Spring 2021 Lecture Series

Brad Gentry is the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Professor in the Practice at the Yale School of the Environment and the Yale School of Management, Senior Associate Dean for Professional Practice at the Yale School of the Environment, and a Director of the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. Trained as a biologist and a lawyer, his work focuses on strengthening the links between private investment and improved environmental performance, with a particular focus on increasing investment in natural areas. He has worked on land, water, energy, industrial and other projects in over 40 countries for private (GE, Suez Environnement, Working Lands Investment Partners), public (UNDP, World Bank, Secretariat for the Climate Change Convention, UNEP) and not-for-profit (Land Trust Alliance, The Trust for Public Land, the Northern Forest Center, SustainableCT) organizations. He holds a BA from Swarthmore College and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Lynn is the Founder and Director of Sustainable CT, a program that inspires, supports, and celebrates actions that make our communities great places to live for all. From affordable housing to vibrant public spaces, walkable and safe roads, inclusive municipal decision-making, and support for local businesses, Sustainable CT helps Connecticut towns and cities improve the quality of life for every resident. Created by towns for towns, the program is coordinated and administered by the Institute for Sustainable Energy at Eastern Connecticut State University.

Lola Schoenrich coordinates the Sustainable States Network. She serves as the Co-Director of Minnesota GreenStep Cities, which she helped to launch in 2010. She is the Vice President for communities at the Great Plains Institute where she has worked since 2008. Lola has over 35 years of experience in energy policy and community energy initiatives. She has extensive background in bringing diverse groups of people together to craft energy policy and implement projects in networks, coalitions, and working teams.

Professor Gillingham is an Associate Professor at Yale University and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2015-2016, he served as the Senior Economist for Energy and the Environment at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He is an energy and environmental economist drawing from the fields of applied microeconomics, behavioral economics, industrial organization, and integrated assessment modeling of climate change. He has published widely on consumer decisions and policy in transportation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. His work has been published in top-tier journals across a range of fields, including economics, science, and management.
 
Prior to joining the Yale faculty, he worked at the California Air Resources Board, White House Council of Economic Advisers, Stanford Energy Modeling Forum, Resources for the Future, and Joint Global Change Research Institute of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  He is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to New Zealand.  His Ph.D. is from Stanford University, where he studied management science & engineering and economics. Before beginning a career as an economist, he was a wilderness ranger in Wyoming and New Hampshire.

Drew Johnstone is a Senior Sustainability Analyst in the City of Santa Monica’s Office of Sustainability and the Environment and leads the Climate and Energy Team. He has 11 years of experience working with cities, businesses, schools, and homeowners on a variety of sustainability projects. In his current role, he focuses on Santa Monica’s green building and energy policies and programs including reach codes and procurement of renewables. Drew is also responsible for implementing actions in the City’s Climate Action & Adaptation Plan with a concentration on zero-carbon buildings.

Jillian Wilson Martin is the Sustainability Director for the Town of Natick, Massachusetts. She has worked on sustainability initiatives for the town since 2014. Jillian is responsible for managing the community’s climate mitigation and adaptation strategies and is in the process of finalizing a 2050 net zero action plan. Jillian leads the development of public renewable energy projects, the community’s electricity aggregation program, energy efficiency and electrification projects in public buildings, and a variety of waste reduction programs, including curbside composting. Prior to working in local government, Jillian spent 10+ years as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and large nonprofits, specializing in corporate responsibility strategy and communications.

Professor Wargo’s research explores threats to human health posed by environmental hazards, including exposures to pesticides, vehicle emissions, toxins in foods, plastics, flame-retardants, metals, and chemicals released outdoors and indoors.  Current research examines environmental and health challenges associated with the global food system. He authored Green Intelligence winning the Independent Publishers Gold Medal in Environment, Ecology and Nature; Scientific American Favorite Science Book of 2010; and the Connecticut Book Award for Non-Fiction. Our Children’s Toxic Legacy, published by Yale Press won the American Publishers’ Association Prize as the best Book in Political Science. He has testified before U.S. Senate and House Committees recommending legal strategies to protect children from environmental hazards, and has been an advisor to the Senate Committee on Health, the Vice President’s office, several EPA administrators, and the Secretary of Agriculture. He has been a member of EPA’s Scientific Advisory Panel/Board on Pesticides, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s scientific panels, advisor to the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and Food and Agriculture Organization on malaria control, food safety, and pesticide control standards.  His analyses were the basis of two National Academy of Sciences Press books on chemical hazards in food. His course, Environmental Politics and Law and its 24 lecturers are freely accessible in video and translated into 50 languages on the website Open Yale, translated into 50 languages. He chairs the Yale College Environmental Studies Major, and has chaired Yale College’s Curriculum Committee. He received his PhD from Yale. He helped guide faculty searches and curriculum development at Yale-NUS College in Singapore.  

Nancy was born in New York and grew up on the island of Jamaica. She was invited to participate in the Red Bank Environmental Commission shortly after she moved to town; she was installing solar on her home’s roof which seemed like a good indicator that she would be interested in joining the group. Nancy was a senior systems analyst for Verizon, AT&T. She is the household program manager and network administrator. She has a BA in Economics from Hunter College. Nancy lives with her two children, her gardening-expert husband Phil who is also an enterprise architect for AT&T, and their dog Scout. Her home is nearly fossil-free, with solar panels and an electric car. Nancy concluded, “My focus is sustainability and I try to live with preservation of our resources in mind, because the Earth will survive the future, but we cannot say the same thing for humanity if we do not make major changes. I hope to inspire others and enact projects that get Red Bank moving in the right direction.

Kristen Wilson is the Director of Grants Management for the City of Kingston. She seeks and manages funds for a range of city projects in the areas of transportation, water infrastructure, environment, housing, community development, and public health.  Many of her management activities are focused on several grant-funded transportation projects on the Kingston Greenline, a network of rail trails, complete streets, and linear parks in Kingston.  Previously, Kristen worked as a Senior Resource Educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County.  In that role, she directed several public health projects and guided the Live Well Kingston Coalition, now a City Commission, into existence.  She also developed Complete Streets advocacy networks in Kingston and Ulster County. Kristen has a Masters from the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, for which she conducted research on watershed policy in Oaxaca, Mexico. Earlier, she worked as an environmental educator and Outward Bound instructor. She is fluent in Spanish, and she enjoys living in Kingston, NY with her husband and 8-year old daughter.

As a pioneer in the field of environmental law, Torres has spent his career examining the intrinsic connections between the environment, agricultural and food systems, and social justice. His research into how race and ethnicity impact environmental policy has informed his teaching and practical experiences and has been influential in the emergence and evolution of the field of environmental justice.

Howard Weissberg, P.E. is the Director of Public Works in Meriden, Connecticut. Prior to this, he was their Associate City Engineer for seven years. His work experience includes serving as the Deputy Director of Public Works in New Haven, Connecticut, and as an engineer and administrator for both Maryland State Highway Administration and Anne Arundel County Maryland Department of Public Works . He is a professional engineer, with expertise in traffic operations, construction, infrastructure management and technology. He was recently appointed to the Board of Directors for the Northeast Chapter of the American Public Works Association.

Paul Dickson is the Director of Planning, Development & Enforcement for the City of Meriden. Paul grew up in shoreline Connecticut, and worked for the Town of Groton Planning Department before transitioning to Meriden 5 years ago. He has a Landscape Architecture background and previously served in Meriden as the Associate Planner/ZEO and Assistant Planning Director.

David Kooris is Director of Rebuild by Design and National Disaster Resilience for the State of Connecticut. These Federal grants, totaling $65 million, will enable resilience planning for Fairfield and New Haven Counties and the construction of several pilot projects for green infrastructure, raised mobility corridors, distributed energy generation, and 21st Century flood protection in Bridgeport. Prior to this position, Mr. Kooris was Director of the Office of Planning and Economic Development for Connecticut’s most populous city, Bridgeport. This role enabled him to chart a long-range strategy for the city’s revitalization grounded in its diverse neighborhoods, spur economic development in its downtown and commercial centers, and reposition thousands of acres of brownfields for sustainable redevelopment. Before assuming that appointment, Mr. Kooris held various positions at Regional Plan Association, the nation’s oldest regional planning organization, culminating in his role as Vice President. Mr. Kooris has worked on high-speed rail-oriented development, sustainability planning, and urban revitalization projects abroad in Canada, Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Taiwan, and South Korea. Since the fall semester of 2012, Mr. Kooris has been a lecturer at Yale University’s Graduate School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in city and regional planning practice.

In Rochester, Minnesota, the City and Destination Medical Center Economic Development Agency wanted to provide pathways for public participation that reached a broader section of their community, particularly Black, Indignenous, and Communities of Color. To facilitate this, the agencies created a community co-design model to identify and prioritize the involvement of disenfranchised community members in the design of a public park and the City’s Sustainability and Resiliency Task Force. This talk will explore the equitable engagement approach, its impact on sustainability outcomes for the two projects, and its role in future planning efforts in Rochester, Minnesota.

Mary Ellen is the Manager of the Borough of Etna and a founding member of the Etna Community Organization, as well as Vice President of the Board of ECO. Mary loves the interconnection and intersection of community and local government that this process has fully deepened!

Megan is an Etna Borough Councilperson and a founding member of the Etna EcoDistrict and the Etna Community Organization (ECO). Originally an ECO board member, Megan has recently taken over as the Executive Director and will be responsible for fundraising, organizing and implementing the projects outlined in the Etna EcoDistrict plan, as well as community outreach and day-to-day operations.