NORTHEAST-MIDWEST INSTITUTE - Key Persons
A former U.S. Senate staffer and executive at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Mr. Echols currently serves as President of Terra Altus, a conservation consulting firm headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia.
Arthur Rypinski has participated in policy analysis, development, and implementation in the intersecting fields of economic, energy, environment, and transportation policy across four U.S. Administrations. He served as the senior energy policy staffer in the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation (2004-2016) and earlier as an economist in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Policy (1998-2004). Among the areas where he has made contributions:
Economics of petroleum markets and prospects for crude oil-by-rail;
Fuel economy and pipeline safety rulemakings;
Climate impacts on transportation for the National Climate Assessment;
Evaluation of competitive transportation grant applications under the TIGER program;
Federal response to hurricanes and other energy-related emergencies;
Participated in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations as an agency specialist;
Development and elaboration of rules for voluntary greenhouse gas reporting.
Before joining the Department of Energy's Policy Office, he served as an economist and team leader at the Energy Information Administration (1989-1998), were he led a team responsible for reporting on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and collecting voluntary reports of greenhouse gas emissions and reductions. He participated in the development of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's guidelines for greenhouse gas emissions inventories, and reviewed the national inventories of participating foreign governments. Other special projects included participating in the development of the Bush Administration's National Energy Strategy and a special study on energy subsidies.
Mr. Rypinski has also worked in the private sector advising clients in the Sultanate of Oman, Turkey, and Pakistan on development planning, petroleum and electric power development, solar energy, energy planning, and energy modeling, and taught classes on greenhouse gas emissions estimation in the Philippines for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Mr. Rypinski holds a B.S. in Economics and International Studies from the American University, and a M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics.
Dan Dozier has over 40 years of experience as an attorney and mediator of complex environmental and public policy matters. He has been appointed by United States District Courts from around the Nation to mediate complex environmental cases.
As an attorney specializing in the mediation of complex civil litigation and environmental disputes, Mr. Dozier is an expert in environmental policy issues including CERCLA and RCRA hazardous waste matters and Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act cases. Mr. Dozier has also served as an expert witness on cost allocation issues in several court cases.
Mr. Dozier has been affiliated with the law firm of Press Dozier & Hamelburg, LLC from 2006 to the present as a partner and currently as Of Counsel to the firm. Previously Mr. Dozier served as Director of the Washington DC Office, CDR Associates, Director of Consensus and Dispute Resolution at SRA International, Inc.; Vice President, TLI Systems, Inc.; and as Senior Mediator and Project Manager at Clean Sites, Inc.
Mr. Dozier was chief legal official for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Agency; a Liaison Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States; Director of the Congressional Liaison Office at the (then) Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; Executive Assistant to the Mayor, City of Detroit; and as Assistant General Counsel, International Union, United Automobile Workers (UAW).
Mr. Dozier was awarded his J.D. by Wayne State University Law School, Detroit, Michigan in 1971 and was a recipient of the University's Center for Urban Studies Fellowship. He received a B.A. degree in history at Wayne State University in 1968. He has been admitted to the practice of law in Michigan, the District of Columbia, and Maryland and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Maryland State Bar. Mr. Dozier was an adjunct professor at the Vermont Law School where he taught Environmental Dispute Resolution from 1989 to 2000.
Job Titles:
- Partner at the Law Firm Nixon Peabody LLC
Deborah DeMasi is a partner at the law firm Nixon Peabody LLC in Washington, DC. She has extensive experience in finance matters representing equity and other funds investing in domestic and international companies and infrastructure projects, project developers and sponsors, project companies, institutional investors, investment companies, and lenders in the development, financing and refinancing, acquisition, divestiture, and workout of power and infrastructure projects; domestic and international project financings, including senior, subordinated, and mezzanine debt arrangements; public offerings and private placements of debt and equity securities; loan workouts and restructurings; sales and acquisitions of assets and partnership and limited liability interests and stock; and general commercial matters, including joint venture and partnering arrangements and structuring and restructuring of equity funds.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- President
- President and CEO of the Northeast - Midwest Institute
Dr. Michael J. Goff is President and CEO of the Northeast-Midwest Institute. A native of Philadelphia, he spent much of his career in Baltimore, and more recently in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Goff has three decades of senior executive experience in management, development, and communications, and a long-standing interest in government, public policy, and nonprofit institutions. From 2011 to 2015, he served as senior vice president and chief development officer at Independent Sector, a leadership organization representing and serving the nonprofit and philanthropic community nationwide. Dr. Goff also served for 21 years as vice president for development and college relations at Loyola University Maryland, from 1987 to 2008. During his tenure, he led five major capital campaigns, raising over $200 million in annual and capital support for the university, and also managed external relations, community relations, and media relations. Previously he served as director of planning and development at The Gilman School, also in Baltimore, from 1982 to 1987, and was special assistant to the president at Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, Pennsylvania, from 1977 to 1979.
Since 2008 Dr. Goff also teaches at The George Washington University as Professorial Lecturer in Political Science, teaching The American Presidency. He serves on the Board of Directors and as Treasurer of Common Cause Maryland.
Dr. Goff earned a Ph.D. in Government at Georgetown University in 2002, specializing in American Politics, Public Policy, and Political Theory. He also holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Political Science from Saint Joseph's University. His research on the impact of money and the media during the early stage of the presidential nomination process was published in 2004 in his book The Money Primary: The New Politics of the Early Presidential Nomination Process.
Job Titles:
- Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Directors
Former Maine State Governor John Baldacci is currently Senior Advisor for Economic Development and Government Relations at Pierce Atwood LLP, a regional law firm headquartered in Portland, Maine. Prior to his service as Maine's 73rd Governor, John represented Maine's Second District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1994 to 2002, serving on the House Agriculture Committee and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. He was first elected to public office in 1978 as a Bangor City Councilor, and also served 12 years as a member of the Maine State Senate from the 9th district. In 2011, after completing his two terms as governor, John accepted an appointment as the director of the Department of Defense's Military Health Care Reform Initiative where he worked with former Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Clifford L. Stanley, to conduct a full-scale review and evaluation of military health care and wellness. John is very active with many non-profit boards including serving as the chair for Jobs for America's Graduates, Inc., co-chair of Fix-the-Debt Maine, campaign co-chair for the Foundation for Maine's Community Colleges, and as a member of the Home Base Leadership Council. A Maine native, John is a graduate of the University of Maine.
Jack Wells has over 30 years' experience as a transportation economist and public policy analyst, including academic teaching and service in both the congressional and executive branches of the federal government. He has conducted research, drafted legislation, advised senior policymakers and international bankers, and developed policy on every mode of transportation, with particular expertise in the benefit-cost analysis of safety regulations and transportation infrastructure investment, strategies to reduce congestion, and airline and railroad competition.
He served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Transportation (2004 - 2014) and at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (2001 - 2004), and as Deputy Administrator at the Federal Railroad Administration (2000 - 2001). From 1993 to 2000 he served as a subcommittee staff director on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and previously conducted research on transportation economics and policy at the U.S. General Accounting Office. He has advised the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the European Investment Bank.
His academic work has included teaching economics at George Mason University (where he is currently a guest lecturer), editing the Journal of Transportation and Statistics, and serving on the boards of the Transportation Research Forum (TRF) and the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis (SBCA). He has a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Yale, both in Economics.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow
- Director of the Cambridge Centre for Evidence - Based Policing UK
Lawrence W. Sherman is Director of the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-Based Policing UK, and Wolfson Professor of Criminology Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, where he currently serves as Director of the Cambridge Police Executive Programme. Since beginning his career as a conscientious objector (to the war in Vietnam) serving as an analyst in the New York City Police Department, he has designed or led experiments in over 50 police agencies on four continents, and trained over 2,000 police officers and analysts in evidence-based policing.
A former President of the American Society of Criminology and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, he holds honorary degrees or medals from five universities and five learned societies. His research has focused on finding useful theories and effective policies for dealing with domestic violence, police corruption, gun crime, burglary, crime hot spots and harm spots, crime harm severity, police legitimacy, fatal shootings by police, crime victims, racial disparities in justice outcomes and other issues. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in two cases. His 1998 Lecture on "Evidence-based policing" has attracted thousands of police in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada to form a Society of Evidence-Based Policing in their countries to promote the production and application of research for improving policing. He spent most of his career at the University of Maryland, founded the PhD program and then Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999-2010, and served as Director of Research at the National Police Foundation in 1979-85.
Job Titles:
- Vice - Chair of the Board of Directors
- Managing Director at Smith Dawson & Andrews
Mary Cronin Brooks is the Managing Director at Smith Dawson & Andrews (SDA), a full service government relations firm in Washington, D.C. She joined SDA in 2010 after a career spanning federal, state and county government. Mary oversees the management of SDA's clients and assists the firm's clients with their policy and funding goals. She also works with private sector companies on government procurement, particularly in the defense and technology sectors. Most recently, Mary was Director of the bipartisan Northeast-Midwest Congressional Coalition (NEMW), where she managed a number of Congressional task forces, coordinating common policy interests among more than 70 Members of Congress representing 18 Northeast and Midwestern states. Prior to her service on Capitol Hill, Mary was Assistant Director of Government Relations for the Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools, the nation's 10th-largest school system, and Legislative Director to the Assistant Majority Whip in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Mary graduated from Saint Michael's College, holds a Master of Science in Public Affairs from the University of Massachusetts, McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, and a Master of Arts in Strategic Security Studies from the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University. She is a member of the Women in Government Relations and Women in International Trade professional societies and she serves on the development committee of the Washington School for Girls.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program at the Northeast - Midwest Institute
Matthew McKenna is the Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program at the Northeast-Midwest Institute. In his capacity, Matthew focuses on policy education and outreach on issues regarding the health of the Great Lakes and their surrounding communities. He works closely with Congressional offices and administrative agencies on Great Lakes protection and restoration initiatives that are aimed at providing economic sustainability throughout the region.
Before coming to the Northeast-Midwest Institute, Matthew served as a Government Policy Specialist in the government relations shop of a large, Midwest based law firm, where he focused on legislative and regulatory analysis and Congressional and administrative outreach. He also served as a legislative aide in the New York Congressional delegation.
Matthew received a Bachelor of Arts degree from The George Washington University, where he majored in Political Science and minored in Creative Writing.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board of Directors
Former Congressman Mike Michaud represented Maine's Second District in the U.S. House of Representatives from January 3, 2003 to January 3, 2015. In Congress, Michaud served as the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. He also served on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.Following his service in Congress, Mike Michaud served as Assistant Secretary of the Veterans Employment and Training Service (VETS) in the U.S. Department of Labor. He was nominated to this position by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate, being sworn in on December 2, 2015, and he served until January 20, 2017. As the Assistant Secretary, Michaud reported to the Secretary of Labor. VETS is the focal point in the federal government for veterans employment by preparing military service members for transition to civilian employment, providing veterans with services to assist them in getting good jobs, protecting veterans employment rights, and promoting veterans employment in the private sector. Prior to his service in Congress, Michaud served in the Maine State Senate from 1994 to 2002, serving as President in 2001 and President Pro Tempore in 2002, and he also served in the Maine State House of Representatives from 1980 to 1994. Michaud was born and raised in the Katahdin Region of Maine, and graduated from Schenck High School in East Millinocket, Maine. Prior to his political career, Michaud worked for over 29 years at the Great Northern Paper Company in East Millinocket.
Former U.S. Congressman Philip S. English is Senior Government Relations Adviser and Co-Chair of the government relations practice at Arent Fox. He assists Arent Fox clients in the areas of trade, health care, tax, and energy policy, as well as in state and municipal government operations. During seven terms in the U.S. Congress, he represented western Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District (now redistricted to the 16th Congressional District), serving from 1995 to 2009. He was a member of the Ways and Means Committee starting as a freshman Congressman. As a Member of Congress, he was a strong advocate in the areas of health care, energy, tax, and trade policy. He also was a long-time member of the Joint Economic Committee and co-chair of the Congressional Economic Leadership Institute. He also serves on the board of several leading policy organizations, including the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group, and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a leader in technology policy. He also currently serves as Coordinator of the Healthcare Group Purchasing Industry Initiative (HGPII), which enforces industry standards, promotes best business practices, and monitors adherence to its ethics code by healthcare group purchasing organizations. He also is Co-Chair of the Institute for Representative Government (IRG) and serves as Honorary Co-Chairman of the Center for Strategic Tax Reform (CSTR) and as Chairman of CSTR's Board of Advisers.
Robert Clarke Brown of Cleveland, Ohio is Treasurer of Case Western Reserve University. Prior to joining Case Western Reserve in 2007, Mr. Brown was Capital Markets Advisor at the U.S. Department of Transportation, where he assisted the Department in developing market-based financing initiatives, including implementation of the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, the first federal credit enhancement program for surface transportation. Earlier, Mr. Brown was an investment banker in Lehman Brothers' transportation finance group, and he practiced law with the firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Cleveland. He also practiced and taught at the Institute for Public Interest Representation in Washington, D.C. During his military service, he was an engineer on the staff of the late Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, who fathered the U.S. Navy's nuclear power program. Mr. Brown is a long-time member, appointed by President Clinton and re-appointed by President Bush, of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the operator of Washington National and Washington Dulles Airports and the developer of the Dulles Metrorail project. He is a member of the Ohio and District of Columbia Bars.
A former two time U.S. Asst. Secretary of Energy (Fossil Energy and Policy & International Affairs), as well as Chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission, Mr. Gee is a practicing attorney and President of Gee Strategies Group LLC, a Washington, DC-based energy and utilities consulting firm.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Chairman Emeritus in Memoriam )
Steve LaTourette was Chair of the Northeast-Midwest Institute's Board of Directors from 2013 until he passed away in 2016 following a long illness. He was an unceasing advocate for the region and for the work of the Northeast-Midwest Institute. Steve was a nine-term Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1995 to 2013. He was highly respected by his colleagues in the House, and an outpouring of tributes and sympathy from current and former Representatives and Senators has followed the announcement of his passing. During four years as Chair of the NEMWI Board of Directors, Steve sought to strengthen the work and impact of the Institute. He worked tirelessly to ensure that the needs of the region were in the forefront, especially economic and environmental priorities, most notably transportation, manufacturing, water quality, and Great Lakes issues. Steve LaTourette's distinguished career of public service, his extraordinary leadership of the Northeast-Midwest Institute, and his legacy working on behalf of Ohio and the region leave a legacy that will not be forgotten.
L. Sue Andersen has more than 25 years' experience as a health law attorney, consultant and law professor. She began her career as a legal services attorney assisting elderly and poor clients to establish eligibility and obtain services in a wide variety of public benefit programs, particularly with Medicaid and state health care services. Ms. Andersen started the Health Law Clinic at the George Washington University Law School in 1995. She was appointed Associate Professor of Clinical Law and, as part of the law school clinic, ran the State Health Insurance Counseling Project for the District of Columbia, a federally-funded program to assist elderly and disabled residents with Medicare, Medicaid, VA benefits, federal employee health benefits and a variety of private health insurance issues. In 2000,
Sue started her own health benefits consulting firm, Health Benefits ABCs, providing consulting services to a variety of companies and federal agencies. In 2008, Ms. Andersen joined the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association's Washington legal team. Wearing a variety of hats, Sue managed subrogation, appeals, and coverage litigation against the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), provided legal representation to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a variety of Medicare contractors in Medicare appeals before the Provider Reimbursement Review Board and arbitrated state Medicare/Medicaid disputes before members of the American Arbitration Association. In 2012 Ms. Andersen was appointed to the federal Provider Reimbursement Review Board, and in 2017 was appointed as Board Chair. The Board is a federal board established under the Social Security Act to decide hospital and nursing home appeals of major Medicare payments established through cost reports, including disproportionate share funding, medical resident and intern training, bad debt, and other payments.
Ms. Andersen graduated with a B.A cum laude from St. Olaf College, received her J.D. from Antioch School of Law, and a L.L.M. from Georgetown University Law School.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow
- Public Finance Policy Analyst, Investment Banker and Financial Advisor
Tom Cochran has 45 years' experience as a public finance policy analyst, investment banker and financial advisor focused on mobilizing capital for essential public purposes in the US and emerging markets around the world. He has advised the US Department of Energy's Office of Loan Programs on renewable energy project transactions and program designs and has also advised USAID, USDTDA and multi-lateral financial institution clients including the World Bank, IFC, and the Global Green Growth Fund, among others. From 1997 - 2005, he led MBIA's surveillance, remediation, and successful restructuring of high profile PPP infrastructure bond and bank debt transactions in Asia, Latin America, and the US. Prior to joining MBIA, Mr. Cochran advised on emerging market infrastructure and general sub-sovereign finance as Executive Vice President of the Resources Development Foundation where he led the International Public Finance Program.
Previously, he had managed the North Atlantic region for Lehman Brothers Public Finance investment banking department; and was as an education and healthcare finance policy advisor to New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne and a New York City Urban Fellow in Mayor John Lindsay's office and the New York City Board of Education. Mr. Cochran served the Northeast-Midwest Institute as its founding Executive Director from 1977 - 1982 and as Board Chairman in the 2000's.
He received his B.A. from Beloit College and his Master of Public Affairs (M.P.A.) degree from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Job Titles:
- Principal at BHMM Energy Services
Vicky A. Bailey is Principal at BHMM Energy Services, LLC, and the president of the Anderson Stratton International LLC management consultants in domestic and international energy industries. She has over twenty years of high level, national and international, corporate executive and governmental experience in energy and regulated industries. Ms. Bailey has demonstrated leadership as a state and federal regulator, a public utility corporate executive and as the leading international official for the U.S. Department of Energy. Ms. Bailey's executive experience includes President and board member of PSI Energy, Inc., Indiana's largest electric utility and subsidiary of the holding company Cinergy Corp., now Duke Energy.
Vincent DeVito of Boston, Massachusetts, is Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Cox Oil LLC. He formerly served as Counselor to the Secretary of the Interior for Energy Policy in the Immediate Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior, from 2017 to 2018. He previously was a corporate and regulatory attorney at the Boston office of Bowditch & Dewey. Mr. DeVito is an authority on renewable energy development and corporate sustainability issues, and he specializes in energy and clean technologies. He previously worked on legislative and regulatory corporate disclosure and compliance matters at the state, national, and international levels. He also previously served in the Office of the General Counsel at the U. S. Department of Energy and has served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs where he oversaw the Climate Change Technology Program. He also served as interim Executive Director of the Institute for Energy and Sustainability and sits on the Advisory Board of Greenopolis.com. He is admitted to practice law in Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia.