Dr. Gary Yohe, Director
- Dr. Gary W. Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University; he has been on the faculty at Wesleyan for more than 30 years. He is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles, several books, and many contributions to media coverage of climate issues. Most of his work has focused attention on the mitigation and adaptation/impacts sides of the climate issue. Involved since the early 1990’s with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that received a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, he served as a Lead Author for four different chapters in the Third Assessment Report that was published in 2001 and as Convening Lead Author for the last chapter of the contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report that was published in 2007. In that Assessment, he also worked with the Core Writing Team to prepare the overall Synthesis Report. He a Convening Lead Author for Chapter 18 of the Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report on “Detection and Attribution” and a Lead Author for Chapter 1 on “Points of Departure”.
- Professor Yohe served as a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change and currently participates as a member of the standing Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change of the National Academies of Science. He has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the “Hidden (climate change) Cost of Oil” on March 30, 2006, the Senate Energy Committee on the Stern Review on February 14, 2007, and the Senate Banking Committee on “Material Risk from Climate Change and Climate Policy” on October 31, 2007. He served as a member of the Adaptation Panel of the National Academy of Sciences’ initiative on America’s Climate Choices and as a member of an Academy Committee on Stabilization Targets for Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Concentrations that was chaired by Susan Solomon.
- Professor Yohe is currently a member of the United States Global Change Research Program Advisory Committee of the National Research Council; and he has been a co-editor, along with Michael Oppenheimer, of Climatic Change since August of 2010.
- In April of 2011, Professor Yohe was appointed Vice Chair of the National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee by Under-Secretary of Commerce Jane Lubchenko for a term of three years.
- Education: BA University of Pennsylvania, MA Stony Brook, MPHIL Yale University, Ph.D Yale University
Dr. Walt Cooper, Director
- Dr. Cooper has worked in public education for 25 years and is the superintendent of the Mountain School District, Colorado Springs. He received the 2002 Bob Cito Vision and Leadership Award for his work in developing cooperative programs for special needs students in eastern El Paso County, and was also named 1996 Administrator of the Year by the Colorado Association of Health and Physical Education.
- Education: BA - University of Northern Colorado, MA - Educational Administration, Doctorate in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Victoria Waters, Director
- CEO, Green Education Foundation
Passionate about educating youth on sustainability concepts and how we can all make a difference in preserving our planet’s natural resources, Victoria founded Green Education Foundation (GEF) in April 2008 with the mission of providing free sustainability education resources and programs to K-12 schools worldwide. Today, GEF’s flagship program, National Green Week, is the largest K-12 sustainability education movement in the nation. With the growth and success of GEF, she was able to launch a new division, GEF Institute, to offer leading edge online sustainability courses and certificates to a wider audience including higher education and corporations. - Victoria lends more than twenty-five years of business experience to her role as CEO. Prior to founding GEF, she spent fifteen years at AMR Research where during her time there AMR grew to over 200 employees and became the leading provider of research and advice on global supply chain and enterprise technology to operations and IT executives. Victoria was instrumental in creating new sales programs that contributed to significant growth and bottom line impact for the company. AMR Research was acquired by Gartner Group, the world’s largest analyst firm, in 2009.
- Victoria has a B.A. in comprehensive physics from Western State College, Gunnison, CO.
Scott MacKenzie, Director
- Vice President, Public Relations at the Castle Group. Mr. MacKenzie has spent 15 years developing and implementing strategic communications programs and crisis response plans for clients across a broad range of industries including health care, higher education, energy, finance and public affairs.
- Education: BS in Business Administration, Saint Michael's College
Gary Kunath, Director
- Founder and former CEO of the Summit Group, founding member of The G2G Collection, equity partner in Bite Tech, adjunct professor at The Citadel in their Sports Marketing Graduate program, and serves on the board of Trustees for Utica College. Gary Kunath was named Businessman of the Year for the United States and was formally recognized for this achievement at a dinner hosted by the President of the United States.
- Education: MS in Organizational Development from the State University of New York at Binghamton, a BS in Business Administration/Marketing from Syracuse University, and an A.A.S. in Business Management from Mohawk Valley Community College. He is also an August 1990 graduate of Duke University's Executive Development Program.
Dr. Stephen Stokes
- CEO Note: Dr. Stokes passed away in 2014. We are terribly saddened by the loss of our esteemed board member and friend. We will be forever grateful for his tireless support and dedication to our mission.
- Dr. Stephen Stokes was a research vice president and distinguished analyst in the Supply Chain Leaders group at Gartner Research. He coordinated sustainability and green technology research across supply chain, business strategy and sustainable technologies. His primary responsibility involved guiding companies in understanding risks and exploring opportunities presented by the challenges of sustainability and the sustainable business transformation. This theme covers a broad cross section of issues relating to the sustainable supply chain, sustainable sourcing and product development, sustainability metrics and benchmarking, sustainable business performance, energy management, carbon emissions and carbon management, emerging frameworks for sustainable business, and business issues associated with the low-carbon economic transformation, ranging from energy and emission policy and regulation to market dynamics.
- Education: Ph.D Climate Change and Environmental Physics, University of Oxford; MBA with a focus on Sustainable Business, University of Auckland; MS Earth Sciences, University of Waikato, New Zealand; BS Computer Science and Earth Sciences, University of Waikato, New Zealand