Speaker Bios

Dr. Wes Jackson - Keynote

 

Wes Jackson is the founder and current president of The Land Institute.After earning a BA in biology from Kansas Wesleyan University, an MA in botany from the Uiversity of Kansas, and a PhD in genetics from North Carolina State University, he established and served as chair of one of the United States' first environmental studies programs at California State University-Sacramento. Jackson then chose to leave academia, returning to his native Kansas, where he founded a non-profit organization, The Land Institute, in 1976. He is still head of The Land Institute, which currently describes its main goal as the development of Natural Systems Agriculture; it also publishes The Land Report, a newsletter about American sustainable agriculture and agrarianism.The Land Institute explored alternatives in appropriate technology, environmental ethics, and education, but a research program in sustainable agriculture eventually became central to its work. In 1978 Jackson proposed the development of a perennial polyculture. He sought to have fields planted in polycultures, more than one plant in a field, as in nature. Jackson also wanted to use perennials, which would not need to be replanted every year - that would leave the soil more intact, preventing erosion, and allowing important relationships between soil and plant to continue. The Land Institute attempts to breed plants not presently used in agriculture into effective producers of perennial grains in intercropping conditions. Jackson argued that this version of agriculture used "nature as model", and to pursue that end The Land Institute has studied prairie ecology.Entering its third decade, The Land Institute is beginning to demonstrate progress in developing the perennial crops called for in the Natural Systems Agriculture model. Programs in wheat, sorghum, and sunflower are generating crop lines displaying both perenniality and agriculturally-significant seed yield. Research on integrating these new plants into polycultures also continues. The Land Institute is not itself developing machinery suitable for one-pass harvesting of grain polycultures. It instead takes the position that integration of existing materials separation technology into harvesters is a straight-forward task, and will be accomplished by public and private agricultural engineers when the demand arrives.Wes Jackson is the author of several books including New Roots for Agriculture and Becoming Native to This Place and is recognized as a leader in the international sustainable agriculture movement. He was a 1990 Pew Conservation Scholar, in 1992 became a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2000 received the Right Livelihood Award. His work is often referred to by author Wendell Berry, with whom Jackson has shared a longtime friendship and correspondence (Bio source: Wikipedia).

Catherine Bottrill

Catherine Bottrill is a UKERC Researcher on Personal Carbon Trading and Equity at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. Her research focuses on further developing the concept of a personal carbon trading scheme. This is a policy framework to motivate individuals' behaviour to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions they are responsible for through their travel and home energy use. This year, her research will be to (1) Consider the appropriate emissions boundaries for a personal carbon trading scheme; (2) Examine the equity issues of the scheme to different groups of people; and (3) Develop an accurate tool for calculating personal carbon emissions in order to provide a better picture of the variation in individuals' personal emission profiles. Prior to her work on personal carbon trading, she focused on the use of the Internet as a tool for communication and information exchange on environmental issues. Catherine studied for a Masters in Environmental Management at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (USA) and has an undergraduate degree in Human Geography at St. Andrews University (UK). She has done environmental research in USA, India and Pakistan.

Mr. Garrett Boone

Mr. Garret Boone is the Chairman of Dallas-based The Container Store, the nation’s leader of storage and organization products. Mr. Boone has helped drive the company’s business since the very beginning in 1978, and today, the company has grown to 38 stores and projected sales of $500 million. Boone’s commitment to maintaining the company’s culture has contributed to The Container Store being selected by FORTUNE magazine as the “Best Company to Work For” seven years in a row. He received a bachelor’s degree in European history from Rice University and a master’s degree in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He sits on the board of the Dallas Metropolitan YMCA, the Dallas Museum of Art, the advisory board for JP Morgan Chase and the advisory council for The Dallas Women’s Foundation. Mr. Boone is also co-chair of Texas Business for Clean Air, a group of prominent business leaders across the state committed to matters that affect air quality in Texas. TBCA believes that the economic vitality of businesses depends on the utility industry's ability to foster technologies that promote efficiency and minimize harmful emissions. TCBA believes there is no conflict between clean air and business interests, but instead a natural long-term alliance for the health and economic benefits that clean air will bring to Texas.

Mr. Todd Onderdonk

Todd Onderdonk is a Senior Energy Advisor in ExxonMobil's Corporate PlanningDepartment. In this capacity, he is responsible for assessing economic and nergy trends, emerging energy technologies, and related public policy issues around the world. Todd is actively involved in developing ExxonMobil's long-term global energy outlook, including the identification of potential implications for energy markets and the Corporation's strategic plans. Todd has worked in the energy industry for more than 25 years in a wide variety of executive, management and advisory positions involving business activities around the world. He holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University and an MBA in Finance from Indiana University.

Dr. Nowell Donovan

Dr. Nowell Donovan is Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Texas Christian University. He also holds the Charles B. Moncrief Chair in Geology.

Dr. Maynard Dyson

Dr. Maynard Dyson is a pediatric pulmonary specialist at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. He holds a BS in Chemistry from Virginia Tech and an M.D. from the University of Virginia Medical School. Dr. Dyson is currently Chariman of Cook Children's Institutional Review Board and Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Texas Tech Medical School in Lubbock, Texas. He has published extensively on allergic diseases and pediatric pulmonology.

Dr. Dave Frame

D Dave Frame is James Martin Fellow in Environmental Change at Oxford's Environmental Change Institute and a College Lecturer in Geography. He holds a BSc in Physics and Philosophy, MSc (Hons) in Astronomy and Astrophysics, and PhD in Physics from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Dave's research looks at how uncertainties in predictions of global climate change models can affect climate policy. He is interested in using recent and future global warming rates to improve the questions policy makers ask, as well as working on ways of quantifying the uncertainties in the answers to those questions.

Mr. Paul Genoa

Mr. Genoa is the Director of Policy Development at the Nuclear Energy Institute. His focus is on developing unified industry policies and effectively communicating those policies to key stakeholders. His technical, regulatory and political experience makes him a valuable resource to policymakers on nuclear energy and environmental issues. His professional career in the nuclear industry has spanned 25 plus years working as a Health Physicist on radiation protection and environmental issues at the Florida Power Corporation - Crystal River Nuclear Plant, the Arizona Public Service - Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station, and at the Consumers Power - Big Rock Point Atomic Plant. He joined the Institute in March of 1995. Mr. Genoa received his B.S. Degree in Environmental Health at Colorado State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. He received his M.B.A. from NOVA University’s School of Business and Entrepreneurship.

Mr. Larry Gustafson

Mr. Larry Gustafson has more than 30 years of experience as a trial lawyer, first with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, then with the Land and Natural Resources Division, Environmental Crimes Section of the Department of Justice, and now in private practice.  Mr. Gustafson’s practice involves the defense of corporations and employees in antitrust and environmental litigation, corporate criminal proceedings, and complex civil and criminal litigation. Mr. Gustafson has written and spoken extensively on topics such as “Environmental Crimes,” “Electronic Discovery,” “Internal Investigations,” “SEC Investigations: Should You Cooperate?,” “Representation of Business Executives and Corporations in Federal Grand Jury Investigations,” and “The Trial of an Antitrust Bid-Rigging Case.” He has written extensively on issues involving aspects of criminal and civil antitrust and environmental law and was a contributing author to the Criminal Antitrust Litigation Manual.  He holds a J.D. from Boston University, and a B.A. in Business Administration and Economics from the University of Texas at Arlington. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Environmental Studies at TCU. <

Dr. Diana Liverman

Diana Liverman is Director of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and holds a university Chair in Environmental Science in the School of Geography. She returned to England in 2004 after spending most of her professional career in the United States. Her current interests include work on climate policy, geographies of the new carbon economy, neoliberalism and the environment, making climate science and forecasts more useful to stakeholders, differentiating the geographies of land use change in Mexico, understanding environmental problems and governance on the US-Mexico border, and theorizing vulnerability to global change.

Prior to joining the ECI, she was Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona. She served as chair of the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change and as chair of the Latin American Studies Association Environment section; co-chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Inter-American Institute for Global Change; and a member of advisory committees for NASA, NOAA and the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. She is a member of editorial boards of the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Global Environmental Change, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Climatic Change, and the past editor of the Journal of Latin American Geography. Her former positions include Interim Dean of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Arizona, Associate Director of the Earth System Science Centre at Penn State University, and assistant professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her degrees are in geography from University College London, the University of Toronto and UCLA.

Mr. Peter Pfeiffer

Peter Pfeiffer (BS Rensselaer ’78, M Arch University of Texas ’83) is a professional Architect and Building Scientist practicing throughout the United States and Canada and has spent the past 29 years developing pragmatic high performance building strategies. In 2004 he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects for this, and for his life-long commitment to "mainstreaming green building in North America”. He is a founding principal of Barley + Pfeiffer Architects, a firm recognized nationally for its pioneering use of environmentally responsive building design and construction techniques. This includes healthful low toxicity environments in medical facilities and private homes, energy-conserving design and construction, and rainwater harvesting for residential and commercial use. Barley + Pfeiffer Architects have completed over 600 projects nationally since its founding in 1987. Their work has been published both in the United States and abroad in such diverse venues as the WashingtonPost, The New York Times, Fine Homebuilding, and Better Homes & Gardens magazine. On multiple occasions he has been a guest on National Public Radio as well as the HG-TV network addressing “green” building. Fine Homebuilding magazine recognized the firm for having designed one of the top nine most noteworthy homes in America in 1993, as well as “the Greenest home in America” in 2003. EEBA , the national Energy Efficient Building Association, awarded Mr. Pfeiffer the Conference Chair’s Award in 1994 for his career accomplishments pioneering environmentally sensitive architecture. The National Association of Home Builders honored him as the “National Green Advocate of the Year” in 2003 for his life-long achievements in “mainstreaming” green building. This year Residential Architect cited him as one of the 10 most influential residential architects of past decade.

Mr. Eric Silagy

Mr. Eric Silagy joined FPL Energy in 2003 and currently serves as Vice President/General Manager for the Texas region. In this capacity, he is responsible for managing all business activities related to the company’s generation assets in the region, including 1,600 MW of wind power. Prior to undertaking his duties in Texas, Eric served as Vice President, Business Development with responsibility for managing and supporting FPL Energy and FPL Group M&A activities, including all nuclear power plant acquisitions. From 1999 to 2003, Eric served as Vice President, Mergers, Acquisitions & Divestitures at Entergy Wholesale Operations. In this position, he led the successful sale and purchase of numerous energy related assets and companies in the U.S. and overseas. Prior to joining Entergy, Eric held the position of Vice President, Development, Southeast Asia for The Wing Group, a subsidiary of Western Resources. In this capacity, he was responsible for managing power generation development activities and offices in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. From 1987 to 1996, Eric served on the staff of United States Senator J. Bennett Johnston. During this time, he served in a variety of roles including Professional Staff member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Legislative Assistant and Chief of Staff. Eric holds a B.A., Economics from the University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.