Lis Mullen Bernhardt
Programme Officer – United Nations Environmental Programme
Lis is an international development and environment professional who proudly joined the UN Environment Programme in August 2016, first in the Freshwater Ecosystems Unit and then from November 2019 as part of the Climate Change Adaptation Unit. Lis is now the Coordinator for the Global Adaptation Network, an initiative that shares key adaptation knowledge and information around the world. In 2019 Lis also served on secondment to the Policy and Programme Division for SDGs coordination across house.
A native of the Great Lakes region of the United States, Lis has been working at the nexus of development and environment since 2002. She holds degrees in International Relations from Northwestern University in her native Chicago area, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and an MBA in organizational culture and resource management from the University of Reading’s Henley Business School in England. Read more about Lis. (Excerpt from “People” page of the UNEP website).
Timothy Carter
President – Second Nature
Tim Carter is the president of Second Nature, a US-based non-profit with a mission to accelerate climate action in, and through, higher education. As president, Dr. Carter provides strategic leadership for the organization, including a focus on decarbonization activity and climate leadership of the 400+ schools in Second Nature’s Climate Leadership Network and University Climate Change Coalition. Prior to Second Nature, Dr. Carter was the founding director of Butler University’s Center for Urban Ecology (CUE) where he built the CUE from a fledgling unit with two interns and a program manager to a thriving academic center with over $3M in externally funded initiatives. He has authored over 20 peer-reviewed publications in the fields of sustainability, ecology, and climate change. Dr. Carter received his Ph.D. in Ecology with distinction from the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia (UGA) and completed his B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife Katy and three children and is an avid coffee home-roaster.
Andrea Fox
Town Manager – Town of Garrett Park, Maryland
Andrea Fox is the Town Manager of Garrett Park, Maryland, a tight-knit community outside Washington, DC that is on the National Register of Historic Places and is also an arboretum. As Town Manager, Andrea manages the administration of the town. Since 2005 Andrea has worked in and with local and state governments, including the City of Omaha, Nebraska; the Nebraska State Legislature; the City of Napa, California; and the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). As local government staff, she implemented numerous sustainability strategies and policies and developed a sustainability plan. As an aide in the Nebraska Legislature, she assisted with the passage of laws that assess and reduce energy consumption. At ICMA, Andrea used her first-hand knowledge of local government to increase the capacity of local governments to create more sustainable and resilient communities. She has a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Denver and is AICP certified.
Jessica Johnston
Preparedness Task Lead – FEMA Individual and Community Preparedness Division at Teracore, Inc.
Jessica provides management and enterprise IT consulting services to the FEMA via her work at Teracore, Inc. She recently served as ICMA’s Program Director for Sustainability and Climate Change. Jessica joined ICMA in early 2013 to manage the USAID funded CityLinks program. Based on the premise that cities learn best from each other, Jessica has been working with community leaders from across the globe to facilitate dialogues and record promising practices around climate resilience. As a strong believer in the power of locally led action, Jessica has worked with communities across the US, Australia, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean to facilitate tailored solutions to pressing climate related challenges. Since joining ICMA Jessica has also directed knowledge management and communications efforts for USAID related to sustainable urbanization. Prior to ICMA, Jessica worked with several nonprofits to support a wide range of international and domestic projects focused on supporting local service delivery. Jessica has a Masters of Science in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, where she was named a fellow with the Council of Women World Leaders. Jessica also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jordan and has a BA from Chapman University in Peace and Conflict Studies.
Debra Rowe
President – U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development
Debra Rowe, PhD., is the 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.
Tony Socci
Senior Lead on International Climate Policy – U.S. EPA
Dr. Anthony Socci is the senior lead international resilience and adaptation policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of International and Tribal Affairs (OITA) in Washington, DC. For nearly a decade, Dr. Socci has helped coordinate and facilitate several international efforts aimed at building capacity to become more resilient and sustainable, and to adapt to compound changes principally in urban and local settings in developing countries.
More specifically, Dr. Socci worked with a host of international partners to make actionable, the principles of the Durban Adaptation Charter (DAC), a pledge on the part of nearly 1000 elected local/urban government officials, largely from Africa and Asia, to take local action to build urban resilience and adapt. He also served as a long-standing member of the DAC steering committee.
Later, at the invitation of the UN Global Adaptation Network (GAN), Dr. Socci agreed to become a member of its Steering Committee. From this vantage point he, along with several international partners and other steering committee members, helped to formulate and implement an effort on the part of the GAN to deliver actionable, demand-driven information to regions and communities in developing countries deemed most vulnerable to the impacts of climate and other changes, through a process referred to as “adaptation learning exchanges”.
Most recently, Dr. Socci has worked with a host of international partners to introduce the EPIC (Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities) model to local governments and universities in developing country cities eager to enhance their capacity to become more sustainable and build resilience in the face of complex physical, natural and social forces. The EPIC model systematically matches city and local government needs with the innovation of students and academics to address a broad spectrum of sustainability-related issues, with lasting and sustainable impacts for all involved.