Author Biographies

Author biogrAPhies

Eddie Bautista is executive director of New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.

Linda Birnbaum is a scientist emeritus and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, and scholar in residence at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

Dana Bourland is vice president of the Environment Program at the JPB Foundation and author of Gray to Green Communities: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises (Island Press, 2021).

Jeb Brugmann is a founding principal with Resilient Cities Catalyst, a nonprofit comprised of urban practitioners and resilience experts with deep experience working in cities and regions around the world.

Bethany Carlos is a community pediatrician from South Carolina and focuses on public health and climate change. She enjoys helping her patients and their families find ultimate health through physical, emotional, and environmental health.

Angela Chalk is founder and executive director of Healthy Community Services.

Henry Cisneros is the former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and former mayor of San Antonio, Texas.

Gary Cohen is co-founder and president of Health Care Without Harm, created in 1996 to help transform the health care sector to be environmentally sustainable and support the health and climate resilience of the communities they serve.

178 • Author Biographies

David Coursen is a former EPA attorney and a member of the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit organization of EPA alumni working to protect the agency’s progress toward clean air, water, land and climate protection.

Veronica Davis is Houston’s director of transportation and drainage operations, and vice president of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).

Lois DeBacker is managing director of The Kresge Foundation’s Environment Program.

Lee Epstein is an urban planner and environmental lawyer who has published widely in both professional journals and the popular press. He has a keen interest in climate change challenges and solutions.

Denise Fairchild is president and CEO of Emerald Cities Collaborative, a national nonprofit organization of business, labor and community groups dedicated to climate-resilience strategies that produce environmental, economic and equity outcomes.

Anna Friedman is an associate director of Resilient Cities Catalyst, a nonprofit comprised of urban practitioners and resilience experts with deep experience working in cities and regions around the world.

William Fulton is president of Solimar Research Group, Inc., in Ventura, California and editor of the monthly newsletter the California Planning and Development Report. He is the author of Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate (Island Press, 2022).

Albert George is the founder of the Resilience Initiative for Coastal Education (RICE), an initiative focused on moving beyond the elite scientific and policy discussions to make the topic of resilience accessible to everyone.

Abigail Hart is a project director in The Nature Conservancy’s California Water Program. Her work and research focus on stakeholder engagement and collaborative management of working landscapes. She is editor of Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes: A California Study in Rebalancing the Needs of People and Nature (Island Press, 2021).

Author Biographies • 179

Melissa Jones is executive director of Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII), the coalition of the eleven Bay Area public health departments, founded to address the preventable decade-long differences in life expectancy that exist by race, income, and neighborhood.

Dan Kaplan is a Senior Partner at FXCollaborative, a New York Citybased architecture, interiors, and planning design firm. Dan serves in a design and leadership capacity for many of the firm’s complex, award-winning projects.

Claire Latané is an assistant professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and the author of Schools That Heal: Design with Mental Health in Mind (Island Press, 2021).

Todd Litman is the author of New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies (Island Press, 2021) and founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, an independent research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transport problems.

Katie S. Martin is the executive director of the Institute for Hunger Research & Solutions at Connecticut Food Bank-Foodshare, and the author of Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries: New Tools to End Hunger (Island Press, 2021).

Laurie Mazur is the editor of the Island Press Urban Resilience Project.

Albert Stanley Meiburg is the director of graduate studies in sustainability at Wake Forest University.

Lewis Milford is president and founder of Clean Energy Group.

Richard Moore is the co-coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance and the co-coordinator of Los Jardines Institute (The Gardens Institute) in Albuquerque, N.M. Moore formerly served as chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) and as executive director of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. He currently serves as a co-chair for the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC).

• 180 Author Biographies

Seth Mullendore is vice president and project director for Clean Energy Group where he leads projects ranging from advancing customer-sited solar and battery storage in underserved communities to the replacement of power plants with clean technologies.

Richard Munson is the author of several books, most recently Tech to Table: 25 Innovators Reimagining Food (Island Press, 2021). Now based near Chicago, he has worked on environmental and clean-energy issues at non-profits, within universities, in the private sector, and on Capitol Hill.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin is a national climate strategist, and the CEO and president of the Environmental Grantmakers Association.

Jacqueline Patterson is the Founder and Director of the The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership.

Jeffrey Peterson is a retired senior policy advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency and the author of A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas (Island Press, 2019).

Ilana Preuss is a community development expert, Founder & CEO of Recast City, and author of Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing (Island Press, 2021).

Anne Perrault is a senior fellow at the Georgetown Climate Center (GCC), advancing research on climate change and finance. She also consults to the United Nations on issues related to human rights, the environment and accountability to local communities.

Abbe Ramanan is a Project Manager at Clean Energy Group, where she focuses on resilient power and hydrogen issues for environmental justice communities.

Elizabeth Sawin is Co-Director of Climate Interactive. Her work focuses on helping leaders find ways to protect the climate for the long-term that also improve people’s lives today.

Peggy Shepard is co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

Author Biographies • 181

Betsy Southerland is the former director of Science and Technology in the EPA Office of Water.

Jennie C. Stephens is director and professor at Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs and author of Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy (Island Press, 2020).

Kevin Surprise is a visiting lecturer at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts.

Robert Sussman is the former EPA deputy administrator and senior policy counsel to the EPA Administrator.

Matt Vander Sluis is director of policy and planning of Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII), the coalition of the eleven Bay Area public health departments, founded to address the preventable decade-long differences in life expectancy that exist by race, income, and neighborhood.

Linda Walden is a family physician; inaugural fellow of the Medical Society Consortium for Climate and Health; and founding /steering committee member for Georgia Clinicians for Climate Action.

Jalonne L. White-Newsome is a former senior program officer at The Kresge Foundation, a national private foundation headquartered in Detroit.

Beverly Wright is an environmental justice scholar and advocate, and the founder and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. She also serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.