POLICY INTEGRITY - Key Persons

Adam Finkel

Job Titles:

Member of the Advisory Board
Member of the Board of Advisors

Adam Finkel is one of the nation's leading experts in the evolving field of risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis. He has 25 years of experience in improving methods of analysis and making risk-based decisions to protect workers and the general public from environmental hazards, including five years of service as Director of Health Standards Programs at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). From 2008 to 2017, he was Executive Director of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Dr. Finkel is currently Clinical Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Al Huang

al..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Environmental Justice Director

Al Huang is the Environmental Justice Director at IPI and a lawyer. His work utilizes a model that focuses on providing legal and technical assistance, when invited, to grassroots groups in low-income communities and communities of color facing disproportionate burdens, such as toxic pollution. The foundation of his work is deeply rooted in the Principles of Environmental Justice and Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, where social change comes from the ground up. Prior to coming to IPI, Al directed the environmental justice work and served as a Senior Attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for 17 years. During his time at NRDC, he guided the growth and development of environmental justice and equity work institutionally, while also litigating cases on behalf of environmental justice communities around the country. He also provided legal, policy and technical assistance to countless community-based grassroots organizations. Al has also worked as a staff attorney at the Environmental Health Coalition, a grassroots environmental justice organization in San Diego; legal fellow at the ACLU of Northern California; Senior Legal and Policy Analyst for Coming Clean; and legal fellow at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. He has taught environmental justice law and practice as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and NYU Law School. He currently serves on the Environmental Justice committee of the American Bar Association and is also an appointed member of the New York City Environmental Justice Advisory Board. He received his J.D. and Masters degree in Environmental Law & Policy from Vermont Law School, and his B.A. from Hamilton College. He can be reached at al.huang@nyu.edu

Albert Monroe

Job Titles:

Member of the Advisory Board
Member of the Board of Advisors
Economist

Albert Monroe is an economist with wide-ranging environmental, energy, natural resources, land use, criminal justice, housing, governmental (federal, state, and local), disaster preparedness, and defense experience and expertise. He is a published academic and expert on the Clean Air Act, energy efficiency, and climate change. Dr. Monroe has a Ph.D. from Harvard in economics and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He has served as Chief of Staff of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and as a professor at the Quinnipiac School of Law and the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Dr. Monroe currently works as an economist in the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, where he conducts use and economic analyses for chemical risk evaluations and regulations.

Alyssa Schiff

al..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Operations Associate
Institute for Policy Integrity As an Operations Associate

Alyssa Schiff joined the Institute for Policy Integrity as an Operations Associate in July 2023. She recently earned her MS in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management from The New School. Prior to this position, she worked in operations further uptown at the Fashion Institute of Technology and in environmental justice and policy with the US Environmental Protection Agency. She graduated from the University of Delaware in 2020 with a BA in Environmental Studies and Ancient Greek & Roman Studies. She can be reached at alyssa.schiff@nyu.edu

Ana Varela Varela

an..@nyu.edu

Ana Varela Varela is an affiliated scholar at Policy Integrity. She completed a Ph.D. in Sustainable Development at Columbia University in 2020, where she specialized in environmental and urban economics. Her research leverages methods from microeconometrics, data science, and remote sensing to improve our understanding of how environmental impacts unfold in an unequal and heterogeneous world. Ana also holds a Master in City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as degrees in Environmental Studies from Imperial College London, and in Civil Engineering from the University of A Coruña, Spain. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a consultant in sustainable infrastructure and urban planning projects. After working as an Economic Fellow at Policy Integrity, Ana joined the Amsterdam School of Economics at the University of Amsterdam as an Assistant Professor. She can be reached at ana.varela@nyu.edu.

Andrew Stawasz

an..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Legal Fellow

Andy holds a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School and a B.S. with Honors from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Andy's interest in rationalizing regulatory decisionmaking began before law school, when he worked as a Research Associate at Data for Decisions LLC, a Massachusetts-based economic consulting firm. There, he worked on projects relating to the full social and economic benefits of vaccination and other global health interventions that resulted in numerous peer-reviewed articles and more general publications. During law school, he undertook extensive research projects regarding how to improve regulatory cost-benefit analysis. He was among the inaugural cohort of Brooks Institute Emerging Scholar Fellows and served as Executive Technical Editor for the Harvard Journal on Legislation. His work at Policy Integrity focuses on rigorously rationalizing the government's use of cost-benefit analysis and the social cost of greenhouse gases. He previously served as Advisor at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Bethany A. Davis Noll

Bethany Davis Noll, an affiliated scholar at Policy Integrity, is the Executive Director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at the NYU School of Law and an adjunct professor at NYU. Bethany also serves as co-chair of the Environmental Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association. Prior to joining the State Impact Center, Bethany was Litigation Director at Policy Integrity. She previously worked as Assistant Solicitor General in the New York Attorney General's Office, where she earned the Louis J. Lefkowitz Memorial Award for her work on several environmental appeals. And she was as a litigation associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and an adjunct lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. She also served as a clerk for the Honorable Chester J. Straub in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and for the Honorable Shira A. Scheindlin in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. Bethany received a J.D. with distinction from Stanford Law School and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Barnard College.

Boris Bershteyn

Job Titles:

Member of the Advisory Board
Member of the Board of Advisors
Partner at Skadden

Boris Bershteyn is a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, LLP. He served as acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2012 and 2013, and as General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) starting 2011. In 2010 and 2011, Bershteyn served as Special Assistant to the President and Associate White House Counsel, focusing on legal issues in regulatory, economic, health, and environmental policy. In 2009 and 2010, he served as the Deputy General Counsel of OMB. He also served as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge José A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He holds a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Stanford University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Bershteyn serves as the Chair of the Institute for Policy Integrity's Board of Advisors.

Bridget Pals

br..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Legal Fellow

Bridget Pals is a Legal Fellow at Policy Integrity, where she focuses on climate risk and resiliency and worker and consumer protection. Pals has recently returned to Policy Integrity after taking leave to clerk for the Honorable Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Pals earned her J.D., magna cum laude, from New York University School of Law where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the New York University Environmental Law Journal. During law school, she had the immense pleasure of working with Earthjustice's Alaska team, Natural Resources Defense Council's litigation team, Institute for Policy Integrity's regulatory policy clinic, and the New York State Office of the Attorney General's Environmental Protection Bureau. Prior to law school, Pals was a research analyst in environmental economics, researching ways to leverage predictive analytics to improve environmental policy implementation and enforcement at the local, state, and federal levels. She received her A.B., with general honors, from the University of Chicago, majoring in physics and economics. She can be reached at bridget.pals@nyu.edu.

Caroline Cecot

Job Titles:

Assistant Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George

Caroline Cecot is an Assistant Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Her research interests include cost-benefit analysis, regulatory reform, and environmental regulation, and her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews. Previously, she was Legal Fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity, Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Law and Economics at Vanderbilt Law School, and Research Associate at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center. She served as a law clerk to Judge Raymond J. Lohier, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Cecot graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude with an A.B. degree in economics and from Vanderbilt University with a Ph.D. in law and economics. She also holds a J.D. from Vanderbilt Law School, where she was the Senior Articles Editor for the Vanderbilt Law Review and Articles Editor for the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review

Charles T. Wehland

Job Titles:

Member of the Advisory Board
Member of the Board of Advisors
Partner at Jones Day 's Chicago

Charles T. Wehland is a partner at Jones Day's Chicago office. He focuses his practice on environmental law and climate change, helping clients develop environmental management systems and achieve effective resolutions of enforcement and cleanup issues. He works on matters involving greenhouse gas emission from electric power plants, Clean Air Act permits, and the cleanup of contaminated drinking water wells and river sediments. He has defended clients against government enforcement initiatives directed at electric utilities, petroleum refineries, and sulfuric acid plants. Chuck regularly writes and lectures on environmental subjects. He is active in several bar associations, including the Environmental Law Institute and the Environment, Energy and Resources Section of the ABA.

Chris Holt

ch..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Economic Fellow

Chris Holt is an Economic Fellow at Policy Integrity. Chris earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland. His research focuses on environmental economics, market design, and industrial organization. In particular, his recent work examines the interaction of market power and environmental policy in the Texas wholesale electricity market. During his graduate studies, Chris held teaching assistant and graduate research positions, and served as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). His EDF fellowship involved addressing how wholesale electricity market design can facilitate the transition to a decarbonized energy system. Prior to his graduate studies, he worked for several years as an economic consultant focusing on antitrust matters across a variety of industries. He can be reached at chris.holt@nyu.edu.

Christoph Graf

ch..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Senior Economist
Senior Economist at the Institute

Christoph Graf is a Senior Economist at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. His research focuses on energy and climate policy supporting the energy transition to a sustainable, low-carbon future. In those areas, he has published several articles in international peer-reviewed academic journals using tools from economics, operations research, machine learning, and public policy. Before joining Policy Integrity, Dr. Graf held several research positions, including at Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, and the Florence School of Regulation at the European University Institute. He taught at several universities in Vienna and received a diploma in Economics as well as a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Vienna. He can be reached at christoph.graf@nyu.edu and more information can be found at this link.

Dena Adler

de..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Senior Attorney

Dena Adler is a Senior Attorney at Policy Integrity. She works on issues of federal environmental regulation with a focus on air quality, power plants, and climate resilience. Prior to joining Policy Integrity, she was an attorney with the clean air team at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in Washington, D.C. At EDF, she worked to defend climate and clean air protections from Trump-era regulatory rollbacks and advance future protections essential to safeguarding public health and the environment. Her portfolio included work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, protect communities from toxic air pollution, and uphold the use of the best available science in the regulatory process. Previously, she served as a climate law fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. At the Sabin Center, she researched climate litigation trends and worked to develop legal and regulatory tools to increase climate resilience and advance efforts to adapt to a changing climate. Dena earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and a Masters of Environmental Management from Yale School of the Environment. Dena received her B.A. magna cum laude from Brown University with honors in Environmental Studies. She can be reached at dena.adler@nyu.edu. Dena is admitted to practice law in the State of New York and the District of Columbia.

Derek Sylvan - Chief Strategy Officer

de..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Strategy Director
Strategy Director at the Institute

Derek Sylvan is the strategy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity and an adjunct professor of environmental studies at NYU. His research and writing focuses on issues including sustainable infrastructure and decarbonization strategies. He previously worked as a senior consultant with Context Group, advising multinational companies on sustainability issues. Additionally, Sylvan has more than eight years of experience in media and documentary film. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Hill, and other outlets. Sylvan has a master's degree in public policy from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs as well as a bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University. He can be reached at derek.sylvan@nyu.edu.

Don Goodson

Job Titles:

Deputy Director
Deputy Director of the Institute

Don Goodson is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. Don's substantive work focuses on litigation and appellate advocacy, cross-cutting legal issues affecting Policy Integrity, and climate-related financial risk. He has authored numerous briefs in federal courts and articles on emerging developments in administrative law, including the major questions doctrine. Before joining Policy Integrity, Don clerked for Associate Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and John Paul Stevens (Ret.) of the U.S. Supreme Court; Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and Judge Alison J. Nathan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (now of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit). He also worked at multinational law firms, where he focused on appellate advocacy and dispositive motion practice, especially in the area of securities litigation.

Dr. Burçin Ünel

Job Titles:

Executive Director
Executive Director of the Institute
Expert

Dr. Burçin Ünel is the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. Dr. Ünel is an expert in utility regulation and environmental and energy policy. She has authored over 100 papers, policy briefs, public comments, and reports on numerous energy and environmental policy issues. Her articles on how to design policies for the future of the grid have been selected by the Environmental Law Institute as one of the year's top five environmental law articles, each year from 2017 to 2019. Dr. Unel also serves on NYISO's Environmental Advisory Council where she uses her expertise in utility regulation and energy policy to help NYISO build and maintain New York's "grid of the future." Prior to her current role, Dr. Ünel had been the institute's Energy Policy Director, leading Policy Integrity's stakeholder involvement both at the federal and state level in front of regulatory agencies such as public utility commissions and FERC. She also served as a Senior Fellow in the Department of Energy's Office of Policy, where she worked on domestic energy and climate policy issues, focusing on federal clean energy legislation, clean energy deployment, and infrastructure planning. Before joining Policy Integrity, Dr. Ünel held faculty positions at the Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the University of Florida, and the Department of Economics at Bogaziçi University in Turkey. She also taught as an adjunct faculty member at the City College of New York and NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She received a B.A. in Economics from Bogaziçi University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Florida. She can be reached at burcin.unel@nyu.edu or (212) 992-6285.

E. Donald Elliott

Job Titles:

Member of the Advisory Board
Member of the Board of Advisors

E. Donald Elliott is a leading academic expert on improving the relationship between law and science, specializing in environmental law and chemical regulation. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Law, Yale Law School and Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches a course comparing chemical regulation in the U.S. and E.U. He has been on the Yale Law School faculty since 1981, and is the author of over 70 articles. He is also senior of counsel in the Washington D.C. office of Covington & Burling LLP, practicing in the firm's Environmental Practice Group. Prior to joining Covington in 2013, he was a partner in Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, chairing the firm's worldwide Environment, Health and Safety Department. Formerly Elliott was Assistant Administrator and General Counsel, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1989-91, where he was EPA's primary liaison to OIRA. He is the author of "TQM-ing OMB: Or What Is Wrong With Executive Order 12291 and What President Clinton Should Do About It in Law and Contemporary Problems" (1994), which was one of the first academic articles suggesting reforms of the OIRA process.

Elizabeth B. Stein

el..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

State Policy Director

Elizabeth Stein joins the Institute for Policy Integrity as the State Policy Director in March 2023. Elizabeth's work focuses on utility regulation and environmental and energy policy. Before joining Policy Integrity, Elizabeth was Lead Counsel, Energy Transition, at Environmental Defense Fund. In that role, Elizabeth led EDF's state utility commission advocacy in support of widespread electrification of trucks and buses, and contributed to relevant research efforts. In previous roles at EDF, Elizabeth's work also encompassed electric utility business model innovations, leveraging distributed energy resources for improved environmental outcomes, sustainable electric rate design issues, emissions reductions from the buildings sector, and natural gas system regulation. She served on the Technical Advisory Committee for New York City's Energy Infrastructure Pathways Study in 2019, and was recognized by City & State's Energy and Environment Power 100 list in 2020 and 2021. She is currently serving as co-chair of the Energy Committee of the NYC Bar Association. She received an A.B., magna cum laude, from Harvard University, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from NYU Law. Elizabeth is admitted to practice law in New York. She can be reached at elizabeth.stein@nyu.edu

Erin Shortell

er..@nyu.edu

Job Titles:

Legal Fellow

Erin Shortell is a Climate Risk Legal Fellow at Policy Integrity. Before joining Policy Integrity, Erin worked as a capital markets associate at Latham & Watkins's London office. At Latham, Erin represented issuer clients in high-yield bond and equity transactions. She also maintained an active pro bono practice focused on domestic violence and immigration law. Erin received her law degree from Harvard Law School, concurrently completing a Master of Public Health with a specialization in Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. During her dual degree program, Erin volunteered as a Student Attorney at the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic, where she worked on projects aimed at alleviating harms to human and environmental health from nuclear weapons, incendiary weapons, and other weapons of war. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Harvard College.

Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr.

Job Titles:

Member of the Advisory Board
Member of the Board of Advisors

Frederick A. O. ("Fritz") Schwarz, Jr. is a distinguished lawyer whose career spans four decades. He currently serves as a Senior Counsel at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP; Chief Counsel at New York University Law School's Brennan Center for Justice; Chair of the Board of Atlantic Philanthropies; and a board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Vera Institute of Justice, both of whose Boards he chaired for almost 20 years. Schwarz has balanced his private practice with a series of critically important public service assignments, such as serving as Chief Counsel to the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activity (1975-1976), an inquiry that uncovered decades of abuse by the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies; Corporation Counsel of the City of New York (1982-1986); and Chair of the New York City Campaign Finance Board (2003-2008).