Board
The US Partnership registered as a 501(C)3 non-profit corporation on May 12, 2006. The first full board was elected July 26, 2006. Following is the current board roster.
Officers:
Debra Rowe, Ph.D. (President) is national co-coordinator of the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium, founder of the Disciplinary Associations' Network for Sustainability and senior advisor to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Dr. Rowe has been professor of energy management, renewable energy technology and psychology for over 28 years at Oakland Community College.
David E. Blockstein (Vice-President and Treasurer) is a Senior Scientist with the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE). He serves as Executive Secretary of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD) and organizes NCSE's annual National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment. He is an ecologist and conservation biologist with 20 years of experience in the science-policy interface.
Peter Adriance (Secretary) serves as Representative for Sustainable Development for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the U.S. He helped establish several major NGO networks for the UN-sponsored sustainability conferences of the ‘90s. He is a member of the Governing Board of the International Environment Forum, manages the Faith Communities pages of the US Partnership, and serves on the editorial board of Sustainability: the Journal of Record and the steering committee for Interfaith Moral Action on Climate. In 2009, he received the Interfaith Bridge Builder's Award from the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington DC, "for his passionate commitment to inter-religious care for the earth."
Dianne Dillon-Ridgley (Chair) is an environmentalist, human rights activist and noted international speaker on sustainability issues. Named a "Top Green LEED-ER" in 2011, she serves on the boards of Interface, Inc., and Green Mountain Energy. She also represents the World Y.W.C.A at the UN, and has served on numerous U.S. delegations to UN. global meetings. Following the 1992 Earth Summit she was national co-chair of the Citizen's Network for Sustainable Development and served on the President's Council on Sustainable Development. She is a past president of Zero Population Growth (ZPG).
William R. Godfrey (Vice Chair), is president of Environic Foundation International (EFI) and has worked extensively, both nationally and internationally, with diverse groups to increase their understanding of sustainability issues and develop their ability to design strategies that address them. Recently, he was the lead author for Sustainable Societies-Africa, a UNEP funded project designed to mainstream environment and sustainability education in African universities. For twenty-years he was an award-winning architect with projects in North America, Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific.
Directors:
Ariana Bain works with cities, industry, and food systems to connect people to themselves, each other, and the world. She co-founded Metabolic Lab in 2012 as a consulting and action laboratory for inspiring applied projects. Ariana is a Senior Fellow in the Environmental Leadership Program and holds a Masters of Environmental Science in Industrial Ecology from Yale University and a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University. Over the past eight years she has lived in four countries and worked as a consultant, a teacher, and a farmer, sometimes simultaneously. She loves teaching meditation, swimming in glacial runoff, and adventuring.
Kelly Bennett is the Director of Utility Business Development at Ice Energy the leading provider of distributed energy storage and smart grid solutions for optimizing energy system efficiency. She is a former vice president of Sterling Planet, a supplier of renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-carbon solutions and a past chair of the New York State Apollo Alliance. She has served as an adjunct professor, teaching about climate change in the MBA program for Managing Sustainability at Marlboro College (VT). She has also served as Deputy Executive Director of Government Affairs for the Environmental Business Association of NY State, Inc. She is a frequent presenter at national conferences and other events.
Janet Bray serves as the Executive Director of the Association for Career and Technical Education, a not-for-profit association representing over 30,000 professionals across the United States. She manages the staff and program services, is actively involved in strategic public policy efforts, and works on legislative and public awareness issues. With more than three decades in the association management profession, she has provided leadership to a variety of associations in strategic planning, education program development, outreach to related professions and publics and creation of innovative programs and services. Janet has spoken at numerous association conferences and has authored articles related to the association field.
Steve Cochran is an internationally-recognized and nationally-prominent leader, speaker, writer, advocate and practitioner in the field of sustainable enterprise. He is the co-founder of Sustainability Strategies, LLC: an Asheville NC-based strategic planning and management consulting firm. He also serves on the boards of the Community and Economic Development Alliance, the Clean Air Community Trust, and Visitors of Warren Wilson College. He is the co-founder of the Sustainability Alliance of the Mountains (SAM).
Douglas Cohen is a sustainability catalyst who works with organizations and communities to envision and pursue their flourishing futures. With more than 20 years as a strategic organizational change management consultant and leadership development specialist, Doug works closely with a community's sustainability vanguard - from government, business, civil society, and education - to create shared visions and pathways to implementation. He practices Social Architecture, an emerging large scale change discipline. Through his youth development programs, Inspired Futures, Doug helps nurture and equip young people to serve as sustainability-focused problem solvers and community builders. He is Chair of National Youth Initiatives for the US Partnership.
Will Duggan is a leading US sustainability "movement diplomat" with 25 years of public interest media design for clients that have included PBS, Discovery, Turner Broadcasting, NASA, JPMorganChase, United Technologies, MasterCard, other Fortune 100 corporations and major U.S. foundations. As executive director of Better Days Alliance, Will helps track and model sustainability trends with a focus on effectively using diverse media and communications assets to ubiquitously amplify and celebrate progress towards a flourishing future.
Sue Gentile is a professor at Antioch University. At the New England campus, Sue teaches in the Environmental Education and Science Teacher Certification Concentrations in the M.S. Program in the Department of Environmental Studies and in the Department of Education's Educating for Sustainability Concentration in the M.Ed. Program. Sue also teaches at Antioch's Los Angeles campus in the Urban Sustainability M.A Program. Prior to working at Antioch, Sue was a teacher and administrator at Northfield Mount Hermon School for over twenty years. She has also been the Content Specialist for AASHE's (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System) Program. Sue is a consultant for schools and school systems that are striving to educate for sustainability, and she lives where Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts meet in the Connecticut River Valley.
Samuel H. Kosoff is the Director of Sustainability at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, NJ. Sam was a founding member of The Island School, in Eleuthera, Bahamas. He has presented at the annual National Association of Independent Schools Conference, Friends School Environmental Education Network and several independent schools. He helps run the Green Cup Challenge, an energy competition among boarding schools and is the New Jersey coordinator for the Green Schools Alliance. He is also on the board of Sustainable Lawrence.
Philip Silva is a Ph.D. student in Natural Resources at Cornell University. His work focuses on informal adult learning and participatory action research in social-ecological systems. For the past four years, Silva taught courses in urban forestry, environmental history, and design at The New School. In 2011, Silva was one of 25 national leaders convened by the US Forest Service to participate in the "Vibrant Cities and Urban Forests" task force. He has worked with some of NYC's leading environmental organizations, including Sustainable South Bronx, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Just Food, and the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. Philip is a recipient of the 2010 iLAB Residency of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance ("iLAND") and a 2009 Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program. He currently serves as co-founder and co-director of TreeKIT, an initiative to measure, map, and collaboratively manage urban forests. A native of Newark, NJ with a graduate degree in urban policy analysis, Silva is dedicated to exploring nature in all of its urban expressions.
A. Christine Eppstein Tang is Director of the Office of Sustainability for the City of New Haven CT. She previously served as Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability for McGuireWoods Consulting, providing advice to clients to enhance their triple bottom line. She also worked at the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) -- the national association of state cabinet-level environmental commissioners -- and was an assistant professor of environmental law in Romania, a member of the Bucharest Bar, and consulted with the Romanian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development on air quality and industrial pollution issues.