WORLD CLIMATE SIMULATION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Executive Director and Co - Founder of Climate Interactive and a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan
- Executive Director, Co‑Founder
Andrew Jones is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Climate Interactive and a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan. He is an expert on international climate and energy policy, a system dynamics modeler, a speaker, and a creator of policy simulations.
He led the teams at Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan that developed En-ROADS and C-ROADS, two climate simulators used widely to engage global decision-makers. His climate policy work has appeared in media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Jones was trained in modeling through degrees from MIT and Dartmouth College. He now teaches systems thinking and climate policy at MIT Sloan, Stanford, and UNC-Chapel Hill.
He co-accepted the ASysT Applied Systems Thinking Prize and the System Dynamics Society's Applications Award as well as Dartmouth College's Ray W. Smith Award for the most significant contribution to the status of the college.
He lives with his family in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.
Andrew Jones speaks on the impact of planting a trillion trees using analysis from the En-ROADS climate solutions simulator
Ava De Leon serves as Climate Interactive's Science & Technology Communications Coordinator. She promotes and expands engagement with Climate Interactive's tools, workshops, and events through a variety of channels. She also supports multimedia content creation and general program development through her role on Climate Interactive's Engagement Team.
Ava holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Miami, where she studied Public Relations and Marine Affairs. She is passionate about finding creative outlets to spark conversations and influence change. She has utilized her expertise in digital communications for several climate-focused nonprofits and marine conservation organizations.
Outside of work, Ava enjoys trying out new recipes, diving into a good book, and enjoying the South Florida coastline at every opportunity.
Dr. Jones holds a PhD in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he has also taught courses in management, ethics, and business & policy. His postdoctoral work was in energy technology policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Before graduate school, he earned a BA in Physics from Boston University and served as a nuclear engineer on submarines in the US Navy.
Chris is responsible for software development at Climate Interactive. He develops and maintains the En-ROADS and C-ROADS climate solution simulators, as well as the underlying software tools (e.g. SDEverywhere) that help power them.
Prior to joining the team, Chris spent 10 years helping to grow Plausible Labs, a worker-owned software cooperative, where he split his time between client projects and Plausible's own open source software libraries. Earlier in his career, Chris spent a decade at Sun Microsystems developing GPU-accelerated 2D graphics and user interface toolkits for the Java platform. He often cannot resist programming in his off hours and finds joy in things like data visualization and building out functional programming libraries.
Chris holds a B.S. in computer science from Georgia Tech. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children. Chris has long enjoyed baking sourdough bread, and often spends his weekends herding his kids along various Bay Area hiking trails.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Project Manager for Climate Interactive 's Engagement
Clara serves as a Project Manager for Climate Interactive's Engagement team. She helps with the diffusion of En-ROADS worldwide through the assessment of program performance, and ensuring a smooth integration and organization across our platforms.
Clara earned her Master's in Sustainability Management from American University as a Fulbright scholar. She also holds a B.A. degree in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Nacional del Litoral, in Argentina, her country of birth and current residence. Prior to joining Climate Interactive, Clara was a research scholar on nanotechnology and worked in the corporate sector serving as both an analyst and a leader in warehousing process improvement.
Danielle brings to the team a unique perspective on business strategy and operational excellence and a passion for furthering organizational equity and inclusion. As an expert in ESG strategy and enterprise risk management, Danielle has served as an advisor on climate and equity risk, strategy, and business operations to the world's largest multinational corporations, financial institutions, and multilateral organizations. Throughout her career, Danielle has also served as a Strategy & Operations Director and Board Member for a variety of sustainability and climate-focused non-profit organizations.
Danielle holds an M.B.A., Masters in Sustainability, B.A. in Sociology-Racial Equity Studies, and a Cornell University Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Certificate. In addition to serving as Climate Interactive's Director of Operations, Danielle serves as a Council Member representing Climate Interactive on the New Venture Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Windward Fund Race, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) Council.
In her spare time, Danielle volunteers to teach business sustainability practices to young entrepreneurs and small business owners and nutrition and cooking skills to children in underserved communities. Danielle is also deeply passionate about regenerative agriculture and preserving local foodways and works to further both practices in her in her dual hometowns of Asheville, NC and Atlanta, GA.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder, Director of the Multisolving Institute
- Founder and Director of the Multisolving Institute
Elizabeth Sawin is the Founder and Director of the Multisolving Institute. Beth is an expert on solutions that address climate change while also improving health, well-being, and economic vitality. She developed multisolving to describe such win-win-win solutions. Beth 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. Since 2014, Beth has participated in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, a continuing dialogue on issues of climate change and sustainability among a select group of humanities scholars, writers, artists, and climate scientists. Beth is also a member of the advisory board to the Kresge Foundation's Climate Change Health and Equity Program.
A biologist with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Beth co-founded Climate Interactive in 2010 and served as Climate Interactive's Co-Director from 2010 until 2022. While at Climate Interactive, she led the scientific team that offered the first assessment of the sufficiency of country pledges to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Beth also led Climate Interactive's efforts to integrate measures of equity, health and well-being into decision support tools and computer simulations. Beth trained in system dynamics and sustainability with Donella Meadows and worked at Sustainability Institute, the research institute founded by Meadows, for 13 years. She has two adult daughters and lives in rural Vermont where she and her husband grow as much of their own food as they can manage.
Ellie leads Climate Interactive's global climate and energy efforts. She has built up Climate Interactive's engagement programs to extend to thousands worldwide from top journalists to leading decision-makers to school children. Through the design of the En-ROADS and C-ROADS simulators and the array of experiences that are used with the tools, Ellie has pioneered approaches to bridging the gap between science and policy. Ellie has been a speaker at UN meetings, the White House, the African Union, and many universities; and her work has been cited in publications like the New York Times, Associated Press, and Washington Post.
Ellie spent years working to increase youth access and participation to the United Nations and engage in the UN climate talks through the non-profit SustainUS. She has also spent time as an encyclopedia editor, a field biologist, and a community organizer.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Project Manager at Climate Interactive
Janet Chikofsky is a Project Manager at Climate Interactive, where she provides research, analysis, and support for leaders using Climate Interactive's climate and energy tools.
Janet earned her bachelor's degree in Human Biology from Stanford University, where she concentrated in Environmental Health. Before joining Climate Interactive, she worked with Duke Medicine Global, a consulting team at Duke University providing global health education and policy analysis for international organizations. Janet has also worked for Heifer International, planning and facilitating experiential education programs addressing global poverty and environmental problems. Janet lives in North Carolina with her husband and enjoys backpacking in any mountain range she can find.
John D. Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of MIT's System Dynamics Group. He is the author of many scholarly and popular articles on the challenges and opportunities facing organizations today, including the book Modeling for Organizational Learning, and the award-winning textbook Business Dynamics.
Prof. Sterman's research centers on improving decision making in complex systems, focusing on environmental sustainability, climate change, alternative fuel vehicles and process improvement in organizations. He pioneered the development of "management flight simulators" of corporate and economic systems, many of which, including the C-ROADS interactive climate policy simulation he helped developed, are used around the world by governments, businesses, universities and the public.
Among his honors, Sterman is the recipient of an honorary doctorate, has twice been awarded the Jay W. Forrester Prize for the best published work in system dynamics, received the best application award from the System Dynamics Society, was named one of MIT Sloan's "Outstanding Faculty" by the BusinessWeek Guide to the Best Business Schools, and has received seven awards for teaching excellence from the students at MIT.
Job Titles:
- Director of Modeling and Technology
Josh is an active volunteer in several service organizations and is especially passionate about the work that he does with Engineers Without Borders and other international humanitarian engineering projects. He has done projects in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Czech Republic, Vietnam, Nepal, Honduras, and the Navajo Nation.
As the Partnerships Manager, Katherine is responsible for stewarding relationships with Climate Interactive's strategic partners and our community of trained En-ROADS Climate Ambassadors operating worldwide.
Katherine spent the first chapter of her career at a large consulting firm where she advised corporations and financial institutions on a range of financial topics. Supporting large multinational corporations with complex engagements allowed Katherine to gain an in-depth understanding of how the corporate sector operates.
Most recently, she consulted US corporations on a range of corporate sustainability matters, including greenhouse gas measurement, science-based target setting, and renewable energy procurement. She was highly involved with climate risk assessments and reporting using the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures.
Katherine teaches corporate sustainability at UCLA Extension and climate reporting at Terra.do. In her spare time, she is a green finance activist and a budding (pun intended) gardener in her hometown of Los Angeles.
Khaled is a System Dynamics Modeler at Climate Interactive. He combines simulation modeling and participatory methods to investigate complex systems.
Over the years, he has provided decision support to several humanitarian organizations and nonprofits as a consultant. Khaled's work has spanned diverse topics such as food security and migration impacts of climate change, sustainability planning under high uncertainty, and other complex problems. He formerly served as a Supply Chain Manager at Procter & Gamble, where he focused on supply network synchronization.
Khaled holds a Master of Philosophy in System Dynamics from the University of Bergen and NOVA School of Science and Technology, an M.S. in Business Administration from Radboud University, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering and Management from Cairo University.
Khaled believes in making the world a better place one data point and one policy workshop at a time. He volunteers at Radboud University, coaching master students in Participatory System Dynamics Modeling. Khaled is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and enjoys reading, painting, practicing yoga, and listening to all musical genres.
Lori Siegel is the Lead Modeler for Climate Interactive. She uses system dynamics analyses (SDA) to gain insight into the complex systems involved in global climate change and to facilitate international dialogue regarding policies to mitigate climate change.
Lori has her Ph.D. in environmental engineering, and is a professional engineer with expertise in SDA as well as in the fields of fate and transport in contaminants, hydrology, hazardous waste management, toxicology, and ecological risk assessment.
As a sole proprietor of Siegel Environmental Dynamics, LLC, she consulted to non-profit research organizations, academic institutions, international engineering firms, and physicians. In addition to addressing climate change, her assignments addressed water quality trading; natural resources; mercury in aquatic ecosystems and subsequent effects on the common loon; and risks of disease complication and benefits of various therapies.
She lives with her husband, three sons and labradoodle in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Development
Megan leads development at Climate Interactive, helping the organization raise funds to fulfill its strategic mission. With over a decade of experience in fundraising program development, she has served as a key decision-maker in organizational grants management and strategy for large national charities in politics, the arts, and conservation.
Megan believes in the power of trust-based philanthropy that centers community experience and expertise. Her volunteer experience supporting artisans in Mozambique inspired her to pursue a career in the nonprofit sector. Megan also serves on the Junior Board for Nest, a nonprofit focused on supporting artisans, and as a mentor for the Nonprofit Alliance Foundation's Leading Edge Internship Program, which elevates the visibility of underrepresented students to nonprofit employers.
In her free time, Megan enjoys reading, traveling, and exploring the natural world.
Job Titles:
- Senior Modeler at Climate Interactive
Skuk Jones is a senior modeler at Climate Interactive. He uses system dynamics research to help people adapt to climate change and other complex issues. He works with international partners to improve community resilience and well-being. By understanding how environmental, economic, and social systems affect - and are affected by - people's livelihoods, leaders can create positive change for a more sustainable world.