Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows 2004
Sustainability Institute selected the following sixteen environmental and social leaders to form the inaugural class of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program.
The 2003-2004 Fellows came from the non-profit, government, business, tribal, university and philanthropy sectors. Fellows convene from 14 states nationwide, and from major cities such as Chicago and Washington, DC, as well as university towns and rural communities. One Fellow comes from Brazil, and several more have significant experience working in international settings with a range of colleagues and stakeholders. Through their individual projects and home organizations, the Fellows impact conservation activists, farmers, industry executives, legislators, citizen boards, and government officials. Their work represents diverse sectors, bioregions and ecosystems. By design, thirteen of the sixteen Fellows are women.
Biographies
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Tim BrownCo-Director and Co-Founder, Delta Institute |
Tim focuses on pollution prevention, toxic reduction, watershed planning and stewardship in the Great Lakes. The Delta Institute engages in the policy and practice of improving environmental quality and promoting community and economic development in the Great Lakes region. More...
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Virginia FarleyDirector, Leadership Programs for the Conservation Study
Institute, National Park Service (NPS) |
Virginia heads the NPS Superintendents' Leadership Roundtable Program and provides technical assistance to NPS employees and partners in the areas of partnerships, community engagement, leadership development, and best practices in conservation. Virginia is also a part-time consultant to non-profit conservation organizations. She conducts workshops, courses and seminars on reflective conservation leadership, stewardship values, land conservation, and sense of place. More...
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John Fisk Director, Henry A. Wallace Center, Winrock International |
The Henry A. Wallace Center works across the nation to increase the sustainability of our food and farming system. The Center's current work focuses upon developing models, knowledge, and technical assistance that support the creation of food and farming enterprises that provide healthy food, grown in a manner that protects the environment and offers a viable return to farmers. The Wallace Center for Sustainable Agriculture is part of Winrock International, a nonprofit organization that works with people in the United States and around the world to increase economic opportunity, sustain natural resources, and protect the environment. More...
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Ashley LanferConsultant, Barr Foundation |
The Heart of the City project treats inner-city Boston as a whole system. It seeks to address the inaccurate and incomplete flow of information between government agencies, communities, local organizations, academics, and other stakeholders. More...
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Michelle MillerProject Manager, Pesticide Use and Risk Reduction Project |
Through the sustainable agriculture research center on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, Michelle works with 50+ researchers, representatives from 13 state agricultural organizations, and Center staff on projects that reduce the risk and use of pesticides on Wisconsin farms. More...
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Julia Novy-HildesleyExecutive Director, The Lemelson Foundation |
The Foundation celebrates and supports inventors and entrepreneurs in order to strengthen social and economic life. The Foundation’s programs in the U.S. and developing countries recognize accomplished inventors, mentor innovators of all ages, and disseminate technologies that help people help themselves. Julia is working to design a new international program to unleash invention and innovation for sustainable development in developing countries. More...
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Christina PageDirector, Climate and Energy Strategy |
Chris Page joined Yahoo! in July of 2007 and is the director of Climate and Energy at the company. Chris is responsible for overseeing the company’s climate-neutral program, efficiency and clean tech initiatives, and providing technical support to Yahoo!’s all-volunteer Green Team, an employee group that harnesses the collective energy of Yahoos around the world to reduce Yahoo!’s carbon footprint and improve overall environmental practices.More...
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Cynthia PansingChanging Tastes ConsultantsSt. Paul, MN |
Currently, Cynthia is principal with Changing Tastes (www.changingtastes.net), a consulting firm based in St. Paul, Minnesota. The firm provides strategic planning, organizational change, trend identification and training to businesses and nonprofit organizations working on issues of food, health and sustainable development.
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Angela ParkDirector, Diversity Matters: catalysts for environmental and social change and Consultant on diversity, inclusion, leadership development and organizational change Hartland Four Corners, VT |
Angela Park is director of Diversity Matters, a nonprofit organization that aims to make diversity and inclusion foundational assets of environmental and social change leaders and their organizations. She is also a consultant to organizations, educational institutions, foundations, and companies. More...
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Shanna RatnerPrincipal, Yellow Wood Associates |
Shanna is a researcher, trainer, and facilitator specializing in rural community economic development. She works with federal, state, and local governments, foundations, non-profit organizations and others to explore development options and build client capacity to achieve shared goals. Her areas of interest include agriculture, forestry, and green community technologies. More...
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Agnieszka RawaSenior Project Manager and Sustainable Development Specialist, Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM) |
Agnieszka is an environmental consultant with over 14 years of experience working for private companies and public organizations evaluating and mitigating factors affecting social and environmental sustainability of development projects. She has a passion for connecting people around the common necessity of caring for our world and believes that collaboration among different sectors of our society (private, public, not-for profit, etc) is the cornerstone to a rational, equitable and sustainable use of our resources – as well as long term social wellbeing. Currently working for Environmental Resources Management (ERM), she leads design studies, impact evaluations, and strives to meaningfully involve stakeholders to avoid, reduce or manage impacts of development. Agnieszka is also a member of the Board of Directors of the ERM Foundation where she helps to designate funding to initiatives that help improve the quality of life of communities around the world while ensuring a sustainable use of our planet’s resources. She has worked and lived in the United States, North Africa and South America. More...
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Amália SouzaExecutive Director, Center for Socio-Environmental Support (CASA) |
Amália works with a council of experts who recommend projects in all of Brazil's ecosystems. CASA, part of the Greengrants Alliance of Funds - www.casa.org.br, is a funding and capacity building institution that provides the basis to mobilize and expand the resources that are essential for supporting critical work of broad movements of social and environmental justice throughout Brazil and neighboring countries. More...
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Mark J. SpaldingPresident, The Ocean Foundation (Washington, DC), Executive Director, Fundacion Bahia de Loreto (Baja California Sur, Mexico) and Executive Director, St. Kitts Foundation (Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis) |
Mark brings his extensive experience with the legal and policy aspects of ocean conservation to the Foundations¢ grantmaking strategy and evaluation process. Mark is an active participant in the marine working group, Baja California group, and coral reef group of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity and serves on the International Bering Sea Forum. Mark has also consulted with numerous foundations including the San Diego Foundation, the International Community Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Fundación La Puerta, and a number of family foundations and he has served as a member of the Environmental Grants Advisory Committee of FINCOMUN (Tijuana's Community Foundation). More...
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Lynn StoddardEnvironmental Analyst, Connecticut Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP) |
Lynn works on DEP’s Climate Change Team. Over the next year, she will be working with diverse stakeholders to develop a climate change action plan for Connecticut that meet goals and targets established in the New England Governors/Eastern Canadian Premiers Climate Change Action Plan. Lynn’s team also works with municipalities, universities, businesses and other state agencies to implement immediate actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and educate the public. More...
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Kathy TibbitsStrategy Group, Cherokee Nation |
Kathy’s work supports tribal sovereignty for the Cherokee Nation, which has about 60,000 resident citizens in its 14-county service area of Northeastern Oklahoma. For Cherokee Nation, she helped to start the Cherokee Small Farm Project and was in on the beginning of Oklahoma Food Cooperative, which is both a producer cooperative and a consumer cooperative now with over 800 members and which has sold about $250,000 of made-in-Oklahoma farm products with 95% of proceeds going to the farmer producers.. More...
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Ellen WolfeResero Consulting |
Ellen is a Vice President of Resero and focuses on electric utility restructuring activities. She works with electrical system operators, policy makers, regulators and market participants to effect change in market structures. Ellen’s work has been in the midst of the "California energy crises" the past few years; she seeks further thinking on how to put in place effective and efficient market structures in an environment of short run political and business cycles. More...
Application to Work
Tim Brown
Co-Director and Co-Founder, Delta Institute
Chicago, IL
Tim has incorporated systems thinking into his work developing an Environmental Management System (EMS) to prevent the introduction and spread of biological pollution in the Great Lakes by preventing the release of contaminated ballast water from ships. Tim used a systems map he created with the help of his Sustainability Institute coach and other Fellows during an exercise in the second Fellows workshop to provide strategic orientation to his team (5 people from 5 different organizations.) His use of systems thinking on this issue was particularly significant because he is a team member, but not a project leader. This is one example of the way in which insights gained by the Fellows ripple out to be useful to others, even, as in this case, when those colleagues do not have formal systems training.
Tim’s systems work made it clear to this team that several major stakeholders must come together to solve the biological pollution problem – ports, vessels owners, the public interest (as represented by Great Lakes congress people and governors) and shippers. The mapping tool helped them to see “that we would have to craft the solution to serve all the stakeholders”. They are currently building engagement with crafting a solution in each of these stakeholder groups.
Virginia Farley
Director, Leadership Programs for the Conservation Study
Institute,
National Park Service (NPS)
Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historical Park
Woodstock, Vermont
Virginia applies the work of the Dana Meadow’s Fellowship to her work with communities, land trusts, and National Parks. The program enabled her to better understand change processes and how to be more deliberate and strategic in taking action toward change. For example, she has developed a theory of change for conservation action that integrates values articulation, visioning, inspiration, action, reflection, evaluation, and adaptation.
Virginia is currently working on a project to help evaluate a management change process for National Parks in New York. Another exciting program is developing strategies to ensure that the National Park Service is able to adapt to changing demographics, attract diverse populations, and articulate and interpret stories reflective of diverse cultures. In addition, Virginia has utilized coaching skills developed during the fellowship in her leadership development work.
John Fisk
Director, Henry A. Wallace Center, Winrock International
Arlington, VA
Through the Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Society Initiative, John supported the creation and expansion of community-based food systems that are locally owned and controlled, environmentally sound and health promoting. John organizes the annual Food and Society Networking Conference, which brings together all of WKKF's Food and Society partners (grantees and others) as well as a broader group active in creating sustainable food systems. This year’s invitees included corporate executives of the food system as well as a professional facilitator, who started each day with a presentation or activity designed to help participants bring their “heart into the room” and not just their analytical mind.
John is also very active in Michigan Integrated Food and Farming Systems (MIFFS): a state wide non-profit organization working to improve the food and farming systems of Michigan–economically, environmentally and socially. One key project is stimulating the purchase of locally and sustainably grown food by Michiganders, a collaborative project with the Michigan Department of Agriculture and some smaller NGO's. A second project works to redirect existing infrastructure and resources that are held in the public domain (university, agencies, etc.) to assist farmers and food entrepreneurs to move away from solely commodity production to create food based businesses that bring more of the food dollar to farmers and more local and healthy products to consumers.
John’s Fellowship work includes deepening his personal mastery skills as he broadens his base of consulting work. He has also worked with staff at the Kellogg Foundation to apply systems thinking tools to evaluation of their programs.
Ashley Lanfer
Consultant, Barr Foundation
Ashley Lanfer is leading a campaign to involve low-income Bostonians in use and stewardship of urban parks.
Ashley provides information resources for coordination, integration, and connection between the different parts of Boston’s urban system, including environmental justice, transportation natural systems, greenspaces, education, and public health. A primary focus is on the tremendous underutilized open spaces in the neighborhoods.
Ashley has been applying the fellowship skills of reflective conversation and systems thinking to this work. She has been using these tools to ask questions such as: what factors limit the access of some neighborhoods to high quality open space; what are the common goals that might unite open space groups with groups that haven't traditionally focused on open space to invest time and energy toward high quality open space. In organizing a team of energetic young people working on a springtime event bringing people into Boston's open spaces, Ashley has also been drawing on her skills to build and hold out a vision, and to create a team.
Michelle Miller
Project Manager, Pesticide Use and Risk Reduction Project, Center
for Integrated Agricultural Systems
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Madison, WI
Michelle is organizing apple growers and university specialists in programs to reduce pesticide use in orchards.
For the past fifteen years, Michelle has worked to be a bridge between farmers and a host of other interest groups, such as organic activists, environmental activists (from small grassroots groups to World Wildlife Fund), academics (humanists, scientists, administrators), government officials (elected, appointed and career), and scientists (social and agricultural scientists from both public and private sectors). She is currently facilitating work between roughly fifty researchers, thirteen farmer organizations, government agencies and others interested in pesticide reduction. For the past five years, Michelle has spent a lot of time developing a relationship with leaders in Wisconsin apple production to develop a systematic approach to reducing pesticide use while at the same time expanding their ability to market these eco-apples. While this project is in the early stages, enthusiasm from the growers is remarkable. Other interesting projects are in the works to support farmer efforts to reduce pesticides, including a video project with a public TV station, and work to better support organic growers.
At the University, Michelle shepherds students through the institutional maze, helping them contribute their skills and passion to the sustainability movement. As a student she helped to organize the F.H. King Students of Sustainable Agriculture, and now advises this student group on attaining their goals. She and others on campus intend to put together an agro ecology masters program in the future.
Julia Novy-Hildesley
Executive Director, The Lemelson Foundation
Portland, OR
Julia has applied a range of tools she learned and practiced through the Fellows Program. She has used an adapted visioning exercise to help her Board of Directors envision the desired results from a program the Lemelson Foundation is initiating.
She is also developing a stock/flow and casual loop map to articulate her foundation’s plan for increasing the rate of invention and innovation towards social ends in the developing world. The stock/flow map outlines the development of ideas to inventions actually in use while the feedback loops show the ways that the foundation’s three strategies – mentoring, recognition, and dissemination – trigger “reinforcing” cycles that could leverage increased results over time.
Julia is utilizing the grantmaking phase of the Lemelson Foundation's new Invention for Sustainable Development program to maximize advances in learning in the field, as well as have a positive impact on people's lives. This program seeks to unleash invention and innovation in developing countries in order to advance sustainable development. The research and relationship building for this program culminated in a strategy symposium in 2003 in which 20 leaders from a dozen countries aided the Foundation in developing the framework for this new international program.
Another effort entails building the Foundation as an integrated entity by creating synergies and mutual learning opportunities between the Foundation's U.S. activities in support of invention and innovation and the work of the new Invention for Sustainable Development program in developing countries. Julia and her colleagues seek to strengthen the new program through the Foundation's decade of experience with U.S. institutions such as the Smithsonian and MIT, and also plan to increase the emphasis on social and environmental sustainability within activities supported in the U.S.
Chris Page
Director, Climate and Energy Strategy
Yahoo! Inc.
Prior to joining Yahoo!, Chris was a senior consultant on the Energy and Resources Team at Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a Colorado-based “think-and-do tank” founded by energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins. In this role, Page was responsible for assessing energy efficiency opportunities for commercial and industrial clients, and has helped to design models to help electricity utilities reduce greenhouse emissions. She also provided counsel to business networks on corporate social responsibility practices, and led lectures on sustainable business practices at National Taiwan University, Peking University, and University of Colorado Leeds School of Business. Prior to working at RMI, Page was a field instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School and a writer/editor for National Public Radio's "Living on Earth.”
While living in Colorado, Chris was a member of the all-volunteer Mountain Rescue Aspen team in Colorado, responsible for assisting lost and injured parties in the Rocky Mountains. She has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from Brown University and a Masters in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Cynthia Pansing
Principal, Changing Tastes Consultants
St. Paul, MN
Cynthia’s areas of practice include environmental planning and policy, strategic planning, facilitation, organizational management, community outreach, communications, evaluation, and fundraising. She has worked with business associations, diverse community organizations, NGOs, government agencies, universities and communities to identify and develop sustainable solutions, particularly in the areas of food systems, energy, transportation, air and water quality, community health and environmental justice.
Until spring 2007, Cynthia served as the executive director of the Mississippi River Basin Alliance (MRBA), a 130-member organization that covered the 33 state basin, with offices in Minnesota, the St. Louis, MO region, and Louisiana. MRBA connected, coordinated, and empowered diverse individuals and organizations to protect and restore the health of the river and communities. Before becoming executive director with MRBA, Cynthia was the statewide coordinator of the Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships program at the University of Minnesota. This program draws together communities and university researchers to improve the health of rural Minnesota regions in the areas of agriculture, alternative energy, water quality, forestry, and ecotourism. Concurrently, Cynthia became one of the founding partners of the Green Lands Blue Waters initiative (a consortium of land grant universities and NGOs – www.greenlandsbluewaters.org), aimed at growing the bioeconomy from the Mississippi headwaters to the Gulf by promoting the adoption of perennial crops.
For Cynthia, how we succeed in developing rural areas, particularly in the food and energy sectors, will have critical implications for the sustainability and resiliency of local communities and the most vulnerable populations. It will also have important ramifications for how we anticipate and address regional, national and global concerns at the local level. This significance only increases with the growing impacts of climate change.
Angela Park
Director, Diversity Matters: catalysts for environmental and social change and Consultant on diversity, inclusion, leadership development and organizational change.
Hartland Four Corners, VT
Angela Park is a consultant to foundations, nonprofits, educational institutions, and companies and director of Diversity Matters, a project that aims to make diversity and inclusion foundational assets of environmental and social change leaders and organizations. In addition, she serves as a consultant with the Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group and Elsie Y. Cross and Associates and is a writer with articles published most recently in Grist Magazine and The Diversity Factor.
As a trainer, consultant, facilitator, and coach, she has worked with clients including the Ford Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, Environmental Grantmakers Association, Yale University, Trust for Public Land, FedEx, United Technologies, Eileen Fisher, and the New England Aquarium.
Previously, Angela worked at The White House in both terms of the Clinton/Gore administration, managed state level sustainable development initiatives at the Center for Policy Alternatives, and was a cofounder and deputy director of the Environmental Leadership Program. Angela has testified before Congress and state legislatures; consulted to community-based organizations, government agencies, and national social and environmental policy organizations; and lectured at universities across the country. Angela graduated from the NTL Institute's Diversity Practitioner Certificate Program, and was named a Young Woman of Achievement by the Women's Information Network in Washington, DC.
Angela used the skills and opportunities of the fellowship to launch Diversity Matters. She is integrating systems concepts into the organization's training curriculum and communications programs. This includes testing assumptions about the root causes of the lack of diversity in the environmental field, mapping impacts and dynamics of interpersonal interactions and organizational policies, and making visible the mental models that can thwart well-intended organizational efforts.
Shanna Ratner
Principal, Yellow Wood Associates
St. Albans, VT
Shanna is creating a cooperative learning community of economic development consultants, incorporating principles of systems thinking and organizational learning.
Shanna has worked for the past 18 years as a consultant in rural community economic development in the United States. Her clients include federal, state, and local government, the non-profit sector, educational institutions, citizen groups, and foundations.
In addition to consulting, Shanna’s current work includes training in a trademarked program called “You Get What You Measure.” The program helps diverse individuals identify shared goals, understand what it means to make progress toward those goals, analyze indicators of progress in a systems context, identify key leverage points, develop measures of change in key leverage points, test underlying assumptions, create and implement measurement plans, reflect on their learnings, etc. Through another project, Green Community Technologies, she and colleagues are developing a service that will assist small rural communities in assessing potential applications of alternative technologies to municipal infrastructure. This begins with assistance in creating an inventory of municipal infrastructure, something most rural communities don't have, assessing its condition in light of current and anticipated future demand, and prioritizing areas for further work. The further work includes an assessment of applications of alternative technologies, including comparative life cycle costing, and sharing of information with the public. They also help in finding financing and offer technical assistance. Part of the vision of the program is to look at every element of infrastructure in relation to every other element, rather than in isolation, and to consider approaches like source reduction as opposed to treatment.
During the Fellows Program, Shanna decided to work more collaboratively with other businesses that provide community development expertise, and she has recently developed an agreement with a highly respected firm with complementary skills. She is also using stocks-and-flows diagramming to develop a sophisticated theory of community wealth.
Agnieszka Rawa
Senior Project Manager and Sustainable Development Specialist, Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM)
Washington, DC
Since completing the fellowship program in 2004, Agnieszka has utilized systems tools and skills in a variety of ways. In 2004 she used them to test the feasibility of creating a Center for Biodiversity in Venezuela and working as a consultant to ConocoPhillips Venezuela, she facilitated a series of collaborative workshops between this energy Company, not-for profit organizations, community representatives and scientists from several academic and research organizations to evaluate potential opportunities to preserve biodiversity in the Gulf of Paria (part of the Orinoco Delta), Venezuela. As part of this process, she drew extensively on the skill of visioning: What would this center look like? Who would be involved? What would they be doing? She also completed a systems analysis to identify intended and unintended consequences of the Center and helped to identify ways to encourage local community participation and to contribute to the social and environmental sustainability of the region. As of 2007, the Center is still under consideration and communities are being involved and trained to monitor biodiversity in their region.
In 2006 and 2007, Agnieszka also worked on energy development (hydroelectric dam and hydrocarbon development) projects in Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru and Argentina – and she continues to utilize leadership and presentation skills reinforced by the Fellowship. In each case, she is helping to ensure that the complex sensitivities and priorities of indigenous communities in areas of proposed projects are identified, understood and included in the decision making process during project planning.
Throughout her career, and increasingly since completing the Fellowship, Agnieszka contributes to promoting dialogue among the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. For example in December 2006, as part of a conference hosted by the Inter American Development Bank in Salvador Bahia, Brazil she lead a participatory dialogue between a state oil and gas company (Petrobras), a conservation NGO (Instituto BioAtlantica), a re-granting organization (Casa) and the diverse audience that attended the meeting. Similarly, while with Ecology and Environment, between 2003 and 2005, she chaired numerous Sustainability workshops. The small (25-30 people) environment at these seminars promoted close and rewarding interactions between representatives of different sectors, both during the formal presentations, discussions, as well as during the informal dialogue that ensued during hikes, bike rides and other outdoor activities.
Amália Souza
Executive Director, Center for Socio-Environmental Support (CASA)
São Paulo, Brazil
Amália has worked with NGOs and the funding community between Brazil and the US since the mid-1980s. She works to support indigenous groups, rainforest preservation, international communication among NGOs, and now has been moving toward building more bridges between the private sector and the social/environmental one.
For 2 years, she was chair of the Global South Task Force for a six-year-old coalition of progressive foundations called Grantmakers without Borders, whose aim is to encourage more international grantmaking by US foundations. Some of Amália's other recent work has included a consulting job for AVEDA Corporation, a cosmetics company based in Minnesota, involving an evaluation of their ten-year partnership with an Amazonian Indian tribe from which they source some organically grown dyes for their products. A larger, lifetime project is to build an intentional community in her hometown, Cunha ecovilacunha.org -- , in the Atlantic Rainforest just above the Atlantic coast between Rio and Sao Paulo. Amália and others want to explore all aspects of a self-sufficient lifestyle, with appropriate energy generation technologies as well as food production, as a model for neighbors and interested parties to use in their own properties.
Some of Amália’s other recent work has included a consulting job for AVEDA Corporation, a cosmetics company based in Minnesota, involving an evaluation of their ten-year partnership with an Amazonian Indian tribe from which they source some organically grown dyes for their products. She has also been organizing a solidarity trip of US based organizations to visit the Xavante Indian Tribe in Brazil in the second half of 2004, following the Xavante's interest in building alliances.
A larger, lifetime project is to build an intentional community in her hometown, Cunha, in the Atlantic Rainforest just above the Atlantic coast between Rio and Sao Paulo. Amália and others want to explore all aspects of a self-sufficient lifestyle, with appropriate energy generation technologies as well as food production, as a model for neighbors and interested parties to use in their own properties. Amália has also just finished Joanna Macy's facilitators training, learning better how to apply Joanna’s experiential work based on systems thinking, ecopsychology and deep ecology.
For her Fellowship project, Amália is using both systems and inquiry tools in the development of a new Brazilian foundation to support grassroots environmental NGOs.
Mark Spalding
President, The Ocean Foundation (Washington, DC), Executive Director, Fundacion Bahia de Loreto (Baja California Sur, Mexico) and Executive Director, St. Kitts Foundation (Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis)
Mark is in Anchorage on a sabbatical from teaching for about a year. He arrived in Alaska in March from San Diego.
His first week in Alaska, Mark participated in an International Bering Sea conference. After working on the shared Mexico-US border for the last 12 years, Mark was impressed that he could have substituted Mexico and the US and conducted the same discussion regarding the level of cooperation and coordination among federal governments, as well as tribes, families and ecosystems split by the arbitrary border. He has also recently returned from a meeting in Washington DC regarding the use of legal advocacy for protection of coastal and ocean resources.
Formerly, Mark directed the Environmental Law and Civil Society Program, and edited the Journal of Environment and Development at the Graduate School of International Relations & Pacific Studies (IR/PS), University of California at San Diego. In addition to lecturing at IR/PS, Mark has taught at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD's Muir College, UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, and University of San Diego's School of Law.
Lynn Stoddard
Environmental Analyst, Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP)
Hartford, CT
Lynn’s recent work at the CT Department of Environmental Protection focuses on attacking a huge global issue (climate change) at the state and local level.
Connecticut signed on to a regional climate change action plan in 2001, along with other New England states and Eastern Canadian provinces. The plan sets ambitious goals for greenhouse gas emission reductions in the region. During 2003, CT state agencies, businesses, non-profit organizations, academia, and the general public participated in a stakeholder dialogue to develop recommendations to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to attain the regional goals. The stakeholder report and current initiatives to reduce CT’s greenhouse gas emissions can be found at www.ctclimatechange.com.
Since the release of the stakeholder recommendations, the legislature and Governor have strengthened the state’s commitment. Recently the Governor committed to make the following purchases for state agency energy needs: 20% renewable energy by 2010, 50% by 2020 and 100% by 2050. In this session the CT legislature passed bills to adopt the California Low Emissions Vehicle II program, establish minimum energy efficiency standards for appliances, and establish a state goal to support the regional greenhouse gas reduction goals set by the New England Governors/Eastern Canadian Premiers.
Lynn continues to work with stakeholders on climate change outreach and education and on implementation of stakeholders’ policies. She is creating a series of Shifting the Burden loops to further analyze and reflect on various stakeholder climate change recommendations. She will share this work with her colleagues to help clarify and refine policies to be more effective.
Kathy Tibbits
Strategy Group, Cherokee Nation
Stilwell, OK
Kathy’s background is in law and political science. With her husband Dennis she lives in rural Stilwell, Oklahoma. Since 2000, Kathy’s work supports tribal sovereignty for the Cherokee Nation, which has about 60,000 resident citizens in its 14-county service area of Northeastern Oklahoma. For Cherokee Nation, she helped to start the Cherokee Small Farm Project and was in on the beginning of Oklahoma Food Cooperative, which is both a producer cooperative and a consumer cooperative now with over 800 members and which has sold about $250,000 of made-in-Oklahoma farm products with 95% of proceeds going to the farmer producers. Via nonprofit Legacy Cultural Learning Community, she helps in preserving Cherokee native plant traditions (by grant writing and seed-saving) so that young people have a cultural connection to the Earth. For conservation group Save The Illinois River, she recently produced a 3-day Earth Day Songwriters’ Music Jam, and helped to bring together a CD single that teaches about river protection from a systems view. She’s working on a collaborative collection of 15 groups of musicians performing 15 original songs about the Illinois River, which span 2 generations of river culture. As cofounder of the Cherokee Film Festival, she delights in the youth filmmaker programs which help rural Indian kids learn and teach native language Cherokee myths in claymation, and in seeing preteens develop technically and creatively as they learn about film. The Festival is now in its 3rd year, and attracts Indigenous productions from New Zealand and Central America, giving the little town of Tahlequah a window on the world.
“I didn’t come in contact with much of it in formal school, but systems learning was an intuitive fit with a nature-wonderment ethic that my parents instilled in me. The SI coursework clicked for me. The enrichment training of SI has been something I use every day in my work, for understanding the implications of current events and in helping my Tribe to get accurate results with our policies, and in directioning our outcomes toward our long term goals of healthy communities, meaningfully enriched lives and keeping the lifeline of our culture. It has been an indescribable fulfillment to find SI and the Fellows. I treasure the insights, and the trust, and the great minds and hearts, the nourishment, and the synergy of these experiences which are now a part of everything I do. These mutual bonds are deeper than friendship and the journey is a lifetime one.”
Ellen Wolfe
Resero Consultings
Granite Bay, CA
Ellen’s primary focus has been on participating in energy deregulation market design so as to develop open markets that provide proper incentives. She generally works with generation owners, wholesale energy trading companies, municipalities, or the organizations that operate the electric markets or manage the electric system, to help work through the details of alternative market design scenarios. Lately, she has been developing training seminars to help interested parties over the hurdles of understanding various alternative market structures.
One possible topic she is considering is modeling the infiltration of real-time pricing and end user response. While fundamental price signals and resulting price response in the electricity industry seem to make incredible sense, virtually no adoption of these programs and practices has occurred, and it is unclear why. Another possibility is to examine the role of regulatory agencies in developing sufficient generating capabilities and in promoting sustainable production sources. Ellen is also interested in the long-run effects of implementing various market designs. Whereas she has done a lot of work looking at immediate cost/benefit tradeoffs, such efforts usually make gross assumptions about long run feedback results.