POST CARBON INSTITUTE - Key Persons
Alnoor's work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking, structural change and narrative work. He was the co-founder and Executive Director of The Rules, a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers and others focused on changing the rules that create inequality, poverty and climate change. TR started in 2012 as a time-bound project and an experiment in temporary organizational design, exploring new ways of how to work, play, and make trouble together.
Alnoor comes from a Sufi lineage and writes about the crossroads of politics and spirituality in troubled times. His work has been published in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Truthout, Fast Company, Kosmos Journal, New Internationalist, and the Huffington Post among others. He is a board member of Culture Hack Labs, a co-operatively run advisory for social movements and progressive organizations. He holds an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics.
Job Titles:
- Marketing & Communications Director
- in 2017 As the Marketing and Communications Director
Amy Buringrud joined Post Carbon Institute in 2017 as the Marketing and Communications Director and is responsible for overseeing strategy development and day-to-day management of communications and outreach operations.
Prior to her role with PCI, Amy worked as a marketing consultant for numerous nonprofit and governmental organizations such as Oregon's former Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury, Habitat for Humanity of Oregon, CLEAResult, Climate Clean, and Sustainable Forest Products Global Alliance. She has worked in nonprofit communications and marketing for nearly 20 years, with the exception of one summer spent building Earthships in Taos, New Mexico.
Job Titles:
- Fellow Emeritus
- Professor of Urban Studies and Political Science at Simon Fraser University
Anthony Perl is Professor of Urban Studies and Political Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before joining SFU, Anthony worked at the University of Calgary, the City University of New York, and Universite Lumiere in Lyon, France. He received his undergraduate honors degree in Government from Harvard University followed by an MA and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.
Professor Perl's research crosses disciplinary and national boundaries to explore policy decisions made about transportation, cities, and the environment. He has advised governments in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, and the United States on transportation and environmental research and policy development. He served on the Board of VIA Rail, Canada's national passenger railway for more than four years. He has also served on the Selection Committee of Transport Canada's Urban Transportation Showcase Program. He has led the Rail Group of the U.S. Transportation Research Board (TRB), a division of the National Research Council. He has also chaired TRB's Committee on Intercity Passenger Rail. Professor Perl is a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and Adjunct Professor of Urban Studies at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.
Job Titles:
- Consultant
- Executive Director
Asher became the Executive Director of Post Carbon Institute in October 2008, after having served as the manager of our former Relocalization Network program. He's worked in the nonprofit sector since 1996 in various capacities. Prior to joining Post Carbon Institute, Asher founded Climate Changers, an organization that inspires people to reduce their impact on the climate by focusing on simple and achievable actions anyone can take. Some of his previous roles include:
Partnership Director at Plugged In, an organization working in East Palo Alto, California that connects individuals and cultivates minds by creating the opportunity to produce, express, and contribute using technology;
International Production Coordinator at Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, which created the largest video archive in the world, containing more than 52,000 interviews conducted in 56 countries around the world; and
Youth Manager at the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County, which engaged more than 800 teens a year in community service and education about social and environmental issues.
Ghostwriter of the autobiography of a Polish Holocaust survivor who fought as a partisan in the forests of Belarus.
Asher has served as a consultant to a number of other nonprofit organizations. He currently serves on the Climate Action Advisory Board for the City of Corvallis. Asher was born in the Netherlands, and has lived in Israel, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Connecticut, Colorado, and California. He currently lives in Corvallis, Oregon with his wife and two children. Asher received his B.A. in Creative Writing from The Colorado College.
Job Titles:
- Co - Editor
- Resilience.Org Co - Editor
Bill McKibben is an author and environmentalist. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in 24 languages. He is founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement. The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the 2013 winner of the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize, and holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities; Foreign Policy named him to their inaugural list of the world's 100 most important global thinkers, and the Boston Globe said he was "probably America's most important environmentalist."
A former staff writer for the New Yorker, he writes frequently a wide variety of publications around the world, including the New York Review of Books, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone. He lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain with his wife, writer Sue Halpern.
Job Titles:
- Fellow Emeritus
- Policy Expert
Bill Sheehan is a policy expert and big picture thinker who has been at the forefront of two U.S. sustainability movements - Zero Waste and Extended Producer Responsibility - over the past two decades. Bill helped launch and lead the civic movement for Zero Waste as co-founder and Executive Director of the GrassRoots Recycling Network between 1995 and 2003. Then Bill co-founded UPSTREAM (formally Product Policy Institute), a national solutions-oriented policy and strategy think tank working to advance sustainability, end plastic pollution and reduce climate disruption through product-focused environmental policies. He served as Executive Director until July 2015 and still advises the organization. At UPSTREAM, Bill worked with local governments, communities and NGOs to bring Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policies to the US to spur green product design through corporate accountability. This work resulted in the formation of local government Product Stewardship Councils in California, New York, Texas, Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Bill holds a Ph.D. in insect ecology from Cornell University.
Brian Schwartz is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he is also currently Co-Director of the Program on Global Sustainability and Health and of the Environmental Health Institute. He has conducted extensive research on the health effects of chemicals via occupational, environmental, and molecular epidemiology studies. Brian's career has included research, teaching, and training, as well as clinical and public health practice.
In the past several years, Brian has increasingly focused on global environmental sustainability, and how land use and energy use are contributing to global climate change, ecosystem degradation, biodiversity and species losses - ultimately posing important risks to individual and population health. He is engaged in ongoing studies on land use and obesity; local food and physical activity environments and the progression of diabetes; abandoned mine lands and community health; and evaluating the public health risks posed by peak oil. Brian received a B.S. from Tufts University, an M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School, and an M.S. in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Job Titles:
- Finance
- HR Director
- Director of Finance and Human Resources
- Finance & HR Director / Finance & HR Director
Cassady Thomas is the Director of Finance and Human Resources at Post Carbon Institute, where she is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day financial, accounting, and HR operations of the organization.
Aside from a foray into oceanographic research, Cassady has spent her career in the nonprofit sector. Before joining PCI, she was the Program Director and Operations Director for an international organization supporting orphans and vulnerable children. Her educational background includes an MPH in international health from Oregon State University and a bachelor of science in biology from Wake Forest University. At PCI, she gets to combine her passion for advancing equity and sustainability with her knack for numbers.
When she's not at work, you can find Cassady chasing after her twins, hanging out with her chickens, and running the backyard blueberry farm she and her husband operate in the beautiful Willamette Valley.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Member of the Board
Chuck Collins is the Director the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org. He is author of the popular book, Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good (Chelsea Green). His most recent book, Is Inequality in America Irreversible? is published by the Oxford, UK-based Polity Press. He was a contributor to The Resilience Reader.
He is an expert on U.S. inequality and the racial wealth divide and author of several books, including 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It. He is co-author with Bill Gates Sr. of Wealth and Our Commonwealth, (Beacon Press, 2003), a case for taxing inherited fortunes. He is co-author with Mary Wright of The Moral Measure of the Economy, a book about Christian ethics and economic life. He was featured in this interview in Sun Magazine.
Cindy Parker is on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she co-directs the Program on Global Sustainability and Health. She is also an Instructor in the Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences where she directs the undergraduate major in Global Environmental Change and Sustainability. Her professional interests include education, policy work, practice, and research on the global environmental topics of climate change, peak petroleum, and global sustainability. As part of her desire to educate the public and policy makers about the health effects of global climate change, she is a frequent speaker on the topic and co-authored Climate Chaos: Your Health at Risk (2008).
Dr. Parker received her MD from the University of Arizona and her Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is board certified in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine where she is Co-Chair of the Environmental Health Committee. She also serves on the National Board of Directors for Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Job Titles:
- Education & Publications Director
Danielle Nierenberg is a world-renowned researcher, speaker, and advocate, on all issues relating to our food system and agriculture. She is President of non-profit organization Food Tank and an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues. Danielle has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world, and innovations in sustainable agriculture; she is the recipient of the 2020 Julia Child Award.
Danielle founded Food Tank with Bernard Pollack in 2013 to build a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. The organization has more than 250 major institutional partners including The Rockefeller Foundation, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Christensen Fund, IFPRI, IFAD, Oxfam America, Slow Food USA, U.N. FAO, the Crop Trust, the Sustainable Food Trust, and academic institutions in all 50 states. Food Tank highlights hope, success, and innovative ideas in our food system through original daily publications, research articles, a chart-topping podcast, interviews, and events and Summits in major cities around the world.
Prior to starting Food Tank, Danielle spent two years traveling to more than 35 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, meeting with hundreds of farmers and farmers' groups, scientists and researchers, policymakers and government leaders, students and academics, and journalists, documenting what is working to help alleviate hunger and poverty, while protecting the environment.
Job Titles:
- Engineer
- Member of the Board
David Blittersdorf is an entrepreneur and trained engineer with more than three decades of experience in the renewable energy industry, seeking to help prepare humanity for future energy constraints. Growing up in southern Vermont within hiking distance of the site of the world's first utility-scale wind turbine, David became fascinated with wind and solar energy at an early age, built wind-powered devices to help operate his maple sugarhouse, and was inspired by the Carter administration's 1979 installation of solar panels on the roof of the White House. This early interest has sustained a career building successful renewable energy companies based on innovative and reliable products, with a focus on lean manufacturing and a "triple bottom line" of responsibility to people, profits and the planet.
David received an associate's degree in Mechanical Design Engineering Technology from the Wentworth Institute of Technology in 1977, and earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Vermont in 1981. The following year, he founded NRG Systems (since renamed Renewable NRG Systems), and over the next 23 years developed the business into a global leader in wind measurement technology. He stepped down as CEO of NRG Systems in 2004 to establish AllEarth Renewables, which designs and manufactures grid-tied solar PV tracking systems for residential, commercial and utility-scale applications across the U.S., via a network of trained dealer-installers. Within the past five years, David has led three separate partnerships in building two utility-scale solar farms, as well as a 10 MW, four-turbine wind farm that helps power the city of Burlington, VT.
In addition to running AllEarth Renewables as the company's founder and President/CEO, David volunteers his time to organizations connected with renewable energy, energy education, and preparing for a post-peak-oil world. He served as treasurer of the American Wind Energy Association for 16 years until the spring of 2010, and subsequently was a founding member and treasurer of the Distributed Wind Energy Association. He is a board member for both the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas-USA and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, and is a current board member, founding member and past chair of Renewable Energy Vermont. David chairs the board of advisors for the University of Vermont's Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, and is also on the board of advisors for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In 2014, he received an honorary doctorate of Engineering Technology from the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Staff Scientist at the Energy Analysis Program
Since 1995, David Fridley has been a staff scientist at the Energy Analysis Program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. He is also deputy group leader of Lawrence Berkeley's China Energy Group, which collaborates with China on end-user energy efficiency, government energy management programs, and energy policy research. Mr. Fridley has nearly 30 years of experience working and living in China in the energy sector, and is a fluent Mandarin speaker. Prior to joining the Lab, he spent 12 years as a consultant on downstream oil markets in the Asia-Pacific region and as business development manager for Caltex China. He has written and spoken extensively on the energy and ecological limits of biofuels. David is co-author with Richard Heinberg of Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy (2016).
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Scientist
- President of Global Sustainability Research
David Hughes is an earth scientist who has studied the energy resources of Canada for four decades, including 32 years with the Geological Survey of Canada as a scientist and research manager. He developed the National Coal Inventory to determine the availability and environmental constraints associated with Canada's coal resources. As Team Leader for Unconventional Gas on the Canadian Gas Potential Committee, he coordinated the publication of a comprehensive assessment of Canada's unconventional natural gas potential.
Over the past decade, Hughes has researched, published and lectured widely on global energy and sustainability issues in North America and internationally. His work with Post Carbon Institute includes:
A series of papers (2011) on the challenges of natural gas being a "bridge fuel" from coal to renewables;
Drill, Baby, Drill (2013), which took a far-ranging look at the prospects for various unconventional fuels in the United States;
Drilling California (2013), which critically examined the U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) estimates of technically recoverable tight oil in the Monterey Shale, which the EIA claimed constituted two-thirds of U.S. tight oil (the EIA subsequently wrote down its resource estimate for the Monterey by 96%);
Drilling Deeper (2014), which challenged the EIA's expectation of long-term domestic oil and gas abundance with an in-depth assessment of all drilling and production data from major shale plays;
How Long Will the Shale Revolution Last? (2019), an in-depth assessment of likely future production in the the top ten tight oil and shale gas plays in the United States;
Various updates to Drilling Deeper, most recently Shale Reality Check 2021.
Hughes is president of Global Sustainability Research, a consultancy dedicated to research on energy and sustainability issues. He is also a board member of Physicians, Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE Healthy Energy) and is a Fellow of Post Carbon Institute. Hughes contributed to Carbon Shift, an anthology edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon on the twin issues of peak energy and climate change, and his work has been featured in Nature, Canadian Business, Bloomberg, and USA Today, as well as other popular press, radio, and television.
David Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Senior Adviser to the President of Oberlin College. His career as a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur spans fields as diverse as environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change. He is the author of six books, including the widely praised Ecological Literacy (1992) and Earth in Mind (1994/2004); his most recent book is Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse.
In 1996 David organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center was later named by the U.S. Department of Energy as "One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century." He has served on the National Advisory Committee of the Presidential Climate Action Project, and is a Trustee of Rocky Mountain Institute and Bioneers.
Dr. Jason Bradford has been affiliated with Post Carbon Institute since 2004, initially as a Fellow. He is currently Board President and a co-host of the Crazy Town podcast. In 2019, he authored The Future is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification.
Jason grew up in the Bay Area of California and graduated from the University of California-Davis with a B.S. in biology before earning his doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, where he also taught ecology for a few years. After graduate school he worked for the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at the Missouri Botanical Garden, was a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Davis, and during that period co-founded the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG). He decided to shift from academia to learn more about and practice sustainable agriculture, and in the process, completed six months of training with Ecology Action (aka GrowBiointensive) in Willits, California, and then founded Brookside School Farm. While in Willits, Jason also instigated the creation of Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL) and was on the board of the Renewable Energy Development Institute (REDI). For four years he hosted The Reality Report radio show on KZYX in Mendocino County.
In 2009 he moved to Corvallis, Oregon, as one of the founders of Farmland LP, a farmland management fund implementing organic and mixed crop and livestock systems, where he worked until early 2018. He was formerly on the Economic Development Advisory Board for Corvallis and Benton County, currently serves as an advisor for the OregonFlora Project based at Oregon State University, and is on the board of Institute for Applied Ecology. He lives with his family outside of Corvallis on an organic farm, co-managing a CSA program with the Organic Growers Club at Oregon State University, and where he practices the land stewardship methods, applies the equipment sets, and cultivates the social organizations that work in "the here and now" and are aligned with a wildly different future.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Founder and Director of the Multisolving Institute
Elizabeth Sawin is the Founder and Director of the Multisolving Institute. She is an expert on solutions that address climate change while also improving health, well-being, equity, and economic vitality.
Beth developed the idea of ‘multisolving' to help people see and create the conditions for such win-win-win solutions. She writes and speaks about multisolving, climate change, and leadership in complex systems for both national and international audiences. Her work has been published widely, including in Non-Profit Quarterly, The Stanford Social Innovation Review, U. S. News, The Daily Climate, and System Dynamics Review. She has trained and mentored global sustainability leaders in the Donella Meadows Fellows Program and provided systems thinking training to both Ashoka and Dalai Lama Fellows.
See also our Fellows Emeriti, who collaborated with Post Carbon Institute from 2009 to 2021.
Erika Allen is Chicago Projects Manager for Growing Power, a nationally acclaimed non-profit organization and land trust providing equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe, and affordable food, especially in disadvantaged communities. She helps food producers of limited resources strengthen their farm businesses and work in partnerships to create healthy and diverse food options in inner city and rural communities.
Job Titles:
- Fellow Emerita
- Founder and Director of Sustainable Obtainable Solutions
Gloria Flora is founder and Director of Sustainable Obtainable Solutions, an organization dedicated to the sustainability of public lands and of the plants, animals and communities that depend on them. In her 22-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, Gloria became nationally known for her leadership in ecosystem management and for her courageous principled stands: as supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in north-central Montana, she made a landmark decision to prohibit natural gas leasing along the 356,000-acre Rocky Mountain Front.
Gloria recently co-authored a report on how Montana can become energy self-reliant through renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation. She serves on the Montana Climate Change Advisory Committee and works throughout the U.S. with the Center for Climate Strategies in assisting states develop climate change action plans. Her work has been featured in national magazines, books, radio, television and documentaries, including NOW with Bill Moyers and in Leonardo DiCaprio's climate change feature film, The 11th Hour.
Greg Pahl is the author of the Post Carbon Institute Community Resilience Guide Power from the People and five books on sustainable living, and has written hundreds of articles and commentaries on sustainable living issues, wind power, solar energy, water power, geothermal energy, biomass, biodiesel, electric cars, "green" appliances, home building materials, and sustainable forestry management in publications such as The Vermont Times, Vermont Magazine, Champlain Business Journal, Vermont History, Middlebury College Magazine, and Mother Earth News.
Greg has had a long-time interest in environmental issues in general, and renewable energy in particular. He lived for a number of years "off the grid" in a wood-heated home powered by a wind turbine atop an 80-foot steel tower. Greg lives in Weybridge, Vermont with his wife Joy. For a number of years they heated their home with a biodiesel fuel blend, and more recently with wood pellets. They also have installed a solar domestic hot water system on their garage roof and they drive a hybrid-electric car.
Job Titles:
- Fellow Emerita
- Professor of Architecture at the City College
Hillary Brown, FAIA is Professor of Architecture at the City College of New York's Spitzer School of Architecture. She is Director of CCNY's interdisciplinary master's program: Sustainability in the Urban Environment, developed with the Grove School of Engineering and CCNY's Division of Science.
Hillary Brown's two books focus on new paradigms for infrastructure planning and development: Next Generation Infrastructure: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works (2014), and Infrastructural Ecologies: Alternative Development Models for Emerging Economies (2017). Hillary recently served for six years on the Board of Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment under the National Research Council of the National Academies. She is a Senior Policy Fellow with the CUNY Institute for Urban Systems, Affiliated Faculty with CUNY's Advanced Science Research Center, and a Senior Policy Advisor at the Ecologic Institute, U.S. In 2019, she was elected to the National Academy of Construction.
While Assistant Commissioner at the City of New York's Department of Design and Construction, Hillary founded the Office of Sustainable Design in 1996, and was managing editor and co-author of the City's internationally recognized High Performance Building Guidelines as well as its High Performance Infrastructure: Best Practices for the Public Right-Of-Way. Hillary has delivered well over one hundred fifty presentations across the U.S., as well as in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. A 1999 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, she was a 2001 Robert Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project
Jacqueline Patterson is the Founder and Executive Director of The Chisholm Legacy Project., which is rooted in a Just Transition Framework and serves as a vehicle to connect Black communities on the frontlines of climate justice with the resources to actualize visions.
Prior to the launch of The Chisholm Legacy Project, Patterson served as the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program for over a decade. During her tenure, she founded and implemented a robust portfolio which included serving the state and local leadership whose constituencies consisted of hundreds of communities on the frontlines of environmental injustice. She also led a team in designing and implementing a portfolio to support political education and organizing work executed by NAACP branches, chapters, and state conferences. She was recently named one of TIME's 2024 Women of the Year.
Since 2007, Patterson has dedicated her career to intersectional approaches to systems change. Her passion for social justice led her to serve as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United; Senior Women's Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid; Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health, Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University, and U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica.
Patterson has published multiple articles, reports, and toolkits including: "Equity in Resilience Building for Climate Adaptation: An Indicators Document," "Jobs vs Health: An Unnecessary Dilemma," "Climate Change is a Civil Rights Issue," "Gulf Oil Drilling Disaster: Gendered Layers of Impact," "Disasters, Climate Change Uproot Women of Color;" "And the People Shall Lead: Centralizing Frontline Community Leadership in the Movement Towards a Sustainable Planet;" "In the Eye of the Storm," "Our Communities, Our Power," "Fossil Fueled Foolery." She has also authored chapters in two books: "Equity in Disasters: Civil and Human Rights Challenges in the Context of Emergency Events" in Building Community Resilience Post-Disaster, as well as "At the Intersections" in All We Can Save.
Patterson holds a Master's degree in Social Work from the University of Maryland and a Master's degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves on the Advisory Boards for Center for Earth Ethics and the Hive Fund for Gender and Climate Justice, on the Governance Assemblies for Mosaic Momentum, Environmental Justice Movement Fellowship, and the Equitable Building Electrification Fund, as well as on the Boards of Directors for the Institute of the Black World, the Bill Anderson Fund, the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, the Movement Strategy Center, the Just Solutions Collective, and the National Black Workers Center Project.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center
- Fellow Emerita
Janelle Orsi is the Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), which facilitates the growth of more sustainable and localized economies through education, research, and advocacy to support practices such as barter, sharing, cooperatives, urban agriculture, shared housing, local currencies, community-supported enterprises, and local investing. Janelle is also a "sharing economy lawyer" in private practice, specializing in helping communities share housing and cars, form cooperatives, launch urban farming initiatives, and form social enterprises. Janelle earned her J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law.
Janelle is the author of Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise, and Local Sustainable Economies (ABA Books 2012), and co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (Nolo Press 2009), a practical and legal guide to cooperating and sharing resources of all kinds.
In 2010, Janelle was profiled by the American Bar Association as a Legal Rebel, an attorney who is "remaking the legal profession through the power of innovation." In 2012, Janelle was one of 100 people listed on The (En)Rich List, which names individuals "whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures."
John Kaufmann was lead staff for the City of Portland's groundbreaking Peak Oil Task Force. John worked with the Oregon Department of Energy for 29 years as solar specialist, manager, and policy analyst helping to make Oregon a national leader. He received the Professional Achievement Award from the American Planning Association-Oregon for getting 26 jurisdictions in the Portland Metro Area to jointly adopt solar orientation and solar rights ordinances, and received the 2009 Energy Manager of the Year Award from the Association of Professional Energy Managers-Oregon for Lifetime Achievement. Most recently, John was Senior Buildings Energy Manager at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.
Joni Praded has been publishing on the nexus between environment, economy, and politics for more than three decades. She works with authors and publishers to develop solutions-oriented books exploring climate change, new economics, systems thinking, renewable energy strategies, progressive politics, community resilience, and other topics related to sustainable living. She also writes, edits, and/or consults for Chelsea Green Publishing Company, The Next System Project, and several other organizations. Previously, she was a senior editor and editorial director at Chelsea Green Publishing company, where books she acquired and edited include New York Times and international bestsellers as well as foundational movement-building works. She has also served as director of program advancement for Island Press/Center for Resource Economics; director and editor of Animals, a magazine that focused on wildlife and the environment; and a journalist writing for various magazines covering the environment and progressive politics. Earlier in her career she worked for Little Brown and Company.
Joshua Farley is a renowned ecological economist working to integrate social, human, and natural capital into the way the world views economics. He is a Fellow of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and a Professor in the Community Development and Applied Economics faculty at the University of Vermont. With economist Herman Daly, Joshua co-authored the foundation textbook Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications; he also co-authored Restoring Natural Capital: Financing and Valuation. Joshua has received several Fellowships and has spent considerable time abroad, including several years teaching ecological economics at the School for Field Studies Centre for Rainforest Studies (CRS) in Far North Queensland Australia.
Job Titles:
- Co - Editor
- Resilience.Org Co - Editor
Leslie Davenport works as a climate psychology educator and consultant, integrating social science insights into relevant resources for organizations, and often exploring the intersectionality of climate, economics, education, policy, and social justice. Leslie is a founding member of the Institute for Health & Healing, one of the United States' first and largest hospital-based integrative medicine programs. Her 25 years of medical experience developing an empowering and collaborative approach to resolving crises has informed her climate psychology model.
Leslie helped shape the American Psychological Association report Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance (2017) and is the author of four books including Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change (2017), a manual for the mental health field, and All the Feelings Under the Sun (2021), written for youth through the American Psychological Association children's book division. She is also an advisor to the non-profits Climate Mental Health Network, Integrative Healers Action Network, and One Resilient Earth, and co-lead of the Climate Psychology Certification at the California Institute of Integral Studies and on faculty with their School of Professional Psychology and Health. For more information, go to www.lesliedavenport.com.
Job Titles:
- Fellow Emerita
- President of Majora Carter Group LLC
Majora Carter is President of Majora Carter Group LLC. Majora simultaneously addresses public health, poverty alleviation, and climate change as one of the nation's pioneers in successful green-collar job training and placement systems. In 2001 she founded Sustainable South Bronx to achieve environmental justice through economically sustainable projects informed by community needs. Her work now includes advising cities, foundations, universities, businesses, and communities around the world on unlocking their green-collar economic potential to benefit everyone.
Majora's vision, drive, and tenacity earned her a MacArthur "Genius" Grant. In 2007 she was named one of Newsweek Magazine's "25 To Watch" and Essence Magazine's "25 most Influential African Americans." The New York Post has named her one of the "50 most influential women in NYC" for two years, and BBC World Service named her "NYC's most influential environmentalist." Majora is a board member of the Widerness Society, SJF Ventures, and CERES. She hosted "The Promised Land" on public radio's Launch Minneapolis, and "Eco-Heroes" on the Sundance Channel.
Job Titles:
- Fellow Emeritus
- Member in the Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems Program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Michael Bomford is a faculty member in the Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His work focuses on organic and sustainable agriculture systems suitable for adoption by small farms operating with limited resources. His projects examine practical ways to reduce food system energy use and meet farm energy needs using renewable resources produced on-farm. Michael has a Master of Pest Management from Simon Fraser University, and a PhD in Plant and Soil Sciences from West Virginia University, where he conducted research on one of the nation's first land grant university farms operated entirely according to national organic standards.
Michael H. Shuman is an economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur, and a leading visionary on community economics. He's Director of Local Economy Programs for Telesis Corporation, a nonprofit affordable housing company, and currently an adjunct instructor at Bard Business School in New York City and at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He's also a Fellow at Cutting Edge Capital and at the Post-Carbon Institute, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). He is credited with being one of the architects of the 2012 JOBS Act and dozens of state laws overhauling securities regulation of crowdfunding. He has authored, coauthored, or edited nine books. His most recent book is The Local Economy Solution: How Innovative, Self-Financing Pollinator Enterprises Can Grow Jobs and Prosperity. One of his previous books, The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition (Berrett-Koehler, 2006), received as bronze prize from the Independent Publishers Association for best business book of 2006. A prolific speaker, Shuman has given an average of more than one invited talk per week, mostly to local governments and universities, for the past 30 years in nearly every U.S. state and more than a dozen countries.
Job Titles:
- Board Chief Financial Officer
Job Titles:
- Secretary of the Board
- Senior Fellow
Job Titles:
- Resilience.Org Co - Editor
Erika and her father, Growing Power founder Will Allen, have received significant attention for their work, including a feature article in The New York Times Magazine. Erika is co-chair of the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council, and was appointed by Governor Pat Quinn in 2008 to the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force. In 2007 she was honored by Family Focus for her work in community food systems, and in 2006 she received the Good Eating Award from the Chicago Tribune. Erika has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in art therapy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Job Titles:
- Fellow Emeritus
- Founder and President of Population Media Center
William Ryerson is founder and President of Population Media Center, and President of the Population Institute. For over 40 years he has worked in the field of reproductive health, including two decades of experience adapting the Sabido methodology for behavior change communications to various cultural settings worldwide. He has also been involved in the design of research to measure the effects of such projects in a number of countries, one of which led to a series of publications regarding a serialized radio drama in Tanzania and its effects on HIV/AIDS avoidance and family planning use. In 2006, he was awarded the Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage from the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development. William received a B.A. in Biology (Magna Cum Laude) from Amherst College and an M.Phil. in Biology from Yale University.