-SpeakersMichael
DiBerardinis,
Deputy Mayor,
Environmental
and
Community
Resources, City
of
Philadelphia:
As Deputy
Mayor for
Environmental
and
Community
Resources ,
Michael DiBerardinis provides leadership for over
10,000 acres of land, 150 recreation centers and
playgrounds, 150 neighborhood and regional parks,
54 library branches and thousands of programs and
events throughout Philadelphia. Since his 2009
appointment as Commissioner of the Department of
Parks and Recreation, DiBerardinis has raised over
$34 million in government grants, philanthropic
funding and private partnerships; overseen the
merger of the Fairmount Park Commission and the
Department of Recreation; renovated City-owned ice
skating rinks; restored swimming season at public
pools and expanded outdoor recreation offerings.
Katherine Gajewski, Chief Officer of Sustainability,
Office of the Mayor, City of Philadelphia: Katherine is
the Director of Sustainability for the City of
Philadelphia. Katherine leads the Mayor's Office of
Sustainability and oversees the citywide
implementation of Greenworks, Philadelphia’s
sustainability plan. In this role she works across
government and with external stakeholders to
advance progress on fifteen targeted goals, covering
a wide array of initiatives. Greenworks has received
broad support within Philadelphia, garnered national
and international attention, and positioned
Philadelphia as a leader in urban sustainability. She
is active nationally as co-chair of the Urban
Sustainability Directors Network, a professional
network of local government sustainability
professionals working in cities across North America.
Michael Nutter, Mayor, Office of the Mayor,
City of Philadelphia: Sworn in for a second term
in January 2012, Michael A. Nutter has set an
aggressive agenda for America’s fifth largest city
–improviding high school graduation and
college attainment rates, vowing to strengthen
community policing through Philly Rising, a
unique partnership between vulnerable
neighborhoods and the City, and continuing to
implement the nationally recognized
GreenWorks Philadelphia initiative that is
helping to make the City of Philadelphia
become the greenest city in America. Born in
Philadelphia and educated at the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania,
Michael Nutter has been committed to public
service since his youth in West Philadelphia.
-PanelistsGeorge Hawkins,
CEO, DC Water and
Sewer Authority:
George Hawkins
serves as General
Manager of the
District of Columbia
Water and Sewer
Authority (DC
Water). On his
arrival in 2009, Mr.
Hawkins launched
an ambitious
agenda to transform
DC Water into a
customer-oriented
enterprise that is driving innovation and delivering
improved value to its ratepayers. The core goal is to
improve aging infrastructure while complying with
stringent regulatory requirements. DC Water is
implementing the $2.6 billion Clean Rivers Project to
nearly eliminate overflows of sewage and
stormwater to the Anacostia and Potomac rivers and
Rock Creek. DC Water has invested $950 million to
achieve the next level of nutrient reductions to help
restore the Chesapeake Bay. DC Water is also
nearing completion of a $470 million waste-toenergy program to help manage solids being
removed from reclaimed water while generating 13
megawatts of green power. Finally, he tripled the
rate of DC Water's program to replace water and
sewer infrastructure.
Suzette Kimball, Acting Director, USGS: Dr. Kimball is
responsible for leading the Nation's largest water,
earth, and biological science, and civilian mapping
agency. Prior to becoming the Acting Director, Dr.
Kimball was the USGS Deputy Director. In 2008, she
became the Acting Associate Director for Geology,
and prior to that was the Director of the USGS
Eastern Region, starting in 2004. She joined the
USGS as Eastern Regional Executive for Biology. In
that position, she built many partnerships, helped
shape programs, and led the establishment of the
USGS Florida Integrated Science Center. She came to
the USGS from the National Park Service in Atlanta,
where she was Associate Regional Director. She
entered the National Park Service as a research
coordinator in the Global Climate Change Program,
became Southeast Regional Chief Scientist, and then
Associate Regional Director.
Michelle
Kunec-North,
Program
Coordinator,
Bureau of
Planning and
Sustainabilit
y, City of
Portland
Michelle
Kunec-North
works for the
City of
Portland’s
Bureau of Planning & Sustainability on projects
to ensure Portland is an equitable, healthy,
resilient, and prosperous community. Her work
focuses on interdisciplinary projects that
address inequities and improve health
outcomes through innovative infrastructure and
community planning. Michelle led the
development of the Portland Plan’s Healthy
Connected City Strategy to create complete,
active and green communities. Her current
work includes the development of a Green
Infrastructure Assets Report and updates to the
City’s Comprehensive Plan and public facilities
plans, which will guide future development and
infrastructure investments. Michelle holds
Bachelor degrees in Environmental Science and
Urban and Regional Planning from the
University of Virginia and a Masters in
Community and Regional Planning from the
University of Oregon.
water bodies. She has designed innovative projects,
directed design standards for GSI in Seattle’s street
rights-of-ways, and developed GSI requirements for
City of Seattle stormwater code. She directs
evaluation of GSI solutions as part of capital
improvement projects to achieve multiple
stormwater goals, as well as working to integrate GSI
with other City sustainability goals. Mrs. Tackett
holds a Master’s of Science degree in Civil and
Environmental Engineering from the University of
Washington.
Howard Neukrug, Water Commissioner, Philadelphia
Water Department: As Commissioner and CEO of
Philadelphia Water, Mr. Neukrug is responsible for
the operation and management of one of the
nation’s oldest, most integrated and largest public
water utilities. With an annual operating / capital
budget of $1 billion, this utility of 2000 employees
serves over 2 million people in every aspect of water
service - drinking water treatment and distribution,
wastewater and stormwater management, flood
control, river/stream protection and enhancement,
and wetlands and source water protection. Mr.
Neukrug is a local and national leader in the water
industry, serving on numerous boards and advisory
groups and currently teaches two classes at the
University of Pennsylvania: “The Water, Science and
Politics of the Green City, Clean Water Program” and
“The US Water Industry in the 21st Century”.
Tracy Tackett, Green
Infrastructure
Program Manager,
Seattle Public Utilities:
Tracy Tackett, PE is
the Green Stormwater
Infrastructure (GSI)
Program Manager for
Seattle Public
Utilities. She is
responsible for the
management,
direction and decision
making for capital
improvement projects
and significant
programs focused on
using green infrastructure to reduce the effects of
Seattle’s urban stormwater runoff on our receiving
Jerry Tinianow,
Chief
Sustainability
Officer, Denver
Office of
Sustainability: As
Denver’s Chief
Sustainability
Officer since
2012, Jerry
Tinianow works
to ensure that
critical natural and human resources are
available and affordable to everyone in Denver,
now and tomorrow. His work is organized
around the City’s 2020 Sustainability Goals,
which are among the most ambitious of any
American city. Jerry previously served as a
national officer of both the Sierra Club and the
National Audubon Society, and also practiced
law for over two decades with two of Ohio’s
largest law firms. The Sierra Club designated
him as a national “Environmental Hero,” and
the President of the National Audubon Society
called him a “star performer.” Jerry received his
undergraduate and law degrees from George
Washington University.
Margot Walker, Director, Capital Planning and
Partnerships, New York City Department of
Environmental Protection, Division of
Sustainability, Office of Green Infrastructure:
Margot Walker has worked in environmental and
stormwater management planning at the NYC
Department of Environmental Protection since 2008
and with DEP’s Office of Green Infrastructure since
its inception in January 2011. Previously, she
worked on stormwater related projects at the Pratt
Center for Community Development while attending
graduate school at Pratt Institute. She is currently
the Director of Capital Planning and Partnerships in
the Office of Green Infrastructure, which is
responsible for implementing the NYC Green
Infrastructure Program.
Tommy Wells, Director, Stormwater Management
Division, District Department of the Environment,
Washington, DC: Tommy Wells is the director of the
District Department of the Environment (DDOE).
Appointed January 2015, he is chiefly responsible for
protecting the environment and conserving the
natural resources of the District of Columbia.
Tommy’s team is comprised of approximately 300
environmental professionals collectively working to
improve the quality of life for residents and the
natural inhabitants of the Nation’s Capital. Most
recently, Tommy served as the DC Councilmember
representing Ward 6—a position he held since 2006.
During his time on Council, he garnered broad
support for his efforts to make the District livable
and walkable for all. Tommy worked with the City’s
leadership and, in particular, residents of Ward 6 to
create a shared and respected place where drivers,
cyclists, pedestrians, and exercise enthusiasts can
co-exist safely. Known for his neighborhood-focused
development, Tommy championed efforts to ensure
availability of public transit, including the
construction of new streetcar lines and the
expansion of the DC Circulator. As Chair of the DC
Council Committee on Transportation and the
Environment, he worked to double the city’s Capital
Bikeshare program.
Bill Werkheiser, Associate Director for Water, USGS:
Mr. Werkheiser has served in numerous positions
since joining the USGS in 1986. Prior to his position
as Associate Director for Water, he was the Regional
Director for the former USGS Eastern Region, where
he oversaw activities related to biological,
geographical, geological, and hydrological research
and assessments. He also led the Natural Hazards
Initiative Team and the long-term Hurricane Katrina
Response and Recovery Team for the USGS. He has
over 25 years of experience with the USGS and other
agencies working on a variety of environmental and
scientific issues. Mr. Werkheiser received a
bachelor's degree in geology from Bloomsburg
University and a Master’s degree in hydrogeology
and glacial geology from the University of
Massachusetts.
-Luncheon SpeakerKaren Seto, Associate Dean of Research, Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies: Karen Seto is Associate Dean of Research and
Professor of Geography and Urbanization at the Yale School of Forestry
& Environmental Studies. Prior to joining Yale in 2008, she was faculty
at Stanford University for eight years. She is an expert in urbanization
and global environmental change, urban mitigation of climate change,
and satellite remote sensing. Professor Seto has pioneered methods to
reconstruct historical land-use with satellite data and has developed
novel empirical methods to forecast the expansion of urban areas. She
has conducted urbanization research in China for twenty years and in
India for ten. She was one of the two Coordinating Lead Authors for
the urban chapter of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. She has served on many U.S. National Research
Council Committees, including the current NRC Committee on Pathways to Urban Sustainability. She is a
founder and co-chair of the international project on Urbanization and Global Environmental Change
(UGEC), a core science project of the Future Earth initiative. She is Executive Producer of “10,000
Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China,” a documentary film that examines urban changes in China.
-FirestartersAditi
Bhaskar:
National
Science
Foundation
Postdoctor
al Fellow,
USGS: Aditi
Bhaskar is
a postdoctoral researcher at USGS Eastern
Geographic Science Center funded by a National
Science Foundation Earth Sciences Postdoctoral
Fellowship. Her research focuses on urban
hydrology and presently on base flow and
groundwater recharge changes associated with
urbanization using green infrastructure in
Clarksburg, Maryland. Aditi received her Ph.D. in
Environmental Engineering at University of
Maryland, Baltimore County where she was a trainee
in the “Water in the Urban Environment”
interdisciplinary graduate program (NSFIGERT). Bhaskar received her undergraduate degree
from Brown University in Geology-Physics/Math.
Dominique
Lueckenhoff, Associate
Director, Water
Protection Division,
EPA Region III:
Dominique
Lueckenhoff has over
20 years of diverse
programmatic and
geographic experience
with US EPA, having
served in several
Regions and the
Administrator’s Office. She currently serves as
Deputy Director of the EPA Region 3 Water
Protection Division. In this capacity, she supports
and shares with the Division Director in the
administration and management of all division
activities, and water protection and state grant
programs for the Mid-Atlantic (PA, DE, MD, VA,
WVA, DC) totaling several billion dollars. She also
serves as EPA’s management point of contact on the
Green Infrastructure (GI) and Urban Waters/Federal
Partnership Initiatives in the Mid-Atlantic, in addition
to participating in a number of related internal and
external national and regional work groups.
Julie Ulrich, Director
of Urban
Conservation, The
Nature
Conservancy: Julie
Ulrich is the
Director of Urban
Conservation for
The Nature
Conservancy. She
has extensive
experience in
sustainable planning and design and has worked at
the intersection of cities and ecology for over ten
years. Working as a Sustainability Specialist for the
City of Portland, OR, she contributed to the
development and implementation of numerous
green infrastructure projects. Focusing on ecological
and social resiliency in cities such as New Orleans,
Toronto, and Stockholm, she is passionate about reenvisioning the relationship between cities,
communities, and nature. She received her Masters
of Urban Planning and Design from the University of
Virginia’s School of Architecture and is a Senior
Fellow with The Environmental Leadership
Program. She also serves on the faculty of
Philadelphia University’s sustainability program.
Pat Coady,
Senior
Director,
Seale &
Associates:
Pat Coady
has a lifelong career
in investment banking. He is currently Senior
Director at Seale & Associates, Washington DC.
Between 1989 and 1993, Pat was U.S. Executive
Director of the World Bank. He has had stints as
Chief Financial Officer at such diverse companies as
a billion dollar financial services company as well as
a start-up rocket development enterprise. Pat
contributed to the book From Walden to Wall Street
and organized a 2007 Conservation Finance
Workshop in New York City. Pat is a senior fellow at
Conservation International. In 1994, Pat co-founded
and is currently Chairman of the Northern Virginia
Conservation Trust. Pat is a graduate of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the
Harvard Business School. He resides in Washington,
DC.
Todd Doley,
Environmental
Economist, EPA:
Todd Doley is an
economist with the
United States
Environmental
Protection Agency’s
Office of Water. His
work on
stormwater issues
began with the Phase II National Stormwater Rule
promulgated in 1999. He was the lead economist for
the construction and development of Effluent
Limitation Guidelines initially promulgated in 2009.
More recently he was the lead economist on a
comprehensive analysis of possible revisions to the
national Stormwater Regulations. Currently he is
working on improvements to the methods used for
estimating the economic benefits associated with
improvements in water quality and with the use of
green infrastructure.
Mark Alan
Hughes, Professor
of Practice,
University of
Pennsylvania,
School of Design:
Hughes is the
founding director of the Kleinman Center for Energy
Policy at Penn, where he has taught since 1999. In
2008-09, he was the founding Director of
Sustainability and Chief Policy Adviser to the Mayor
of Philadelphia. He was a weekly opinion columnist
for the Philadelphia Daily News from 2001-2007. He
has been a senior fellow at Brookings and the Urban
Institute, a program officer at the Ford Foundation, a
professor at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. He
has a BA from Swarthmore and a PhD from Penn.
Lisa Pelstring, Advisor,
Urban Environmental
Issues, Office of Water
and Science and Office of
Fish, Wildlife, and Parks,
U.S. Department of
Interior: Lisa has worked
in the environmental field
for the last twenty years
in the nongovernment
and government sectors.
In 2011, Lisa was hired to work for former Interior
Deputy Secretary David J. Hayes on urban
environmental issues. She is currently an Advisor
reporting to the Assistant Secretary for Water and
Science and the Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife
and Parks at the Department of the Interior. In this
role, Pelstring is working across the Bureaus to
spearhead an Administration initiative launched in
2011, the Urban Waters Federal Partnership
(UWFP)—a collaborative effort among 14 federal
agencies working at the intersection of economic
revitalization and environmental restoration in
underserved communities.
Pierre
Glynn,
Eastern
Branch
Chief,
USGS:
Pierre
oversees a
broad diversity of science in areas such as
numerical modeling of water flow and solute
transport, environmental isotope forensics and
characterization, groundwater dating, water
and sediment contamination problems, nutrient
cycling, ecological habitats, geomorphic
processes, and the application of molecular and
other techniques to the study of microbial
processes. His current interests include
integrated environmental modeling, Citizen
Science, watershed research and monitoring
programs, and the behavioral
biogeosciences. Some of Pierre's recent
accomplishments include (1) leading a review of
the USA National Phenology Network (USGS
Circular provisionally approved), (2) publishing
two papers on human biases and human
challenges in the construction and use of
integrated environmental models
(http://www.iemss.org/sites/iemss2014/papers
/iemss2014_submission_113.pdf; 2nd paper
coming out soon
at http://sp.lyellcollection.org/online-first/408),
and (3) contributing to a review and synthesis
paper on Participatory Modeling (just submitted
to the journal Environmental Modelling and
Software).
David Hsu, Assistant
Professor, University
of Pennsylvania,
Department of City
and Regional
Planning: David Hsu
is an Assistant
Professor in the
Department of City &
Regional Planning at
the University of
Pennsylvania. His
main area of research is urban environmental
policy. Topics of particular interest include efficiency
in energy and water networks; policies to encourage
green buildings; and data analysis. Current projects
include studies of how information affects
investment in energy efficiency in the real estate
market, funded by the US Department of Energy;
digital tools for green infrastructure planning,
funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency;
and smart stormwater management, funded by the
National Science Foundation. He will join the faculty
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Urban Studies and Planning as an
Assistant Professor in July 2015.
Margaret Walls,
Research Director
and Senior Fellow,
Resources for the
Future: Margaret
Walls is Research
Director and Senior
Fellow at resources
for the Future, an
independent
research
organization in Washington, DC. Dr. Walls has
conducted research and policy analysis on a range of
environmental and natural resource issues. Her
current work focuses on land use and urban
development, climate resilience, and building energy
efficiency. Her work has appeared in a number of
peer-reviewed journals and she is the author of 18
book chapters. Dr. Walls was previously on the
faculty of the School of Economics and Finance of
Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. She
has a PhD in economics from the University of
California – Santa Barbara.
Dr. Kateryna
Wowk, Senior
Social Scientist to
the NOAA Chief
Economist:
Kateryna (Katya)
Wowk is an expert
in using
multidisciplinary
approaches to
achieve
sustainable management of human impacts on
coastal and marine areas, with a focus on ecosystem
services, climate change and coastal hazards and
resilience. Prior to her current position, Katya
served as Senior Policy Official to the Assistant
Secretary of Commerce for Conservation and
Management, where she led NOAA and interagency
efforts related to Sandy Recovery, National Ocean
Policy, and the National Drought Resilience
Partnership. Katya also worked for a private
company conducting federal contracting services to
NOAA, and as a Consultant for the Global Forum on
Oceans, Coasts and Islands. Katya holds a PhD in
International Marine Policy from the University of
Delaware and a Masters of Public Administration
from Columbia University.