Society of Environmental Journalists

14th Annual Conference Speakers

Pittsburgh, PA

 

Robbie Ali is director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh. The center is a resource for information on environmental health for the Pittsburgh area. Robbie has been an emergency physician for 14 years, and worked around the world, from Antarctica to Rwanda. He also works with The Nature Conservancy and the government of Indonesia on a health initiative for rainforest-dwelling people.

 

Emilia Askari is a reporter with the Detroit Free Press, with more than a decade of experience covering public health and the environment. She was on the founding board of SEJ, serving as its second president. This fall, Emilia is teaching environmental journalism as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Michigan. She is co-director of the Free Press High School Journalism program, which assists Detroit public high schools in publishing student newspapers.

 

John Bachmann is the associate director for science policy and new programs at the EPA's office of air quality planning and standards. He was a member of the EPA team that worked on the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, and revisions and legal defense of the 1997 revisions to the National Air Quality Standards for particulate matter and ozone. John is also a developer of alternatives for electric power, including the Clear Skies Act and the Clean Air Interstate Rule proposal.

 

Frances Backhouse is a freelance journalist based in British Columbia. She has been writing for Canadian and American magazines since 1985 and is the author of two books: "Women Of The Klondike" and "Hiking With Ghosts: The Chilkoot Trail Then And Now." Her latest book, "Woodpeckers Of North America," will be published by Firefly Books in 2005.

 

Jennifer Bails is a science and technology reporter at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Prior to joining the T-R last summer, she was a staff writer for the Valley News Dispatch in Tarentum, PA.

 

Bob Batz Jr. has been a general assignment feature writer in Pittsburgh for 18 years. During that time he's covered area rail trails, a hike through West Virginia's highlands on a search for mountain lions, rafted the Cheat River and traveled the Youghiogheny River.

 

Edwin Bender is executive director of the Institute on Money in State Politics, and has been the institute's research director since 1999. He has led research at the institute, both developing its campaign finance databases and the analysis of those databases. In March, he was a speaker at the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism seminar "Campaign Coverage: From the Checkbook to the Ballot Box."

 

Dan Boone is a wildlife ecologist and natural resources policy analyst with 30 years of experience studying wildlife and their habitat throughout the Appalachian region. He began his career as a wildlife biologist with the US Fish & Wildlife Service in the Migratory Bird and Habitat Research Lab at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. He later served as the head of Maryland Department of Natural Resource's Heritage Program, which was responsible for the identification and protection of the state's rare species and other biological diversity. Boone has been actively involved with concerns regarding industrial wind energy development for two years — at the local, regional and national level. He is a member of the Environmental Working Group of the Virginia Wind Energy Collaborative, and serves on the board of the grassroots organization Citizens for Responsible Wind Power.

 

Beverly Braverman is the executive director of the Mountain Watershed Association, a grassroots, community-based group dedicated to the restoration and protection of the Indian Creek Watershed, southwestern PA, that tackles pressing environmental justice challenges to the watershed and community. She is an attorney and a fifth degree black belt in the martial arts and owns two karate schools. Beverly is the Youghiogheny Riverkeeper. She is returning to school to study non-profit management, hoping to learn more about the theory behind the practice.

 

Tom Buchele is director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. The clinic was founded in 2000 to provide pro bono legal services regarding legal matters to individuals and not-for-profit groups. Tom worked for two years as a public interest lawyer at the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago.

 

Doug Carlson is executive director of the Conservation District Planning Department of Forest County Pennsylvania, and is a founding member of Allegheny Forest Alliance, a non-profit organization promoting sustainable forestry, environmental stewardship and multiple-use management of the Allegheny National Forest.

 

Bill Caylor became president of the Kentucky Coal Association in January 2001. Before that, he was the group's vice president and general counsel since 1976. For the past 20 years, he has served as a registered lobbyist representing the industry in Frankfort.

 

Meg Cheever founded the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy in 1996 after years of watching the slow deterioration of the great parks of Pittsburgh: Frick, Highland, Riverview and Schenley. The Conservancy runs successful environmental education programs and lectures, leads ongoing restoration efforts in the parks and holds symposia with international leaders in landscape design and restoration ecology.

 

Jeanne Clark serves as director of communications for Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (PennFuture), and runs the Environmental Communications Center of Western Pennsylvania. The Center provides activists and the working press with a one-stop shop for expertise, video, audio and print material and referrals on environmental issues. She has more than 30 years of experience working for public interest advocacy. Jeanne's resume includes service as national press secretary for the National Organization for Women, campaign experience on national, state and local issue and candidate campaigns and media expertise provided to women's rights, civil rights, labor unions, consumer and environmental organizations.

 

Milt Clark is senior health and science advisor for Chicago's office of the EPA, and adjunct professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Illinois school of public health. Since 2001, Milt has served on the science advisory board of the International Joint Commission on the Great Lakes, where he has promoted reducing widespread mercury pollution, which is responsible for more than 2,000 fish consumption advisories in the U.S.

 

Jared Cohon is president of Carnegie Mellon University and a national authority on environmental and water resource systems analysis. He has focused on water resources planning and management in the United States, South America and Asia, and on energy facility siting, including nuclear waste shipping and storage. In June 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Cohon to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and appointed him as chairman in January 1997. Dr. Cohon assumed his duties as the eighth president of Carnegie Mellon University on July 1, 1997.

 

Jennifer Constable is media director of the Rocky Mountain Institute. She has written on green building and energy for RMI's newsletter and the Japanese business magazine Nikkei Ecology.

 

Lucy Dalglish was a media lawyer for almost five years in the trial department of the Minneapolis law firm of Dorsey & Whitney LLP. From 1980-93, Lucy was a reporter and editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She was awarded the Wells Memorial Key, the highest honor bestowed by the Society of Professional Journalists, in 1995 for her work as Chairman of SPJ's national Freedom of Information Committee from 1992-95 and for her service as a national board member from 1988-91. She also was named to the inaugural class of the National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame in 1996.

 

Alison Davis is media liaison of the EPA's office of air quality planning & standards, in Research Triangle Park, NC. She spent 10 years as a reporter at papers in North Carolina and southwest Florida, and seven years as a PIO in the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

 

Devra Lee Davis is Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and the author of the 2002 book "When Smoke Ran Like Water." She is a researcher of environmental health and chronic disease and a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School as well as an expert advisor to the World Health Organization. Davis is also a former member of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and the former senior advisor to the assistant secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

Joseph Davis is director of SEJ's WatchDog Project, which works with SEJ's First Amendment Task Force to improve journalists' access to environmental information. He edits SEJ's WatchDog and TipSheet newsletters (TipSheet is co-sponsored by the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation). Davis is a freelance writer-editor who has specialized in environmental journalism for over 27 years. He also works as senior writer for Environment Writer, a newsletter for environmental journalists, published by the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting.

 

Miguel Angel de Alba has been an investigative journalist and newsroom manager since 1972. He is a co-founder and first director of the Asociacion Mexicana do Perodistas Ambientales (Mexican Association of Environmental Journalists), created this February. He is currently a freelance writer based in Leon, Mexico.

 

Cornelia Dean is a science writer and commentator at The New York Times. From 1997 to 2003, she was the paper's science editor, where she was responsible for coverage of science, health and medical news both in the daily and the weekly "Science Times" section. In the 2003-2004 academic year, Cornelia taught on environmental science and public policy at Harvard. She is working on a book about the misuse of scientific information in American public life. Her first book, "Against The Tide: The Battle For America's Beaches," (Columbia University Press, 1999) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

 

Sally Deneen, a freelance reporter and editor in Seattle, has reported for publications from Organic Gardening to the Columbia Journalism Review. She contributed a chapter to the 2004 book, "Feeling the Heat: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Climate Change."

 

Jim Detjen is the director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. He joined the MSU faculty in January 1995 as the Knight Chair in Journalism, the nation's only endowed chair in environmental reporting. He was the founding president of the Society of Environmental Journalists and has served on SEJ's board of directors since 1990. He helped found the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ) in 1993 and served as IFEJ president from 1994 to 2000.

 

Dennis Dimick is now senior editor for environment and technology at National Geographic Magazine in Washington DC. Besides editing a dozen Society books, at National Geographic he has produced stories on environmental subjects from the earth's carbon cycle to the General Mining Law of 1872 and genetically engineered food. A 74-page cover story he originated and orchestrated on global climate change was published in September 2004. Dimick annually serves on faculty for the University of Missouri Photo Workshop, where documentary techniques inspired by the 1930s Farm Security Administration photographers are taught.

 

Jim Dunster is curator of birds at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. He worked as zookeeper at the Ross Park Zoo in Binghamton, NY, and at the Houston Zoological Gardens, then the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, KS, before joining the National Aviary. Jim is responsible for the daily supervision of keepers along with maintenance and husbandry of the zoo's bird collection.

 

Odoemelam Chika Ebere hails from Umuja-Umunakanu-Ama, in Ehime-Mbano L.G.A. of Imo State of Nigeria. He is currently a master's degree student in environmental journalism at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

 

Kevin Elliott became the forest supervisor of the Allegheny National Forest in April of 2001. He formerly was deputy forest supervisor of Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri, and worked in the Forest Service's legislative affairs and policy analysis staffs in Washington, DC. 

 

Ira Flatow is host of National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation: Science Friday." Flatow is a veteran National Public Radio science correspondent, and an award winning TV journalist. He is also the founder and president of TalkingScience, a non-profit company dedicated to creating radio, TV and Internet projects that help make science information accessible to the masses.

 

David Fleshler has been environmental reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for the past five years. He specializes in marine issues, endangered species like the manatee and Florida panther, and national parks.

 

Larry Foulke is a consultant in reactor physics at Bechtel Bettis, Inc. He received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT in 1967 and was inducted into the Engineering Hall of Fame at Kansas State University in November of 2003. At Bettis, he has held management positions in fleet performance analysis, reactor methods and programming, reactor safety, environmental assessment, physical security, safeguards and nuclear materials management.

 

David Garman was sworn in as Assistant U.S. Secretary of Energy on May 31, 2001. Before that, David was chief of staff to Alaska Senator Frank Murkowsi. He also served on the staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. David also served as a U.S. Senate observer at nearly all major negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 1995 to 2000.

 

Paul Gilman is the assistant administrator for the office of research and development, the scientific and technologic arm of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is also the agency science advisor, charged with assuring that science is better integrated into the agency's programs, policies and decisions. Paul has also been director of policy panning for Celera Genomics, a bioinformation and drug discovery company, and executive director of the life sciences and agriculture divisions of the national research council of the National Academy of Sciences. He also served on the staff of the United States Senate for 13 years.

 

Bernard Goldstein is the dean of the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health. He served as the director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, a joint program of Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) Robert Wood Johnson Medical School from 1986-2001.

 

Jim Grazio is an aquatic biologist with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection specializing in issues pertaining to Great Lakes biology.  He represents the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on the Great Lakes Panel on Aquatic Nuisance Species and the Lake Erie Lakewide Management Plan (LaMP) Working Group.  Jim has conducted considerable research into the population dynamics and control of zebra mussel invasions in inland lakes and has written several papers on these topics.

 

Noah Hall is the senior manager, water resources for the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes Natural Resource Center in Ann Arbor, MI. In this position, Noah directs efforts to protect the waters of the Great Lakes on behalf NWF's four million members and supporters. Prior to joining NWF, Noah practiced environmental law, representing a variety of conservation organizations and private businesses in natural resource and energy matters.

 

Marilyn Heiman is director of the Boreal Songbird Initiative, part of an effort to protect one of the largest forest ecosystems remaining on the planet. She was Alaska policy advisor for former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit and was special assistant on natural resources and oceans to the governor of Alaska.

 

Jack Hedlund is a retired school district administrator who now serves as the executive director of the Allegheny Forest Alliance, a non-profit organization promoting sustainable forestry, environmental stewardship and multiple-use management of the Allegheny National Forest.

 

Tom Henry created The (Toledo) Blade's environment beat shortly after joining the newspaper in 1993. He began his newspaper career in 1981at The Bay City (MI) Times after earning his bachelor's degree from Central Michigan University. His prelude into full-time environmental writing ranged from the woods of northern Michigan at his first job to alligator swamps of central Florida at his second newspaper, The Tampa Tribune, where he worked from 1985-91 and received accolades from none other than singer Jimmy Buffett for his coverage of endangered manatees.

 

Rick Hind is legislative director of the Greenpeace toxics campaign. He presents the group's policies to government and the media. Hind has been with the campaign since 1991. He has worked on efforts to identify vulnerability in U.S. chemical plants, treatys on eliminating POPs, and proposals to phase out the use of PBC plastic. Before he joined Greenpeace, Hind was environmental program director for the US PIRG in Washington, DC.

 

Don Hopey has covered the environment for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette since 1992. He has written series about an 80-mile canoe trip through the Wild & Scenic sections of the Allegheny River, the "Wise Use" movement in the East, problems with the nation's hazardous waste incinerators and damage to historic homes buildings due to subsidence caused by longwall mining in southwestern Pennsylvania.

 

Thomas Hylton is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of "Save Our Land, Save Our Towns," about the impacts of sprawl in the Mid-Atlantic states.

 

Jerry Ingersoll is the off-highway vehicle program manager for the USDA Forest Service. He served as district ranger for the Ketchikan-Misty Fiords Ranger District of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska starting in 1999. Jerry has also been a forest planner, forester and ranger in Arkansas, Nevada and Colorado.

 

Derrick Jackson has been a columnist at the Boston Globe since 1988. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary in 2001. Prior to the Globe, Jackson was a news and sports reporter at Newsday and The Kansas City Star.

 

Kirk Johnson is executive director of Friends of Allegheny Wilderness, working to win designation of additional federal wilderness areas within the Allegheny National Forest under the 1964 Wilderness Act. His career in wilderness preservation and conservation has included work with the National Park Service, the Allegheny Defense Project, Wolf Haven International, and as a liaison between the Washington Department of Natural Resources and Washington's 27 recognized Native American tribes. Kirk has published "A Proposal For Tionesta Wilderness Designation In The Allegheny National Forest," (Natural Areas Journal, 2001) and "Honoring A Wilderness Vision: A Proposal For Pennsylvania's Allegheny National Forest" (Wild Earth, 2002.).

 

David Jones is senior news and feature editor at Business Traveler, based in New York. For the past three years, David has been a freelance journalist based in Newark, NJ. In 2003, he was awarded a senior fellowship by SEJ.

 

Jennifer Szweda Jordan regularly reports and produces news and feature stories heard on The Allegheny Front, the region's only locally produced environmental radio program. She also writes for public radio station WYEP-FM in Pittsburgh, after working for The Associated Press and daily newspapers in NY and VA.

 

Charles Karpowicz is a civil engineer who has overseen 30 dam modification projects, and the deactivation of more than 100 dams that affected the national park system. Charles has more than 35 years of experience with dams, including creating the Bureau of Indian Affairs manual for dam safety in 1979, and developing the technical priority rating system in 1986.

 

Patricia Kennedy an attorney since 1981 and an SEJ academic member since 1999, is an associate professor in the communication department at Clarion University of PA. She has experience in environmental law.

 

Robert Kennedy Jr. is chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a clinical professor and supervising attorney at the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University School of Law in New York, and author, "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking our Democracy."

 

Scott Klara manages the U.S. Department of Energy's carbon sequestration program in the office of fossil energy at the National Energy Technology Laboratory. He manages a $170 million dollar portfolio of more than 80 projects dedicated to developing technology for greenhouse gas management and mitigation.

 

Gillian Klucas is the author of the forthcoming book "Leadville: The Struggle To Revive An American Town," a narrative nonfiction account of the challenges to clean up a hard-rock mining site. As a freelance writer, Gillian has written about the environment and other topics for such publications as Preservation, OnEarth, and High Country News.

 

Mary Kostalos has been a professor at Chatham College in Pennsylvania for 31 years. She teaches biology, ecology, environmental studies and human health. Her research includes studies of the detritus pathway in aquatic systems and stream remediation. Kostalos is also the secretary of the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association and a board member of the Earth Force, a local environmental group.

 

John Kostyack is senior counsel in the National Wildlife Federation's Washington, DC, office, where he manages the Federation's Wildlife Conservation Program. He also serves as co-chair of the environmental community's Unified Endangered Species Campaign. John serves as counsel for NWF and other environmental groups in a variety of legal initiatives, including cases to protect the critically-endangered Florida panther and to restore the gray wolf in the northeastern U.S. 

 

Scott Kovarovics serves as director of the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition. The Coalition includes more than 110 conservation, recreation and other groups working to better protect public lands and waters from the impacts caused by all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), dirt bikes, jet skis and other off-road vehicles. Before joining the Coalition in April 2001, Scott worked for nearly seven years for U.S. Representative Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut, including as chief of staff, legislative director and legislative assistant.

 

Gail Krantzberg is director of the Great Lakes regional office of the International Joint Commission, a team of American and Canadian scientific experts studying the Great Lakes. She is past president of the International Association of Great Lakes Research. Gail has written more than 80 peer-reviewed articles on issues pertaining to Great Lakes ecosystem quality, science and policy.

 

Thomas Lacher Jr. is the executive director of the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International. He has held positions at Texas A&M University, Clemson University, Western Washington University and the University of Brasilia, Brazil. Thomas has been working in the tropics for 30 years. His research has been focused on the ecology and behavior of mammals, the applications of GIS technology to wildlife conservation, the effects of environmental contaminants on wildlife populations, and the integration of ecological and economic principles in conservation.

 

Neal Lane is currently a professor at Rice University and is a former director of the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

 

Deborah Lange is the executive director of the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research (SEER) at Carnegie Mellon University. The SEER was founded in the Spring of 2004 with the mission to help the university realize some of its boldest goals: inspiring students to make a real difference in the real world; changing the way the world thinks and acts with regard to sustainability; ensuring that future generations have the resources they need to flourish; and transforming cultures of waste and depletion into cultures of conservation and renewal.

 

Governor Michael Leavitt was sworn in as the 10th administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in November 2003. Leavitt was a pioneer of collaborative environmental management during his term as governor of Utah.

 

Edward Lloyd has been general counsel to the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group since 1983. He was also founding director of the Rutgers University Law School Environmental Law Clinic in 1985, and co-founder and co-director of the Eastern Environmental Law Center.

 

Vivian Loftness is a professor in the school of architecture at Carnegie Mellon University and senior researcher at the Center for Building Performance. She is a board member of the U.S. Green Building Council, the AIA Committee on the Environment and the Federal Energy Management Council of the U.S. Department of Energy.

 

Francesca Lyman is a freelance writer and investigative reporter who, for the last five years, has written the "Your Environment" column for MSNBC.com. She has contributed to The New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, This Old House and such environmental periodicals as Land and People, The Green Guide, Organic Style, Sierra, Orion, and Orion Afield. She is the author of two books, "The Greenhouse Trap: What We're Doing To The Atmosphere And How We Can Slow Global Warming" (Beacon Press), and a children's book, "Inside The Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest: Exploring The Heart Of Central Africa" (Workman Publishing).

 

Paul MacClennan was the environmental reporter for The Buffalo News for 30 years and continued to write a weekly environmental column for several years after retirement. He continues as a freelance journalist. A graduate of Syracuse University's School of Journalism, he taught at The American University at Cairo for three years and then returned to work at The Watertown Times before joining The News. He covered Love Canal for 25 years and was the pool reporter inside Attica prison during the uprising.

 

Michael Mansur, local government reporter at The Kansas City Star, has reported on the environment since the 1980s. In 1991, he was a member of a team of reporters at The Star who won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, for a series of stories on the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Michael is past president of the Society of Environmental Journalists and is currently editor of the SEJournal.

 

Robert McClure covers environmental affairs for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In 2001 he and P-I reporter Andrew Schneider produced the most thorough newspaper investigation to date of the General Mining Law of 1872, "The Mining of the West: Pollution and Profit on Public Lands." Robert currently focuses on natural resources, including mining, timber and fisheries.

 

Norris McDonald is founder and president of the African American Environmentalist Association. The group is a national organization dedicated to protecting the environment, promoting the efficient use of natural resources, enhancing human, animal and plant ecologies and increasing African-American participation in the environmental movement.

 

Jim McKay covers workplace and general assignment business issues for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he has been a staff writer for 21 years. His recent articles have looked at the outsourcing of white-collar jobs to India, oil and natural gas production in Pennsylvania, efficient manufacturing techniques and work skills aptitude tests.

 

Granger Morgan is head of the department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the School of Public Policy and Management. His research addresses problems in science, technology and public policy.

 

Jim Motavalli is editor of E The Environmental Magazine, a columnist for Environmental Defense and the Appalachian Mountain Club's AMC Outdoors, a freelance writer for the New York Times, and author or editor of four books: "Forward Drive: The Race To Build Clean Cars For The Future," "Breaking Gridlock: Moving Toward Transportation That Works," (both Sierra Club Books), "Feeling The Heat: Dispatches From The Frontlines Of Climate Change," (Routledge) and "Green Living: An E Magazine Planetary Resource Guide" (Plume, 2005).

 

Sean Moutlon has served OMB Watch, since early 2002, as senior information policy analyst with special attention on environmental information and right-to-know issues. Before joining OMB Watch, Sean developed his lobbying and policy analysis skills as the Tax Policy Analyst at Friends of the Earth, a national nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Sean's work experience also includes several years as a research fellow and contract employee with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in their Industry Sector Policy Division.

 

Ben Moyer is outdoors columnist and feature writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He has also written "Pennsylvania's Wildlife And Wild Places: Our Outdoor Heritage in Peril," (PA DCNR, 2003) and "Out Back: Reflections From The Appalachian Outdoors" (Raven Rock Books, 2002).

 

Mike Mumau is the assistant park manager at Presque Isle State Park in Erie, PA. His main responsibility is the development of the Tom Ridge Center at Presque Isle but is also responsible for the park's environmental education and interpretive program, natural resource management and intern/volunteer programs. Mike has also worked as an outdoor educator in the Chesapeake Bay area, and a backcountry ranger for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in southwestern Alaska.

 

Keiran Murphy works as a research specialist for Taliesin Preservation, Inc. (TPI), a non-profit organization in Spring Green, Wisconsin. TPI preserves the 600-acre Taliesin estate, which includes Frank Lloyd Wright's personal residence, Taliesin (1911-1959), together with four other Wright-designed buildings. The Taliesin estate stands on land originally farmed by the architect's maternal ancestors and Wright traced his lifelong love of nature to his experiences there as a teenager. She is a co-presenter at this year's Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy conference on October 14 in a talk focusing on phase one of Taliesin's Save America's Treasures project.

 

Dan Nephin is a newsman in the Pittsburgh bureau of The Associated Press. He has been a journalist for more than a dozen years, covering everything from parades to death penalty cases. Recently, he's begun focusing on environmental issues. He's written about the Allegheny National Forest, invasive species, pollution, mining and hunting and fishing.

 

Sara Nicholas is an associate director of dam programs with American Rivers, and covers the Mid-Atlantic region including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Delaware. Her primary focus is removing dams that no longer serve any purpose to help restore the region's rivers and streams. She has worked in the environmental field for the past 15 years, including positions with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Environmental Law Institute.

 

Raymond Orbach is director of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. He manages the third-largest federal sponsor of basic research in the U.S. The office funds programs in high energy, nuclear physics, basic energy sciences, magnetic fusion energy, biological and environmental research and computational science. From 1992 to 2002, Raymond was chancellor of the University of California-Riverside, increasing enrollment from 8,805 to more than 14,400.

 

Doug Oster is the Backyard Gardener for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He covers gardening for the newspaper, as well as for KDKA-TV's Saturday news show and Pittsburgh Today Live. Oster also writes, produces and works on-air for WYEP public radio and WQED-TV.

 

Vince Patton covers the environmental beat for KGW-TV (NBC) in Portland, OR. After winning SEJ's Best Documentary Award, Vince now co-chairs SEJ's awards program. He is also a member of SEJ's First Amendment task force tracking increasing secrecy in government.

 

Eric Perry is a hydrologist with the U.S. Office of Surface Mining's technical support group in Pittsburgh. His duties include analysis of water quality and quantity impacts from active and abandoned surface and underground coal mines; geochemistry of rocks; acid drainage prediction, prevention and treatment; and characterization and disposal of coal combustion wastes.

 

Scott Peterson is vice president for communications at the Nuclear Energy Institute. He was senior director for NEI's communications division. Scott directs the Institute's activities in media relations, advertising, editorial and creative services, public opinion research and industry communications. Before joining NEI, he was director of communications for the American Nuclear Energy Council, a government relations organization for the nuclear energy industry and one of three groups merged in 1995 to form the Nuclear Energy Institute. 

 

Gerald Poje has been a member of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board since its inception in 1997. He was on scene at the CSB's investigations into the chemical explosion at the First Chemical Corp. manufacturing facility near Pascagoula, MS, the Kaltech reactive chemical explosion in Manhattan, NY, that injured 32, the Georgia-Pacific toxic gas incident that killed two and injured more than a dozen people near Pennington, AL, and the Sonat Exploration explosion and fire that killed four near Pitkin, LA.

 

Cindy Rank was president of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy from 1988 to 1994 and now chairs the mining committee of that group. She has led research and protests on coal mining and water quality issues in her area, and was the first to compile a map visually documenting the extent of stream loss from mountaintop removal valley fills in West Virginia.

 

Donna Vincent Roa is one of 10 researchers who studied the Treasury Department's redesign of the $100 bill. She is now public affairs director for research and development at the EPA.

 

Michelle Robbins joined American Forests as managing editor in 1992 and became editor and director of publications in 1996. A former reporter, she left the daily grind after five years to become editor of a start-up monthly, Capital Computer Digest in Washington, DC in 1986. From there she was director of publications and marketing for the National Association of Biology Teachers before joining American Forests.

 

Rick Rodriguez has been executive editor of The Sacramento Bee since June 1988. He joined the paper in November 1982 as a political writer in the paper's state capitol bureau. As executive editor, he is in charge of the overall news operations of The Bee, which has a daily circulation of 295,000 and a Sunday circulation of 350,000. Rodriguez is a long-time board member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and is slated to become president in 2005. He would be the first Latino to be ASNE's president.

 

Edward Rubin is the alumni professor of environmental engineering and science at Carnegie Mellon University. He researches environmental control, energy use, and technology-policy interactions, including the role of government policies in environmental technology innovation. Edward is the author of more than 200 technical papers and reports, including the recent textbook "Engineering and the Environment."

 

Ann Safley has worked for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission since 1991.She reviews federal and state development projects for their effects on historic properties, and increasing numbers of dam removal projects. Ann has also worked on America's Industrial Heritage Project, which covered a nine-county region in southern Pennsylvania.

 

Wayne Schloop is the chief of operations for the Detroit District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  He has worked for 20 years at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and has been involved with the planning, design and construction of navigation, hydropower and various marine projects. Wayne has also served as a project manager in lock rehabilitation; breakwater, pier and revetment repairs; dredging projects; and a bi-national study assessing the long-term navigation requirements of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.

 

John Schombert is the executive director of the 3 Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Program, a non-profit organization created in 1998 to help municipalities in the Pittsburgh area address its aging and deteriorating sewer system. The organization awards grants for demonstration projects, benchmarking sewer technology and increasing inter-municipal cooperation. Before joining 3 Rivers, John worked for nearly 30 years in the Allegheny County Health Department's water pollution, public drinking water and waste management programs.

 

Kathryn Schulz is formerly managing editor and currently editor-at-large of the online environmental magazine Grist (www.grist.org). Prior to that, she was a reporter and editor for The Santiago Times, Chile's English-language newspaper, where she covered environmental, labor and human-rights issues.

 

Larry Schweiger became president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation in March 2004. Previously, he served eight years as president and CEO of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, where he increased visibility for the conservancy through public advocacy and community garden projects.

 

Scott Segal is a partner in the government relations and strategy section of the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson, LLP. For the last 15 years, Scott has focused on environmental and energy policy development in Washington DC, representing a range of industry and non-profit interests. He serves as spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of utilities that has focused on air issues. He has argued several major Clean Air Act cases before the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

 

Ilsa Setziol is environment reporter for NPR-affiliate KPCC in Los Angeles. Many of her stories concern efforts to save endangered species and preserve open space in one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Prior to her work as environment reporter, Ilsa served as senior producer of KPCC's morning talk show, Larry Mantle's AirTalk. During that time she also reported and produced special projects, including a series on race relations and programs about the history, cultures and contemporary lives of California Indian tribes. She contributes to syndicated programs, especially NPR's Living on Earth and The California Report.

 

Deanna Simon works for the city and county of San Francisco's municipal pest management and pesticide reduction program. She also works with San Francisco's Preferable Purchasing Program, helping the city buy less toxic products. Her specialty is less-toxic alternatives to pest management.

 

Edith Smeesters is spokesperson for the Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (CAP), created in 1999 to reduce pesticide use in Québec, Canada. Her most recent book is "Aménagement paysager adapté à la sécheresse" (Landscaping For Drought) which was released in March 2004. Edith has a degree in botany from Leuven University in Belgium. She moved to Canada in 1970.

 

John Spengler is the Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation, in the Exposure, Epidemiology and Risk Program, Department of Environmental Health, at Harvard University's School of Public Health. He is researching the integration of knowledge about indoor and outdoor air pollution as well as other risk factors into the design of housing, buildings and communities. In addition to his academic and research activities, John has been active in professional education workshops and short courses on topics that include pollution prevention and indoor environmental quality management for schools, offices and hospitals, and distance learning.

 

Jodi Stemler joined the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation in early 2002 and brings a decade of experience in the wildlife conservation community to the organization. Prior to joining CSF, she managed a legislative campaign to increase federal funding for the conservation of wildlife and their habitats and did communications work for a state fish and wildlife agency. At CSF, Jodi focuses on communicating the work of the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation and the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus to the media and the general public.

 

Brian Stempeck is a senior reporter for Greenwire and Environment & Energy Daily in Washington, DC. He covers climate change, transportation and automotive industry issues for the two publications, where he has worked since 2001. Previously, Brian wrote for the Louisville Courier-Journal and Boston magazine.

 

Mark Stevenson is a freelance reporter and producer based in Toronto. His work has appeared on CBC, CNN, The Discovery Channel (Canada) and the Canadian national newspaper the Globe and Mail. Mark has traveled across Canada, and into the arctic and Antarctica. He has a certificate in East European Studies from the Jagellonica University at Krakow, Poland, and a certificate in the Russian language from the Institute of Youth at Moscow.

 

Ben Stout III is associate professor of biology and director of environmental studies at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, WV. He has worked as an instructor and researcher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and studied water resources in Virginia and Tennessee.

 

Susan Stout has been employed as a research forester with the United States Forest Service research project in Warren, PA, since 1981. In 1991, she was named leader of the research team at that location. Her research interests include forest diversity, deer impact on forests, and translating results from ecosystem research into practical management guidelines for Pennsylvania's forests and beyond. Currently, she is collaborating with the Sand County Foundation and several landowners, land managers, hunters, and scientists to improve both hunting and habitat on a 74,000 acre landscape in northwestern Pennsylvania.

 

Dawn Stover, the science editor of Popular Science, has been at the magazine for 18 years. She currently writes and edits feature articles on science, technology and the environment. She has been a telecommuter since 1991, working from an office in the Pacific Northwest. Dawn has written for every section of the magazine, but her primary expertise is in the life sciences. Her previous work includes stints at Harper's and Science Digest. Dawn has been co-coordinator (with Orna Izakson) of SEJ's Mentor Program since its founding in 2001.

 

Joel Tarr, the Richard S. Caliguiri Professor of Urban and Environmental History and Policy, is one of the nation's leading scholars of urban history, particularly the history and impact of urban technological systems and the problems of environmental pollution. He is the author of two books: "The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective" — which received the Choice Distinguished Academic Book Award for 1997 — and "A Study in Boss Politics: William Lorimer of Chicago."

 

Russell Train, is Chairman Emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund and author of "Politics, Pollution and Pandas." Train was the first chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality and the second administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, both during the Nixon Administration. He is also former Undersecretary of the Interior and founder of the World Wildlife Fund and the African Wildlife Fund.

 

Ernesto Villanueva is a researcher with the legal research institute of the University National Autonomuos of Mexico. He is also director of the Comparative Media Law Journal. His most recent book is "Freedom of Information in Latin America."

 

Eric Washburn is executive director of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. For the prior 10 years, Eric worked for Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, most recently as senior policy advisor on environmental and conservation matters.

 

Deborah Weisberg covers fishing and the outdoors for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and is also a reporter and commentator for WYEP-FM's Allegheny Front, the area's only locally produced environmental program.

 

Tim Wheeler covers growth for The Baltimore Sun. He has written about the environment frequently in his 30-year journalistic career, which included a decade as the beat reporter for The Evening Sun and then The Sun after the two papers merged. He recently spent nearly two years as an editor coordinating The Sun's environmental coverage, during which the paper won an SEJ award for spot-news coverage in 2001 of a chemical-laden train fire in downtown Baltimore.

 

Dale Willman runs his own production company and reports on environmental issues for a number of outlets. He also lectures on college campuses on numerous topics, from environmental journalism to diversity in the media. As managing editor for the Great Lakes Radio Consortium for two years, Dale turned a small radio news service into a regional powerhouse. The news feed's coverage was expanded by 10 percent, reaching 135 public radio stations in 20 states and Canada. He also spent more than 10 years in various roles at National Public Radio in Washington, DC.

 

Elizabeth Withnell is counsel to the Privacy Office for the Department of Homeland Security. She provides legal advice on a wide range of privacy matters, and on issues involving the Freedom of Information Act.  In addition to serving as counsel, Elizabeth also helped to establish the FOIA program for DHS Headquarters. Prior to joining the staff of the Privacy Office, Elizabeth was a senior attorney in the Office of Information and Privacy of the Department of Justice, where she was involved in a wide range of administrative and litigation-related activities involving the FOIA and the Privacy Act.

 

Chris Wood is the vice president for conservation at Trout Unlimited (TU). Chris developed TU's public lands program, which focuses in part on cleaning up abandoned mines in the Western U.S. He served as the senior policy and communications advisor to the chief of the U.S. Forest Service. Chris is co-author and editor of "Watershed Restoration: Principles And Practices" (American Fisheries Society, 1997) and "From Conquest To Conservation: Our Public Land Legacy" (Island Press, 2003).

 

Mike Wright is director of health, safety and environment for the United Steelworkers of America. The USWA represents 600,000 members in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Their members include most workers in the integrated steel industry, and about half the workers in steel mini-mills. The USWA also represents workers in other industries: aluminum and other non-ferrous metals, mining, rubber, forest products, chemicals, containers, shipbuilding, electronics, defense, manufacturing, health care and state and local government. Mike is a current member of the EPA's Clean Air Act advisory committee and NIOSH's mine health research advisory committee.

 

Ed Zahniser is the senior writer/editor for the publications unit of the National Park Service Media Development Group at the Interpretive Design Center in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He is the author of many official national park visitor information brochures and national park handbooks on such areas as Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Sequoia national parks. He is contributing editor for and a contributing writer to "The Living Earth Book of North American Trees," and editor of "Where Wilderness Preservation Began." His numerous books of poetry include "The Way to Heron Mountain" and "A Calendar Of Worship And Other Poems."