 

Mac Callaham
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE LAND: Jumping Earthworms and Other Eco-Bullies, 11:00 a.m.
  • Mac Callaham is a research ecologist and team leader at the Center for Forest Disturbance Science in Athens, Ga. (It’s a unit of the USDA Forest Service’s Southern Research Station.) His work addresses many aspects of soil ecology, but the effects of invasive organisms on soil ecosystems has been a favorite topic. He is a member of the graduate faculty of the University of Georgia, and holds an adjunct position at UGA’s Odum School of Ecology where he teaches soil biology and ecology. In 2010, Callaham was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study the ecology of native and invasive earthworms in southern Brazil. Next summer, he will serve as the lead organizer of the 10th International Symposium on Earthworm Ecology, realizing a bizarre, but nevertheless noteworthy, career-long dream.

 

Dave Cleaves
 

 

Dwight Cooley
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Biodiversity 2: Threats and Opportunities on the Species-Rich Cumberland Plateau, 8:30 a.m.
  • Dwight Cooley has worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the past 33 years at various locations throughout the southeastern United States including the Daphne Ecological Services Field Office in coastal Alabama, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi, and Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in coastal North Carolina. Since 2001, Cooley has served as the Project Leader at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Complex, a group of seven national wildlife refuges spread over 12,500 square miles of northern Alabama. His professional interests revolve around migratory bird management, habitat management and restoration, and endangered species management. Cooley holds a B.S. in Biology from Athens State University and a M.S. in Zoology and Wildlife from Mississippi State University. He spends way too much time birding and enjoys reading and fishing.

 

Mark Cooper
 

 

Dawn Coppock
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CLIMATE: What Would Jesus/Plato/Confucius Do... About CO2? 9:00 a.m.
  • A list of Dawn Coppock’s accomplishments provides a glimpse of her unbounded energy; respected adoption lawyer, author of Coppock on Tennessee Adoption Law, now in its 6th edition, co-founder of Lindquist Appalachian Environmental Fellowship, and legislative director, co-author and principal lobbyist of The Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act, a bill to stop mountain top removal coal mining in Tennessee. But it is the counsel of the small town attorney that friends and clients value most. Whether she is talking to a pregnant woman in prison or the Senate Environment Committee, Dawn speaks unvarnished truth with authority, insight and love, never to tear down, but always to encourage elevation. A child of the Southern Appalachian Highlands, Dawn’s passion is for this place and the children of this place.

 

Bob Corker
 

 

Todd Crabtree
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Biodiversity 2: Threats and Opportunities on the Species-Rich Cumberland Plateau, 8:30 a.m.
  • Todd Crabtree is a botanist with the state’s Natural Inventory Program. As Tennessee state botanist, he monitors and conducts searches for rare plants across the state as part of the Natural Heritage Program. He is vice-president of the Tennessee Native Plant Society, leads wildflower hikes and has an interest in photography. Crabtree spent many summers as a child hiking the Fiery Gizzard Trail.

 

Dennis Creech
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CITY: What Makes Green Buildings Really Green? 9:00 a.m.
  • Dennis Creech co-founded Southface in 1978 and has served as executive director for over 30 years. Recognized as a local and national leader in sustainability, he has received numerous professional awards, including Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Lifetime Achievement Award, GreenLaw’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Energy & Environmental Building Alliance’s Legacy Award and Residential Energy Services Network’s Program Leadership Award. Creech helps shape sustainability policy and has served on advisory boards for local and federal government, foundations and the private sector. He serves on the governance board for the Residential Energy Services Network, Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance, Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership and Georgia Watch. Under his leadership Southface has helped the private sector launch practical, market-based sustainability solutions, and helped state and local governments across the Southeast adopt policies to encourage sustainable development and clean energy technologies. Creech works in a LEED Platinum office building, lives in an EarthCraft certified home and drives a hybrid vehicle.

 

Wayne Cropp
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 3, Chattanooga: From Gritty City to Green-Manufacturing Hub, 7:30 a.m.
  • J. Wayne Cropp is the President and CEO of The Enterprise Center, a high-tech economic development entity serving the Chattanooga region. He has more than 30 years diverse C-Suite leadership experience including as an entrepreneur, corporate CEO, environmental attorney, and government director. Cropp has been a leader in Chattanooga’s highly-acclaimed environmental transformation as the former chief executive of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Air Pollution Control Bureau . He has now committed his time and leadership to growing Chattanooga’s technology-based economic development initiatives and entrepreneurial spirit. Cropp has degrees from Bryan College, Dayton, TN, 1974, and Cumberland School of Law (J.D.), Samford University, Birmingham, AL, 1977.

 

Steve Curwood
 

 

 

D

 

Caroline D’Angelo
 

 

Anne Davis
 

 

Joseph A. Davis
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE WATER: Sleuthing Dam, Impoundment, and Levee Databases, 10:45 a.m.
  • Joseph A. Davis has been writing about the environment since 1976. Joe currently edits SEJ's WatchDog newsletter as part of SEJ's freedom-of-information project, which promotes access to information for environmental journalists. He also compiles SEJ's daily news headlines, EJToday. Joe is something of a geek, having built his first computer in the mid-80s, about the time he did his first database reporting project. He lends a hand to SEJ's website.

 

Jon Devine
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Combined Sewer Overflows: The Gift That Keeps on Polluting, 9:00 a.m.
  • Jon Devine is a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council's water program. His work focuses on implementing, defending, and strengthening Clean Water Act core programs. Jon specializes on the legal scope of the Clean Water Act; runoff pollution and the use of green infrastructure; water quality and nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River Basin; and mountaintop removal coal mining and its impacts on bodies of water in Appalachia. Prior to the water program, Jon worked with NRDC's health and environment program for four years. Before joining NRDC in 2001, Jon was an attorney-advisor in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of General Counsel. Jon was a law clerk for Judge Phyllis Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1996 and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1991. Before attending law school, he was an environmental specialist in the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

 

TJ DiCaprio
 

 

Scott Dodd
 

 

Cynthia Dohner
 

 

Peter Dykstra
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CLIMATE: Climate Change and Media Coverage: Have We Blown It? 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT 1: Follow the Frackin' Money, 10:45 a.m.
  • Peter Dykstra is publisher of Environmental Health News and its sister site, The Daily Climate. During a 17-year career at CNN, Dykstra was executive producer for science, environment, weather and technology coverage. He shared an Emmy award for CNN's coverage of the 1993 Mississippi River floods; a Dupont-Columbia Award for the network's reporting on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; and a Peabody Award for the 2005 coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Prior to CNN, Dykstra was national media director for Greenpeace, setting up the organization's U.S. media operations. In 2009, he launched Science Nation, a video news series, for the National Science Foundation. From 2009 to 2011, he was a deputy director at The Pew Charitable Trusts, in charge of web, print and broadcast communications for the Pew Environment Group.

 

 

E

 

Rene Ebersole
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT 1: Freelance Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Rene Ebersole writes and edits articles and books relating to science, the environment, and health. As staff Features Editor at Audubon magazine, she oversees articles on a wide range of topics, from serious environmental issues and wildlife conservation to gardening, food, and travel. Her book, Gorilla Mountain, a children’s biography of gorilla biologist Amy Vedder, was co-published by Joseph Henry Press and Scholastic. She has worked as an adjunct professor at NYU’s Masters program in Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program, of which she is a graduate, and guest lectures at other universities.

 

Justin Ehrenwerth
 

 

Tasha Eichenseher
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop, Successful Freelancing 201, 8:30 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT 1: Freelance Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Tasha Eichenseher recently moved from being the environment producer and editor at National Geographic Digital Media in D.C. to senior editor (print and digital) at Discover magazine’s new office in Wisconsin. She has been writing and editing science and environment stories for nearly a decade for a variety of print and online outlets, including E/The Environment Magazine, Environmental Science & Technology online news, Greenwire, Green Guide, and National Geographic News. Tasha has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and a master’s degree in environmental management from Yale University. She was a Ted Scripps environmental journalism fellow.

 

Jon Evans
 

 

Lisa Evans
 

 

 

F

 

Dan Fagin
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE GLOBE: Shifting From a Toxic Legacy to a Sustainable Future, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT 3: Who's the Expert? 2:00 p.m.
  • Event: Sunday, How's the Future Look... for Your Environment Book? 8:30 a.m.
  • Dan Fagin is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. His new book about environmental cancer epidemiology, Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, was published in March 2013 by Random House. For fifteen years, Fagin was the environmental writer at Newsday, where he was twice a principal member of reporting teams that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Science in Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers. Co-author of the 1997 book Toxic Deception, Fagin is a proud former board member and president of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

 

James Fahn
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CLIMATE: All Impacts Are Local: Bringing Climate Change Close to Home, 2:00 p.m.
  • James Fahn is a Lecturer at UC-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the executive director of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, which connects over 4,500 journalists covering environmental issues around the world. Fahn is a journalist who has primarily focused on environmental and science issues in developing countries. Fahn was based in Thailand for nine years where he was a reporter and editor for The Nation, an English-language daily newspaper based in Bangkok, and hosted a television show on Thailand’s ITV network. His book, A Land on Fire, recounts the issues and scandals he uncovered while working on the environmental beat in Southeast Asia. He has also written for the New York Times, The Economist, Newsweek, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Jakarta Post, SciDev.net, Nature.com, the Huffington Post and the Columbia Journalism Review. Fahn received UNEP’s Global 500 Award for The Nation’s environmental reporting, and was pinned by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn for his service to Thailand. He was the co-founder of the Thai Society of Environmental Journalists, the country director for Internews’ Burma program, and has also worked for the Ford Foundation as a program associate in the field of environment and development. He has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College.

 

John Farrell
 

 

Alex Feldt
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CLIMATE: What Would Jesus/Plato/Confucius Do... About CO2? 9:00 a.m.
  • Alex Feldt is a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he teaches courses on contemporary moral problems, democratic theory, and global justice and human rights. His primary research interests lie in ethics, political philosophy, and environmental political theory, with his work focusing predominately on issues with global dimensions, particularly problems posed by climate change. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma and an M.Litt from the University of Glasgow. His dissertation, Climate Change & Human Rights: Creating Norms to Govern Earth’s Atmosphere, was the recipient of the 2012 University of Oklahoma Provost’s Ph.D. Dissertation Award as the best dissertation in the Humanities and Fine Arts for calendar year 2012.

 

Douglas Fischer
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT 1: Freelance Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT 3: Who's the Expert? 2:00 p.m.
  • Douglas Fischer is the editor of DailyClimate.org, a nonprofit, foundation-funded news Web site focusing on climate change. Before switching to the Web, Fischer spent eight years covering the environment for the Oakland Tribune and five years at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska, where, among other hats, he was the paper’s restaurant reviewer. He started his journalism career in Newsweek’s Letters Department. His articles have won numerous national and regional awards, among them an Award of Merit from the inaugural Grantham Prize. Fischer is a graduate of Columbia University and an SEJ board member.

 

Steve Fleischli
 

 

Jim Frierson
 

 

Samuel Fromartz
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT 2: Can Nonprofit News Orgs Save Environmental Journalism? 9:00 a.m.
  • Samuel Fromartz is Editor-in-Chief of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent investigative journalism non-profit focusing on food, agriculture and environmental health. Launched in 2011, FERN works largely with freelance writers, producing in-depth stories in partnership with other media organizations. Fromartz is a veteran journalist who began his career at Reuters news agency in the mid-1980s, working as a correspondent in Washington and as deputy editor for the Reuters Business Report in New York. Since leaving the news agency, his articles have appeared in Inc., Fortune, Business Week, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. He is the author of Organic Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew (Harcourt, 2006) about the evolution of the organic foods industry and is currently working on a book about grains and bread, which will be published by Viking/Penguin in 2014. 

 

 

G

 

Nancy Gaarder
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CLIMATE: Climate & Weather: Is Juiced Up Severe Weather Already the New Normal? 10:45 a.m.
  • Nancy Gaarder has been a print journalist her entire career. She worked as an editor or reporter since the early 1980s at one of two newspapers, the Omaha World-Herald (1995 to present) and the St. Joseph, Mo., News-Press/Gazette, from the early 1980s to 1995. Her beats have ranged from City Hall to the environment and energy. She now covers weather full time. Nancy is a graduate of University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism and a community development volunteer, Cameroon, Peace Corps.

 

Dodd Galbreath
 

 

Duane Gang
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Biodiversity 2: Threats and Opportunities on the Species-Rich Cumberland Plateau, 8:30 a.m.
  • As an environmental reporter for The Tennessean, Duane Gang has written about a wide variety of issues, including hydraulic fracturing in Tennessee, dam safety, air pollution from coal-fired power plants, and proposals to hunt sandhill cranes. He joined the Tennessean in March 2012. Before coming to Nashville, he was a reporter for seven years at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., where in 2007 he was part of a team that won third place in SEJ's Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting for stories on habitat preservation. From 2000 to 2005, Gang worked at the Chattanooga Times Free Press. He's a New Jersey native and graduate of Rutgers University.

 

Gordon Garner
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE WATER: Combined Sewer Overflows: The Gift That Keeps on Polluting, 9:00 a.m.
  • Gordon R. Garner is a professional engineer, and vice president in the Water Business Group at CH2M HILL. He has a major emphasis on wet weather issues, sustainability and green solutions, and progressive utility management. With CH2M HILL, he has done Wet Weather Plan/utility management support with Baton Rouge; Bangor, ME; Tuscaloosa; Evansville, IN; Cincinnati; Independence,MO and others. Conducts workshops and does management assessments. Expert witness for Jefferson County, Alabama. Coauthor of WEF publication for managing wet weather flows in wastewater systems. As an independent consultant, he has facilitated green partnerships in three cities, most recently the Green Partnership for Greater Cincinnati. He's a former executive director of the Louisville Metropolitan Sewer District, where he oversaw a major sanitary sewer expansion, real-time control wet-weather planning, biosolids pelletization, a geographic information system and a greenways program. In 1996, Garner was presented Vice President Al Gore’s “Hammer Award” for Reinventing Government, for his work on the US EPA National Combined Sewer Overflow Policy. He is currently Board President of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance and Board Chair of the Louisville Center for Neighborhoods.

 

Angela Garrone
 

 

Anna George
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 4, Biodiversity 1: From the Mountain Tops to the River Bottoms, 7:45 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Lunch and Plenary Session, Is Diversity (Bio and Otherwise) the Backbone of Sustainability? Noon
  • Dr. Anna George, Director of the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute (TNACI), discovered early in life that being a biologist provided a good excuse to be outside. Since joining TNACI in 2006, she has led successful research initiatives in freshwater habitat restoration, species reintroduction, and population genetics. Her enthusiasm for educating scientists and non-scientists alike reflects her passion for collaborative conservation problem-solving. Anna has taught at Franklin & Marshall College, Mountain Lake Biological Station, the University of the South, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and she currently mentors undergraduate and graduate students from several universities. She serves on the Advisory Council for Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary and the Board of Directors for Crabtree Farms. Recent awards for her work include the 2012 Audubon/Toyota TogetherGreen Fellowship, 2011 Heroic Environmentalist Award from Appalachian Voices, and the 2008 Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. Anna has a B.A. from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from Saint Louis University, both in biology. Whether for work or fun, she can be found snorkeling, paddleboarding, and otherwise enjoying the company of fish.

 

Christy George
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CLIMATE: What Would Jesus/Plato/Confucius Do... About CO2? 9:00 a.m.
  • Christy George, an SEJ board member, is an independent radio and television producer in Portland, Oregon. Her most recent projects have been for Oregon Public Broadcasting's TV show, "Oregon Field Guide," and the PBS program, "History Detectives." She's also working on a book about climate change and social change. Christy initially moved to Oregon to create a bureau covering the intersection of business and the environment for the American Public Media business show, "Marketplace," and later hosted the weekly radio show, "Oregon Territory." Before that, Christy edited foreign and national news for The Boston Herald and covered politics for WGBH-TV and WBUR-FM. She started out as a volunteer, covering noise and air pollution and neighborhood encroachment by Logan Airport for The East Boston Community News — a dream job that first introduced her to the environment beat. Christy has won Emmys in both the Northwest and New England, a Gracie Allen Award, an Edward R. Murrow award, a first-place prize in the New York Festivals and numerous AP and SPJ awards. Her special, "Liquid Gold," on how water is 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.

 

Erica Gies
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT 1: Freelance Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Erica Gies is an independent reporter who writes about science and the environment, particularly energy and water. Her work appears in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Economist, Forbes, Wired News, Ensia, and other outlets. More.

 

Adam Glenn
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT 2: Social, Mobile & Local — A Workshop on New Tools for Environmental Reporting, 2:00 p.m.
  • A. Adam Glenn has been a journalist, digital media consultant and journalism educator for over 30 years and is now on the full-time interactive faculty at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. An online pioneer and environmental journalist since the early 1990s, he was executive editor for Greenwire, and environment reporter and senior producer for ABCNews.com. He has won a Knight News Challenge grant for climate change coverage and has taught environmental reporting on fellowship in India. Adam has been a member of SEJ since 1992 and currently serves as editor of the SEJournal.

 

Scott Gordon
 

 

Erik Gottfried
 

  • Event: Friday, Breakfast of Alternative Vehicle Champions, Electrifying Cars: The Next Five Years, 7:30 a.m.
  • Erik Gottfried is Nissan’s director of Electric Vehicle Sales and Marketing. In this capacity, Gottfried leads initiatives to solidify and grow the position of Nissan LEAF as the top-selling EV in the United States while looking ahead to prepare for a wider array of Nissan electric vehicles in the future. He was named to this position in April 2013. An 11-year Nissan veteran, Gottfried has held a variety of positions in Sales and Marketing in both the United States and Brazil, including senior manager of SUV Product Marketing, senior manager of Strategic Planning & Execution and senior manager of Americas Dealer Network Development Strategy. Prior to joining Nissan, Gottfried worked in dealer operations at a division of Freightliner Trucks, LLC. Gottfried holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, and a MBA from Duke University in Durham, N.C.

 

Britta Gross
 

 

Daniel Grossman
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop, Successful Freelancing 201, 8:30 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CLIMATE: Climate Change and Media Coverage: Have We Blown It? 11:00 a.m.
  • Daniel Grossman has been a print journalist and radio and web producer for 25 years. He has reported from all seven continents including from near both the south and north poles. He holds a Ph.D. in political science and a B.S. in physics, both from MIT. He often collaborates with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He is a Contributing Editor of National Geographic’s News Watch and contributes frequently to PRI’s program The World. He was has been awarded a Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism and an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship. He is author of Deep Water: As Polar Ice Melts, Scientists Debate How High Our Oceans Will Rise, and coauthor of A Scientist’s Guide to Talking with the Media: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

 

Elizabeth Grossman
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE LAND: Jumping Earthworms and Other Scary Invasive Species, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT 3: Who's the Expert? 2:00 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT 1: Obstacles to Access: Strategies for the Stonewalled, 9:00 a.m.
  • Elizabeth Grossman is a freelance journalist and writer specializing in environmental and science issues. She's the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry; High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health; Watershed: The Undamming of America; Adventuring Along the Lewis & Clark Trail; and Shadow Cat: Encountering the American Mountain Lion, co-edited with Susan Ewing. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic.com, Chemical Watch, Earth Island Journal, InsideClimate News, Mother Jones, The Nation, The Pump Handle, Salon, Scientific American, The Washington Post, Yale e360, and other publications. She's been a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a science journalism fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Wood Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. A native of New York City and graduate of Yale University, she writes from Portland, Oregon. More.

 

Brian Grow
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT 1: Follow the Frackin' Money, 10:45 a.m.
  • Brian Grow is an Enterprise Correspondent based in Atlanta. He joined Reuters in September 2010 as a Senior Staff Writer covering legal affairs. Along with a team of journalists at Reuters, his coverage of the easy-availability, uses and abuses of U.S. shell companies and of Chesapeake Energy Corp. won Loeb awards in 2012 and 2013. Prior to Reuters, Brian was the project director for business and financial investigations at The Center for Public Integrity in Washington, where he investigated FHA mortgage lending with The Washington Post, and litigation finance with The New York Times. From 2004 to 2009, Brian reported for BusinessWeek, covering retail, airlines, cyber-security and immigration, then joined the investigations team, where he wrote about the business of poverty, the buying and selling of delinquent debt, cyber-warfare and click fraud. His stories won more than 20 awards and were twice finalists for the National Magazine Award. Before becoming a reporter, Grow spent nearly a decade as a corporate executive for multinational firms in Switzerland, Moscow, Vienna and London. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

 

 

H

 

Ben Hall
 

 

Ann Harris
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Energy Options: From Nukes to Hydro Storage, 8:00 a.m.
  • Ann Harris is a retiree of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) nuclear program after 16 years' tenure. She worked at Watts Bar’s plant as a manager in Electrical Engineering, Document Control, Human Resources and several special assignments for 14 years. Watts Bar is a twin of the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant. She was, and is, a well known safety advocate who speaks out on national nuclear safety issues as well as having TVA employees going to her home with safety issues or otherwise contacting her.

 

David Haskell
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 6, Biodiversity 2: Threats and Opportunities on the Species-Rich Cumberland Plateau, 8:30 a.m.
  • David Haskell’s work integrates scientific and contemplative studies of the natural world. In addition to numerous scientific articles on the ecology and evolution of animals, he has published essays and poems about science and nature. His book, The Forest Unseen, was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction, winner of the 2013 Reed Environmental Writing Award and the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, and has been shortlisted for 2013 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. In 2009, the Carnegie and CASE Foundations named him Professor of the Year for Tennessee, an award given to college professors who have achieved national distinction and whose work shows “extraordinary dedication to undergraduate teaching.” He has served on the boards of land conservation groups. Haskell holds degrees from the University of Oxford and from Cornell University. He is Professor of Biology at Sewanee: The University of the South.

 

Steven Hawley
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: The Many Faces of Dam Removal, 11:00 a.m.
  • Environmental journalist Steven Hawley is the author of Recovering a Lost River: Removing Dams, Rewilding Salmon, Revitalizing Communities (Beacon Press, 2012). He was among the first to write about the historic agreement to tear out Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Maine. Since then, his work has appeared in High Country News, Bear Deluxe, National Fisherman, OnEarth, Arizona Quarterly, the Oregonian, and the Missoula Independent.

 

Denis Hayes
 

  • Event: Friday, Opening Plenary, Just What Is a Sustainable City? 9:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CITY: What Makes Green Buildings Really Green? 9:00 a.m.
  • Denis Hayes is President of the Bullitt Foundation. In the Carter Administration, he directed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; during the Reagan years, he split his time as a professor of engineering and human ecology at Stanford University and a Silicon Valley lawyer. A Time magazine “Hero of the Planet,” Hayes has received the John Muir Award, the Rachel Carson Medal, and a National Jefferson Award. He was also honorary chair of the 100th anniversary of the World Congress of Architects in Chicago. At the Bullitt Foundation, Denis leads an effort to mold the cities of the Pacific Northwest into global models of resilience, applying ecological principles to the design of 'human ecosystems'. To "walk its talk", the foundation is recently completed the world’s greenest office building.

 

John Henry
 

 

Tom Henry
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 2, Oak Ridge National Lab: Nuclear Legacy and Cutting Edge Research, 7:00 a.m.
  • Tom Henry has specialized in Great Lakes energy and environmental issues for 20 of his 32 years in journalism, both as a writer-columnist for The (Toledo) Blade and as a Toledo-based freelancer. He was granted his wish to return to The Blade's newsroom and resume his love of reporting in February 2013 after a 1.5-year stint as an editorial writer and Op-Ed columnist. He also has done some editing. Tom is up for re-election to SEJ's board of directors, which he has served on since 2010. He also is the volunteer book editor of SEJournal, the group's quarterly magazine, and a member of that magazine's editorial board. His freelance work includes a regular environmental column for Michigan State University's online magazine, Great Lakes Echo. He also has freelanced music CD reviews on a weekly basis for more than 20 years and has written dozens of book reviews.

 

Mary Hoff
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT 1: Freelance Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT 2: Can Nonprofit News Orgs Save Environmental Journalism? 9:00 a.m.
  • Mary Hoff is editor in chief of Ensia, a magazine powered by the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota with support from private foundations that showcases solutions to the Earth’s biggest environmental challenges. Hoff previously served as managing editor of Momentum, Ensia’s predecessor, and as a member of the editorial team of the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. She has more than two decades’ experience helping to improve understanding, appreciation and stewardship of the environment and natural resources as an award-winning freelance science writer and editor.

 

Cheryl Hogue
 

 

Don Hopey
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CRAFT 1: Follow the Frackin' Money, 10:45 a.m.
  • Don Hopey has covered the environment for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette since 1993. 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, problems with the nation's hazardous waste incinerators and the health impacts from coal-fired power plants in western Pennsylvania. 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, and is an instructor for the public lands and fly fishing segment of Pitt's Yellowstone Field Course. He is also a board member and current president of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

 

Joel Houser
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 9, How Sustainable Ag Feeds Sustainable Cities, 10:00 a.m.
  • Joel Houser has passions for sustainable agriculture, food justice, and our environment, whether natural or built. He has worked in the field of Sustainable Agriculture since 2002. In that time he has performed many jobs from farm labor to community outreach and development. Joel is currently the Executive Director of Crabtree Farms of Chattanooga and has served in that role since 2010. Crabtree Farms is a nonprofit organization working to connect Chattanoogans with our local foodshed. Current initiatives include the production of a workshop series designed to alleviate the pressures of food deserts, continuation of the Local Food Program (a program that works to connect farmers and consumers), the construction of a new educational facility, and a standalone workshop series that educates participants on gardening and cooking methods. Joel sits on the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Food Coalition as well as the Tennessee Food Policy Council. He has a M.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

 

Patrick Hughes
 

 

Elizabeth Hurst
 

  • Event: Sunday, Book Author Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • EJ (Elizabeth) Hurst was introduced to environmental activism in elementary school when she went door-to-door clutching a Greenpeace petition clipped from the newspaper. She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies degree from the Universities of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and Griffith, Brisbane, Australia. Her journey has led her through various environmental education jobs in Australia, U.K. and Canada, and she currently works for New Society Publishers as a marketing coordinator. EJ lives in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada.

 

Giles Hutchins
 

 

 

J

 

Sally Jewell
 

 

Susan Jewell
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE LAND: Jumping Earthworms and Other Eco-Bullies, 11:00 a.m.
  • Susan Jewell has been a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 1992, first in the Everglades, then with endangered species programs, and now with invasive species programs working out of Washington, DC. As Injurious Wildlife Listing Coordinator, she strives to prevent the next Asian carp-type invasion by listing species as "injurious," a federal category that prohibits importation and interstate transportation. Last year, she coordinated the listing of the already-invasive Burmese python, as well as another python species that is not yet invasive (as a prevention effort). Jewell, a long-time SEJ member, is the author of three environmental books and freelanced many newspaper and magazine articles.

 

Jane Ji
 

  • Event: Saturday, Game On! Breakfast, Environmental Games and Journalism, 7:30 a.m.
  • Jane Ji is co-founder of Springbay Studio Ltd., a company dedicated to creating innovative educational games on multiple platforms. Jane focuses her professional game design skills on creating educational games aimed at promoting environmental awareness.

 

Gerrit Jobsis
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: The Many Faces of Dam Removal, 11:00 a.m.
  • Gerrit Jobsis is the Southeast Regional Director for the nonprofit American Rivers. Gerrit leads American Rivers’ expanding advocacy for healthy rivers in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. Gerrit joined American Rivers in 2005 after working four years for the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League as Rivers Project Director under a partnership with American Rivers. Prior to that he worked more than a dozen years for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources on a broad array of environmental and recreation issues affecting rivers and wetlands. Education: B.S. in Water Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and M.S. in Fish and Wildlife Sciences from The Pennsylvania State University.

 

 

K

 

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka
 

 

Thomas Karl
 

 

Troy Keith
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 3, Chattanooga: From Gritty City to Green-Manufacturing Hub, 7:30 a.m.
  • Troy Keith is a professional geologist with twenty years of experience in hydrogeology, soils, environmental assessment, and remediation. As a Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) Environmental Field Office Manager, he is responsible for overseeing the application of investigative and remedial technologies to client needs relating to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). In addition, he assists multi-disciplinary teams on project technical matters relating to Brownfield’s, Superfund remedial investigation/feasibility study (RI/FS) and remedial design/remedial action (RD/RA) activities, RCRA Facility Investigations (RFI), UST investigations and remediation, groundwater recovery operations, and various environmental site assessments.

 

Ronald Kendall
 

 

Sharon Kneiss
 

  • Event: Friday, Opening Plenary, Just What Is a Sustainable City? 9:00 a.m.
  • Sharon H. Kneiss is the president and CEO of the Environmental Industry Associations (EIA), the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA) and the Waste Equipment Technology Association (WASTEC). Kneiss has more than 30 years of business, management and advocacy experience relating to environmental policy at the federal and state levels. She served as vice president, products division with the American Chemistry Council (ACC). Kneiss previously served in a management capacity at the American Forest & Paper Association and in policy advocacy roles at Chevron Corporation, Hercules Inc. and the American Petroleum Institute. Kneiss has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Scranton and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

 

Pam Knox
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CLIMATE: Climate & Weather: Is Juiced Up Severe Weather Already the New Normal? 10:45 a.m.
  • Pam Knox is an agricultural climatologist for the University of Georgia in the Department of Crop and Soil Science, which is part of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. In that position she provides outreach and education on climate and its effects on crops and livestock in the Southeastern US. She also provides weather and climate data and analyses to university scientists and user groups across the region. In addition, she is a regional coordinator for the volunteer CoCoRaHS (Community Cooperative Rain Hail and Snow) rainfall network in Georgia and is serving on the advisory board for the Georgia Automated Environmental Monitoring Network. Pam is also currently serving on the American Meteorological Society’s Board on Continuing Professional Development and is an active Certified Consulting Meteorologist in the areas of forensic meteorology and climatology. In the past Pam was Georgia Assistant State Climatologist, the Wisconsin State Climatologist and worked for the National Weather Service. She previously served as President of the American Association of State Climatologists and on the American Meteorological Society’s Board of Applied Climatology.

 

Michael Kodas
 

 

Bill Kovarik
 

  • Event: Friday, Network Lunch 8, Teaching Environmental Journalism, 12:15 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE GLOBE: Citizen Science: Empowering Awareness from Appalachia to Africa and Above, 10:45 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Beat Dinner 3, SEJ and the World: What SEJ Can Do for International Members (and Vice Versa), 7:00 p.m.
  • Event: Sunday, Book Author Pitch Slam, 11:00 a.m.
  • Bill Kovarik is a professor in Radford University's School of Communication. His teaching and research interests include journalism, media history, media law, science & environmental writing, visual communication, digital imaging. Research interests include media history and environmental history. Kovarik earned his B.S. at VCU, his M.A. at the University of South Carolina and his PhD at the University of Maryland. He has extensive experience with wire services and daily newspapers, and has written several books about the media, including Mass Media and Environmental Conflict (1996), Web Design for Mass Media (2001) and Revolutions in Communication (2011). His latest book is Brilliant! A History of Renewable Energy.

 

Sara Kuebbing
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE LAND: Jumping Earthworms and Other Eco-Bullies, 11:00 a.m.
  • Sara Kuebbing is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she studies the impacts of co-occurring invasive plant species on native communities and ecosystems. Sara’s work with invasive species also spans science policy and management. Prior to entering graduate school, Sara worked with the Vermont Chapter of The Nature Conservancy as the program coordinator for their “Wise On Weeds!” invasive plant outreach program. Currently, she serves as a Board of Director for the state-wide non-profit Tennessee Exotic Pest Plant Council. In 2012, Sara was awarded the Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America for her work with invasive plant policy and management.

 

tom kunesh
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 8, The New Civil War: The Struggle to Preserve History, 9:30 a.m.
  • Tom kunesh has been a Chattanooga resident for 23 years. He is a founding member of the Chattanooga InterTribal Association, its Public Relations committee chairman, and worker on the Bend (Moccasin Bend). Kunesh's mother is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

 

 

L

 

Heather Langford
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CITY: What Makes Green Buildings Really Green? 9:00 a.m.
  • Heather Langford oversees the Demand Response Partnership, a collaborative effort between USGBC and Environmental Defense Fund. Heather also works on the LEED for Existing Buildings Recertification Program, supports the advocacy team on greening building codes and standards, and contributes to the technical development of LEED. Heather holds a B.Sc. from Cornell and a Master of Environmental Studies from Yale. Through her coursework and ensuing experience,she developed a specialty in the field of urban ecology. Prior to joining USGBC in 2011, Heather worked as a LEED consultant facilitating clients through integrated design and the LEED certification process. In addition to her green building qualifications, Heather brings 15 years experience in collaborative building, strategic planning, and organizational development. She is co-founder of Urban Green, a Senior Fellow in the Environmental Leadership Program, and past president of the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council. She has held previous positions at SSRCx in Nashville, Casey Trees in Washington, DC, the Urban Ecology Institute in Boston, and Urban Resources Initiative in New Haven.

 

Ron Littlefield
 

 

David Lochbaum
 

 

Francesca Lyman
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CITY: What Makes Green Buildings Really Green? 9:00 a.m.
  • Francesca Lyman is a free-lance journalist and author of The Greenhouse Trap: What We’re Doing to the Atmosphere and How We Can Slow Global Warming, with World Resources Institute, and Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest, with the American Museum of Natural History. Managing editor of the green building website Solaripedia, she has written for many newspapers and magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, The Sacramento Bee, Popular Mechanics, InvestigateWest, Crosscut.com, Horizon Air Magazine, Ms. Magazine, MSN channels, The New York Times Green Blog, Seattle Met Magazine, National Geographic's Green Guide, The Kirkland Reporter, and AOL.com. She wrote the award-winning "Your Environment" column for MSNBC's Health pages for seven years. A native of Chicago and graduate of Bennington College, she writes from Seattle. Spotlight on SEJ.org. More.

 

 

M

 

Mario Mairena
 

 

Tim Male
 

 

Mike Mallen
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 3, Chattanooga: From Gritty City to Green-Manufacturing Hub, 7:30 a.m.
  • Mike Mallen's practice is "boots on the ground" involvement with industrial sites and manufacturing facilities. He has over two decades of experience founding, owning and operating heavy manufacturing businesses, restoring industrial brownfield sites and practicing environmental, commercial and real estate law. For the majority of his career, Mallen has served as in-house counsel and as an owner of heavy manufacturing companies. This provides Mallen's clients with a real world resource for problem solving. Mallen has testified before the United States House of Representatives on the subject of environmental regulation, the reauthorization of Superfund/CERCLA and its impact on the private sector. Mallen focuses his practice on assisting clients with manufacturing projects, real estate development and environmental law. Mallen is a lecturer and panel speaker at multiple Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation conferences and also frequently speaks on the topic of OSHA Health and Safety Compliance for manufacturers, contractors and commercial businesses.

 

Emma Marris
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop, Successful Freelancing 201, 8:30 a.m.
  • Emma Marris is an environmental writer and reporter. She writes for Nature, Conservation, Slate and many other outlets. In 2011, she published her first book, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. The book highlights alternative conservation strategies that do not focus on holding or returning land to a historical baseline. From managed relocation of species threatened by climate change to the embrace of so-called novel ecosystems, she champions a blurring of the lines between nature and people, and a conscious and responsible care of our humanized planet.

 

Linda Marsa
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CLIMATE: All Impacts Are Local: Bringing Climate Change Close to Home, 2:00 p.m.
  • Linda Marsa is an award-winning investigative journalist and a contributing editor at Discover who has covered medicine, health and science for more than two decades. A former Los Angeles Times reporter and author of Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Harm Our Health and How We Can Save Ourselves (Rodale, 2013), her work was selected for inclusion in The Best American Science Writing, 2012. More.

 

Duncan Maysilles
 

  • Event: Sunday, How's the Future Look... for Your Environment Book? 8:30 a.m.
  • Duncan Maysilles is both an attorney and the holder of a doctorate in history. As an attorney, he earned his JD at Duke University in 1976 and currently practices in the Tort and Environmental Litigation section of King & Spalding in Atlanta. As a historian, he received his Ph.D. in 2008 at the University of Georgia with his dissertation, Ducktown Smoke. After revision into book form, it was published in 2011 by the University of North Carolina Press under the title, Ducktown Smoke: The Fight over One of the South's Greatest Environmental Disasters.

 

Robert McClure
 

  • Event: Friday, Indoor Lunch Breakout Session, Busted: The Whys and Wherefores of Criminal Environmental Cases, 12:15 p.m.
  • Robert McClure, an SEJ board member, is Executive Director of InvestigateWest, an independent reporting studio in Seattle, WA. A Florida native, he spent a decade on the beat at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where he wrote numerous articles pointing out the need for Everglades restoration in the years leading up to launching of the planet's largest ecosystem restoration there. He also was awarded a prestigious Knight Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he studied environment and economics and concluded that he must move West to tackle the really big environmental stories. That's what he did, taking a job with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In a decade at the P-I, he produced five multi-part projects on mining, endangered species, and the need for environmental restoration of Puget Sound and the Duwamish River. He has covered climate change and other environmental news topics in his blog, Dateline Earth. When the P-I ceased publishing in March 2009, McClure was instrumental in helping launch InvestigateWest, a start-up non-profit news venture, to carry on investigative and narrative reporting on the West. His professional career began at United Press International's Miami and Tallahassee bureaus. McClure is the recipient of numerous state, regional and national journalism awards including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.

 

Elizabeth McGowan
 

  • Event: Sunday, How's the Future Look... for Your Environment Book? 8:30 a.m.
  • Elizabeth McGowan was the Washington, D.C.-based energy and environment reporter with Crain Communications, before she joined InsideClimate News, from 2010-2012. She has worked at daily newspapers in Vermont and Wisconsin, including The Journal Times and The Janesville Gazette. In 2007 she won second place in the Cleveland Press Club Excellence in Journalism contest in the public service/investigative category for two stories about the five-year anniversary of September 11: one on the compromised health of clean-up workers, and another on environmental complications associated with the razing of the Deutsche Bank building at ground zero. Elizabeth is co-author of The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of, about the 2010 spill of one million gallons of diluted bitumen from the Canadian tar sands into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.

 

Michael McKinney
 

 

Erin Meezan
 

 

John Messeder
 

 

Richard Meyer
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE NATION: Nukes, Fossil Fuels, Alternatives: What Will Power Our Future? 11:00 a.m.
  • Richard Meyer is an Energy Analyst with the Policy Analysis team at the American Gas Association in Washington, DC. His focus is energy policy and economic analysis, and he supports the AGA’s efforts to develop demand-side growth opportunities related to distributed energy such as combined heat and power. Meyer authored "Squeezing Every Btu: Natural Gas Direct Use Opportunities and Challenges", a report that details the policy and market issues related to the benefits and constraints on the direct use of natural gas in homes and businesses. Last year, the Policy Analysis group released "Rethinking Natural Gas", a white paper study on natural gas market stability and the future of natural gas in the US economy, to which he was a principal contributor. Prior to AGA, Meyer was a Senior Associate with ICF International in its Fuels and Technology group and worked on a range of natural gas and propane market modeling and analyses and climate-related projects.

 

Tyson Miller
 

 

Dingaan Mithi
 

  • Event: Wednesday, From Chattanooga to Chennai: Reporting on Population and Sustainability in an Urbanizing World, Eight Billion Stories: Reporting on People and the Planet, 10:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE GLOBE: More Than Numbers: Population, Environment and Human Rights, 2:00 p.m.
  • Dingaan Mithi is a Malawian journalist and civil society activist. He was a radio correspondent for Radio Netherlands Worldwide in 2010-2011. He has produced stories on climate change and population dynamics for Malawi's leading daily newspaper, Daily Times, and is also a correspondent with InterPress Service (IPS). He has experience in media studies and project management, with training from Population Reference Bureau through University of Malawi's Center for Reproductive Health, Skyway University, and Malawi Institute of Management.

 

Susan Moran
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop, Successful Freelancing 201, 8:30 a.m.
  • Susan Moran is a freelance print journalist, based in Boulder, Colo., covering energy development, climate science, environmental health, agriculture, business and other issues. Susan also co-hosts and produces a science show on KGNU community radio, called "How On Earth." Her articles appear in The New York Times, Popular Science, Discover, The Economist, Nature and other publications. She also sometimes helps teach science communication workshops for early-career scientists and graduate students. For several years she taught journalism at CU Boulder as an adjunct instructor. Moran was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT (2009-2010); a Marine Biological Laboratory Fellow at Palmer Station, Antarctica (November-December 2010); and a Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism Fellow at CU Boulder (2001-2002).

 

James Morris
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE LAND: Jumping Earthworms and Other Eco-Bullies, 11:00 a.m.
  • James A. Morris, Jr., is an ecologist with NOAA’s National Ocean Service, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. His research focuses on coastal marine ecology with expertise in marine aquaculture and invasive species. Past research includes laboratory and field experiments on aquaculture environmental interactions, candidate species, finfish reproduction, and invasiveness of marine organisms. James leads a Coastal Aquaculture Planning and Environmental Sustainability research team, has investigated the biology and ecology of invasive lionfish, studied the propagation of invasive colonial tunicates, assisted with development of an early detection and rapid response program for marine invaders in South Florida, and has cultured many species of marine fishes and multiple species of bivalves.

 

Camilla Mortensen
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT 1: Obstacles to Access: Strategies for the Stonewalled, 9:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 2, The Birds and the Beetles: Volkswagens, Bird Watching, Wetlands, Solar and More, 2:15 p.m.
  • Camilla Mortensen is the associate editor and reporter for Eugene Weekly, an alternative news weekly in Oregon where she covers the environment, from the coast of Oregon to the Cascade Mountains. Her beat includes activism and politics from the county through Congress. Before becoming a journalist she earned a master’s degree in folklore and mythology and a doctorate in comparative literature. Prior to being hired at EW, she wrote a thesaurus for the American Folklore Center of the Library of Congress.

 

Jim Motavalli
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop, Successful Freelancing 201, 8:30 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Breakfast of Alternative Vehicle Champions, Electrifying Cars: The Next Five Years, 7:30 a.m.
  • Jim Motavalli writes on environmental topics for The New York Times, NPR’s Car Talk, Mother Nature Network, Txchnologist and PluginCars.com. He is author or editor of eight books, including Forward Drive: The Race to Build Clean Cars for the Future, and Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Climate Change and Naked in the Woods: Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of Frontier Fakery. His book, High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug in the Auto Industry, was published by Rodale in 2012. He is also a senior writer for E/The Environmental Magazine, a contributor to Audubon, Mother Earth News and Success magazines, to the Environmental Defense Fund publications and to Knowledge@Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. Motavalli hosts a radio program on WPKN-FM in Connecticut, and lectures widely.

 

Thomas Mote
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE CLIMATE: Climate & Weather: Is Juiced Up Severe Weather Already the New Normal? 10:45 a.m.
  • Thomas Mote is professor and department head of geography at the University of Georgia and the founding director for UGA's Program in Atmospheric Sciences. He received a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1994, and he has received several awards and honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil (2008). His research involves the application of satellite imagery to examine issues related to water in a changing climate. He is most noted for his research on the planet's changing snow and ice cover during the past several decades.

 

N

 

Simon Nicholson
 

 

 

P

 

Lisa Palmer
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CITY: Biomimicry and Biophilic: What Can Nature Teach Us About Sustainability? 2:00 p.m.
  • Lisa Palmer is a freelance reporter and editor specializing in environmental and business coverage. Her reporting has appeared in Nature Climate Change, Slate Magazine, Scientific American, The Daily Climate, and CNNMoney.com, among many others. She is a regular contributor to The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, a news site for scientists, journalists, and communicators that is known for its original reporting, commentary, and analysis of climate change. She has worked as a freelance editor for the National Academy of Sciences and has written reporting guides for journalists covering the sustainability story for the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University. She is a graduate of Boston University and earned her master's degree in communications from Simmons College in Boston. She lives in Maryland.

 

Meaghan Parker
 

  • Event: Wednesday, From Chattanooga to Chennai: Reporting on Population and Sustainability in an Urbanizing World, Breakfast, Welcome and Introductions, 9:30 a.m.
  • Event: Wednesday, Meet & Greet, SEJ and the World: International Stories, Global Audiences, 4:00 p.m.
  • Event: Friday, Network Lunch 6, From Chattanooga to Chennai: Unsustainable Growth or a Demographic Dividend? 12:15 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Beat Dinner 3, SEJ and the World: What SEJ Can Do for International Members (and Vice Versa), 7:00 p.m.
  • Meaghan Parker, Board Representative for the SEJ Associate Membership, has served as the Writer/Editor for the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars since November 2003. She is the editor of the ECSP Report and the founding editor of the daily blog New Security Beat, both of which focus on the connections among environmental, health, and population dynamics and their links to conflict, human security, and foreign policy. Her work at the Wilson Center has won five Global Media Awards for Population Reporting. Prior to joining the Center, she was Manager of Research and Internal Communications at PPL Global, a subsidiary of Fortune 500 energy company PPL Corporation, where she researched international investments and renewable energy policy.

 

Sara Peach
 

 

Ivan Penn
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE NATION: Nukes, Fossil Fuels, Alternatives: What Will Power Our Future? 11:00 a.m.
  • Ivan Penn joined the Tampa Bay Times in July 2006 as an investigative reporter, focusing on consumer issues. He became the utility reporter at the paper in May 2011 and has written extensively about Duke Energy's nuclear projects in Florida. His numerous awards and honors include a 2012 Green Eyeshade award and a Florida Society of News Editors award for coverage of the broken and now shuttered Crystal River nuclear plant. Penn, a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park, began his career in 1992 as a computer-assisted reporter and researcher at the Miami Herald. A year later, the Baltimore Sun hired him as a social services and community news reporter. During his 12 years at the Sun, he covered three mayors of Baltimore, two governors and six years of the Maryland General Assembly. He was part of the Sun's investigative team before being selected a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University for the 2005-2006 academic year.

 

Jim Pfitzer
 

 

Stuart Pimm
 

 

John Platt
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE LAND: Endangered Species Success Stories: Reintroduction, Restoration and Protection, 2:00 p.m.
  • John R. Platt is a freelance journalist specializing in endangered species, wildlife, energy, cutting-edge technologies and entrepreneurship. His Extinction Countdown blog appears twice a week at Scientific American and he is also a frequent contributor to Mother Nature Network, Conservation, Lion, Today's Engineer and other publications. In 2012 he received the Animal Action Award from the International Fund for Animal Welfare for his coverage of endangered species, climate change, wildlife trafficking and related issues. He lives in a small fishing village on the coast of Maine.

 

 

R

 

David Reed
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 9, How Sustainable Ag Feeds Sustainable Cities, 10:00 a.m.
  • David Reed and his wife Phyllis operate Erma's Bees, focusing on producing local honey, sustainable beekeeping practices, education of new and assistance to existing beekeepers, and development of localized/acclimatized bee stocks. His primary apiary is located at Crabtree Farm in Chattanooga, TN with yards in other areas of Hamilton County. In addition to honeybees Reed is interested in the study of native pollinators and challenges they face. He has developed programs, education opportunities and taught on subjects related to beekeeping and native pollinators. Reed is a past president of the Northwest Georgia Beekeepers Association and the Georgia Beekeepers Association; a member of several local, state and national organizations related to beekeeping; and is a U.T. Master Beekeeper, currently involved in further study to complete the Georgia Master Beekeepers Program. He is involved with North Carolina State University's B.E.E.S. Program as an Ambassador for that program, and assists as a volunteer adviser to Children's Discovery Museum of Chattanooga, TN in their care of bees used in public education programs.

 

Robin Rogers
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CITY: What Makes Green Buildings Really Green? 9:00 a.m.
  • Robin Rogers, architectural designer and writer, works as a full-time consultant to Community Housing Partners, an affordable housing provider in the southeastern U.S. For more than a decade she has worked as a consultant in residential and commercial sustainable design and building, and was a contributor to the development of a national green building standard and guidelines, as Built Green director, sustainability director at OTak, and as a consultant. She is the designer of a small, planned sustainable community with builder Steve Weise near Yakima, WA. Robin runs Solaripedia, a website devoted to designing and building sustainably. Previously she was Executive Director of Built Green, the green residential building program of Washington State’s King County Master Builders Association. Her Master of Architecture thesis from Virginia Tech was focused on passive solar residential design, and she became a LEED AP in 2002.

 

Joseph Romm
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CLIMATE: Climate Change and Media Coverage: Have We Blown It? 11:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CLIMATE: What Would Jesus/Plato/Confucius Do... About CO2? 9:00 a.m.
  • Joe Romm is the Chief Science Editor for the forthcoming Showtime TV series, "Years of Living Dangerously." He is the Founding Editor of ClimateProgress.org, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010." In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of 100 "people who are reinventing America." Time named him a "Hero of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger." Romm was Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress Action Fund and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. Romm is the author of eight books, most of which focus on clean energy and climate change. His latest book is Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln and Lady Gaga. Van Jones of CNN’s "Crossfire" has said, "This book changed my life, and it can change yours, too. Joe Romm understands the secrets of persuasion and messaging and he has distilled them into this must-read book."

 

 

S

 

Susan Sachs
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE LAND: Critters and Climate: Phenology, Impacts and Adaptation, 10:45 a.m.
  • Susan Sachs is the Education Coordinator for the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Her job allows her to develop creative ways to tell the research stories occurring in the Smokies and other parks of the Appalachian Highlands Monitoring Network of the National Park Service. Involving visitors in the scientific process in projects such as phenology monitoring and other citizen science is one of the most meaningful ways she connects people to park resources. The Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center and it's citizen science programs were recently named as the "Exceptional Environmental Education Program of 2013" by the Environmental Educators of North Carolina. Ms. Sachs originally comes from Baltimore, MD and has lived all over the country calling some of the country's most beautiful areas her backyard including the Grand Canyon, Denali, Big Sur, CA and Washington, DC.

 

David Sachsman
 

 

Molly Samuel
 

 

M. ("Sanjan") Sanjayan
 

 

Ned Sauthoff
 

 

Karen Schaefer
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT 1: Obstacles to Access: Strategies for the Stonewalled, 9:00 a.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 1, Russell Cave, Bats, and White Nose Syndrome, 2:15 p.m.
  • Karen Schaefer is a freelance journalist and independent radio producer based in the Great Lakes region near Cleveland, Ohio. She has worked in public radio for more than 20 years, more than half of them as a reporter at NPR member stations in Ohio, where she created an environmental beat focusing on Great Lakes issues. Her environmental stories range from Lake Erie algae blooms and the search for invasive Asian carp to childhood lead poisoning and steel mill clean-up. You can hear her latest work on WCPN-Cleveland, WBEZ-Chicago, Only A Game, The Allegheny Front, In The Fray, and Great Lakes Echo.

 

Mark Schleifstein
 

 

Oliver Schmidt
 

  • Event: Friday, Breakfast of Alternative Vehicle Champions, Electrifying Cars: The Next Five Years, 7:30 a.m.
  • Oliver Schmidt started working in Volkswagen engine development in 1997 after achieving a degree of mechanical engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Hanover. Throughout his career with Volkswagen, Schmidt has served in various positions in development, marketing and production but all positions were connected to powertrain development. The most recent job before he came to the U.S. in March 2012 was the head of Powertrain Product Management for the VW brand. In the U.S., Schmidt is responsible for everything related to emissions, starting with regulatory, leading to certification and in the end taking care of defect reporting up to 15 years in a car's life.

 

Matthew Schroyer
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CRAFT 1: Environmental Reporting With Drones: What's the Future? 2:00 p.m.
  • Matthew Schroyer founded DroneJournalism.org in late 2011, which is the website for the Professional Society of Drone Journalists. Along with more than 70 DroneJournalism.org members from more than a dozen countries, he develops and works to deploy unmanned aircraft systems, commonly called drones, to augment a variety of journalism investigations. An award-winning reporter, Schroyer has written for newspapers and newsweeklies, and contributes to the unmanned systems news website sUASNews.com. On MentalMunition.com, he documents his work in drone and sensor journalism. Full-time, he analyzes the social networks of teachers, and conducts STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) outreach with drones for a National Science Foundation grant. He holds a master's in journalism from the University of Illinois.

 

Judith Schwartz
 

  • Event: Friday, Network Lunch 3, Soil, Climate, and Why Farming Matters, 12:15 p.m.
  • Event: Sunday, How's the Future Look... for Your Environment Book? 8:30 a.m.
  • Judith D. Schwartz is a longtime freelance writer whose work has appeared in venues from Glamour and Redbook to The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times. She is the author of several books, including Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth, Tell Me No Lies: How to Face the Truth and Build a Loving Marriage (coauthored) and The Therapist’s New Clothes. She has an MA in counseling psychology and an MS from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

 

Ben Shapiro
 

 

Mike Sharp
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE GLOBE: The BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster’s Silver Lining, 9:00 a.m.
  • Mike Sharp, director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund (AL, FL, MS), has nearly 20 years’ experience working in Washington, DC, and comes to NFWF after most recently having served three years as Legislative Director to Representative Jo Bonner (AL-01). Prior to joining Bonner’s staff, Mike worked in the private sector and assisted a wide variety of clients in navigating the political and legislative landscapes of the Hill. In the private sector, Mike maintained affiliations with Sonny Callahan and Associates, LLC, and Dawson and Associates, Inc. From 1995 to 2002, Mike worked in the Office of Representative Sonny Callahan (Ret.) with expanding legislative responsibilities, culminating as associate staff to the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, chaired by Mr. Callahan.

 

Kate Sheppard
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE GLOBE: More Than Numbers: Population, Environment and Human Rights, 2:00 p.m.
  • Kate Sheppard is a senior reporter and the environment and energy editor at Huffington Post. She was previously a reporter at Mother Jones, Grist, and the American Prospect. Her reporting has been recognized with awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Online News Association, and Planned Parenthood.

 

Willie Shubert
 

  • Event: Wednesday, From Chattanooga to Chennai: Reporting on Population and Sustainability in an Urbanizing World, Visualizing Demographic Change: Using Maps, Graphics, and Video, 2:00 p.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE CLIMATE: All Impacts Are Local: Bringing Climate Change Close to Home, 2:00 p.m.
  • Willie Shubert is the Senior Project Coordinator for Internews’ Earth Journalism Network. As a coordinator of a global network of environmental journalists, Willie helps make tools that enable people to connect with each other, find material support, and amplify their local stories to global audiences. In his previous position at National Geographic Magazine, he coordinated translation for the magazine’s 32 local language partners. He holds a degree in Geography from Humboldt State University with concentrations in cartography, environmental economics, and Chinese Studies. Outside of work, he devotes his time to the development of a free school dedicated to community building through education and to collaborative mapping and audio projects.

 

Morgan Simmons
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 4, Biodiversity 1: From the Mountain Tops to the River Bottoms, 7:45 a.m.
  • Morgan Simmons has a degree in English from Washington and Lee University. He's a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School's instructor's course, based in Lander, Wyo. Simmons started at the Knoxville News Sentinel 25 years ago, and is now the paper's environmental reporter. For the last four years he's written a monthly hiking column for the paper. Simmons also plays in a bluegrass band, and enjoys mountain biking.

 

Ellis Smith
 

 

Patrick Smith
 

 

Sam Smith
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 8, The New Civil War: The Struggle to Preserve History, 9:30 a.m.
  • Sam Smith is the Education Coordinator for the Civil War Trust. A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he began writing for Franklin’s Charge, a preservation organization associated with the Franklin, Tennessee battlefield, while teaching specialty classes in the Chapel Hill public school system. At the Civil War Trust, he runs regional and national Teacher Institutes, administers the K-12 Civil War curriculum, and writes content for a variety of media.

 

Stephen Smith
 

 

David Steinkraus
 

 

Dan Stout
 

 

Rena Stricker
 

 

 

T

 

Peter Thomson
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE CRAFT 2: Sound Storytelling: Using Audio to Cover Science and the Environment, 11:00 a.m.
  • Peter Thomson, an SEJ board member, is the environment editor at the BBC/Public Radio International program "The World" and the author of Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal. He was the founding producer and editor of NPR's groundbreaking environmental news program "Living on Earth" in 1991, and in a decade with the program also served as senior editor, western region bureau chief, senior correspondent and special projects editor. Thomson's work has been honored with numerous awards, for reports and documentaries on subjects ranging from oil, natives and wildlife on Alaska's North Slope to threats facing America's drinking water supply to the environmental legacy of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Thomson has received fellowships from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Rockefeller Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. He is a member of the advisory board of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting, and has served on the advisory board of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources.

 

Tom Tidwell
 

 

Eugene Trisko
 

 

Shea Tuberty
 

 

John Turner
 

 

Brad Tyer
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 1, THE WATER: The Many Faces of Dam Removal, 11:00 a.m.
  • Houston native, 7th-generation Texan, and Rice grad Brad Tyer has contributed to The  Texas Observer as a writer and editor since the mid-1990s. He’s worked as music editor at the Houston Press and editor-in-chief of Missoula, Montana’s Independent; his freelance work has been published in The New York Times Book Review, Outside,High Country News, No Depression, and The Drake, among other venues. Brad was awarded a 2010 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan and a 2011 grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism to support research for his first book, Opportunity, Montana, published by Beacon Press in March 2013.

 

Rae Tyson
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE CRAFT 1: Obstacles to Access: Strategies for the Stonewalled, 9:00 a.m.
  • A co-founder and past president of SEJ, Rae Tyson has more than two decades of experience as an environmental reporter, the first 20 years with USA Today, Gannett News Service and Niagara (Falls) Gazette. He left journalism in 1998 for a 12-year stint as public affairs director for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. He is currently on staff of Environmental Health News and The Daily Climate, and a free-lancer.

 

 

W

 

Maggie Walser
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 3, THE GLOBE: The BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster’s Silver Lining, 9:00 a.m.
  • Maggie Walser is a senior program officer with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Gulf program. During her four years with the NAS, she has served as study director for a number of studies on topics ranging from weather issues to the national security implications of climate change. Prior to joining the NAS, Dr. Walser was the AGU/AAAS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow, working with the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. She has BS degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering, and a PhD in atmospheric chemistry, all from the University of California, Irvine.

 

Steven Wangen
 

  • Event: Saturday, Game On! Breakfast, Environmental Games and Journalism, 7:30 a.m.
  • Steven Wangen is postdoctoral scholar at the University of Wisconsin. His background is in invasive ecology, quantitative methods, and simulation approaches. He currently sits in the optimization group at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, and is interested in using agent-based modeling and complex systems approaches to examine the interaction of coupled human-natural systems. He is currently working to examine the potential ecological and economic ramifications of transitioning towards cellulosic-based ethanol production in southern Wisconsin. He has also been working on a team developing a web-based simulation game for classroom use intended to engage students to employ evidence-based reasoning approaches to learn about biofuel production systems. He enjoys using multidisciplinary collaborative approaches to tackle current and relevant issues regarding human-environment interactions, and hopes to be able to use these approaches to promote responsible and ethical land stewardship

 

Sarah Webb
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop, Successful Freelancing 201, 8:30 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Picnic Lunch Breakout Session, Urban Trees and Human Health: Walk Chattanooga with the City’s Forester, 12:15 p.m.
  • Event: Saturday, Mini-Tour 6, Biking and Urban Sustainability, 2:15 p.m.
  • Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sarah Webb writes about science, health, policy and the environment for researchers, for the general public and for children. Her work has appeared in Discover, Science News, ScientificAmerican.com, Science, Nature Biotechnology, National Geographic Kids, Science News for Kids and many other publications. Before her move into journalism, she completed a chemistry Ph.D. at Indiana University. She contributed to The Science Writers’ Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Pitch, Publish, and Prosper in the Digital Age and is the Editor-in-Chief of the book’s blog.

 

Jennifer Weeks
 

  • Event: Wednesday, All-Day Workshop, Successful Freelancing 201, 8:30 a.m.
  • Jennifer Weeks is a Massachusetts writer specializing in environment, energy and science issues. She has written for more than 50 newspapers, magazines, and web sites, including the Washington Post, Boston Globe Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Audubon, Discover, Slate, Grist, National Geographic Kids, Backpacker, High Country News, and Preservation. Before going freelance she worked for fifteen years 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).

 

Ken Weiss
 

  • Event: Wednesday, From Chattanooga to Chennai: Reporting on Population and Sustainability in an Urbanizing World, Eight Billion Stories: Reporting on People and the Planet, 10:00 a.m.
  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE GLOBE: More Than Numbers: Population, Environment and Human Rights, 2:00 p.m.
  • Kenneth R. Weiss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, focuses on topics at the intersection of science, environment and public health. He is now writing a book that draws the connections between women’s rights and reproductive health with hunger, poverty, national security and environmental decline. The book was inspired by his series, Beyond 7 Billion, published last year in the Los Angeles Times on the causes and consequences of human population growth. He was the lead reporter for the Altered Oceans series, which showed how the slow creep of environmental decay often has a more profound impact than cataclysmic natural disasters. Besides winning the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting, Weiss has won the George Polk Award, the Grantham Prize, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Scripps Howard Foundation’s National Journalism Award and many others. He holds a bachelor’s degree in folklore from UC Berkeley and lives in Carpinteria, California. Like way too many Californians, he prefers to conduct his own ocean research from his surfboard.

 

Jake Weltzin
 

  • Event: Saturday, Concurrent Sessions 4, THE LAND: Critters and Climate: Phenology, Impacts and Adaptation, 10:45 a.m.
  • Dr. Jake F. Weltzin is an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the first executive director of the USA National Phenology Network. Weltzin has been studying the impacts of global change on natural and managed ecological systems for over two decades. His research subjects include plant and animal populations and communities, from habitats ranging from tropical savannas to temperate woodlands to northern peatlands. In all cases, he investigates the response to many driving factors of global environmental change, including atmospheric chemistry, climate change, and biological invasions. As a science administrator at the National Science Foundation, Weltzin recognized the need to foster large-scale science initiatives, so he left academia to develop and direct the National Phenology Network. The Network is a new national public-private partnership designed to track the influence of climate on phenology (such as the timing of leafing and flowering of plants, and reproduction and migration of animals) as a barometer of climate change impacts on plants, animals, landscapes and human societies. More information.

 

Andrew Wetzler
 

  • Event: Friday, Concurrent Sessions 2, THE LAND: Endangered Species Success Stories: Reintroduction, Restoration and Protection, 2:00 p.m.
  • Andrew E. Wetzler is director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s land and wildlife program and deputy director of NRDC’s midwest program. Since joining NRDC in 1998, his primary focus has been on open space preservation, natural resources, and wildlife conservation. As co-director of NRDC’s land and wildlife program, Andrew helps guide its campaigns to protect endangered wildlife, including gray wolves, polar bears, and Yellowstone buffalo, as well as efforts to strengthen overall wildlife conservation policy.

 

Tim Wheeler
 

 

Roger Witherspoon
 

  • Event: Thursday, Tour 5, Energy Options: From Nukes to Hydro Storage, 8:00 a.m.
  • Roger Witherspoon, an SEJ board member, has spent more than 45 years working in all forms of the media as a journalist, author, educator, and public relations specialist. Along the way, he has written extensively on politics, foreign affairs, finance, defense, civil rights, constitutional law, health, the environment, and energy. Most of his career has been in the news business, working as a full time reporter, editor, columnist, or producer for a variety of media companies including newspapers (The Record, N. J.; Star Ledger, N. J.; NY Daily News; Atlanta Constitution; Dallas Times Herald; and Journal News (N.Y.); television (CNN, KNBC and NBC Network); and radio (WCBN, MI). As a freelance writer, he has written for several publications, including Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Essence, The Economist, and US Black Engineer & IT. As an educator, he was responsible for restructuring the print and broadcast curriculum and staff in the Department of Mass Communications at Clark-Atlanta University. In public affairs, he managed millions of dollars in health and environmental grant programs globally for Exxon Corp. He is the author of Martin Luther King, Jr…to the Mountaintop, Doubleday; and co-author of Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients, Time-Life Books; and Engineering 101: A Text Manual, Hampton University College of Science and Engineering. He is a founder of the Association of Black Journalists, which grew into the present National Association of Black Journalists; and a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the International Motor Press Association, and the Automotive Press Association.

 

Amanda Womac
 

 

Christine Woodside
 

 

 

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