Adenike Adeyeye is the senior analyst and Western states energy manager in the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In her role, she focuses on advancing clean energy policy and reducing the use of fossil fuels. Previously, she has worked at the California Public Utilities Commission and Earthjustice. She earned a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and a BA in environmental studies from Yale University.
Newsha K. Ajami, Directs the Urban Water Policy Program at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. A leading expert in sustainable water resource management, water policy, and the water-energy-food nexus, she studies the human and policy dimensions of urban water and hydrologic systems. Dr. Ajami served as a gubernatorial appointee to the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board for two terms and is currently a mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. She has published many highly cited peer-reviewed articles, and contributed opinion pieces to the New York Times and the Sacramento Bee. Dr. Ajami received her Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from the UC, Irvine, an M.S. in hydrology and water resources from the University of Arizona.
Dominic Bednar is a community-engaged scholar and engineer. He will soon complete his doctoral degree at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability concentrating on Energy Justice. His research examines the institutional barriers of energy poverty recognition and response in the United States whilst exploring the spatial, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic patterns of residential energy affordability, consumption, and efficiency. His body of work contributes to the growing energy, environmental, and climate justice fields and promotes ongoing policy analysis and program evaluations to improve community health and to effectuate a just energy transition. Collectively, his work aims to provide clarity for structuring more effective policy interventions and to improve decision making that supports assistance to energy-vulnerable households, those likely to fall into energy poverty or struggle to pay their energy bills, often resulting in energy shut-offs and forgoing basic necessities. Dominic holds a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland and a MS in Natural Resources and Environment (Sustainable Systems) from the University of Michigan. He has been recognized as an Imagining America Publicly Active Graduate Education Fellow (PAGE), Fulbright Scholar, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Bouchet Graduate Honor Society member, Rackham Merit Fellow, GEM Fellow, and Forbes Under 30 Scholar. Dominic is committed to fighting climate change through the integration of academic research on residential energy injustices in a way that engenders community engagement and co-development of impactful solutions. He centers community knowledge and experiences through his teaching and research. His passion for environmental justice and community-engaged pedagogy guides his writing, teaching, and community-based learning consultancy.
Alice Hill is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her work at CFR focuses on the risks, consequences, and responses associated with climate change. Hill previously served as special assistant to President Barack Obama and senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff where she led the development of national policy to build resilience to catastrophic risks, including climate change and biological threats. Prior to this, Hill served as senior counselor to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in which she led the formulation of DHS’s first-ever climate adaptation plan and the development of strategic plans regarding catastrophic biological and chemical threats, including pandemics. Earlier in her career, she was a supervising judge on both the Los Angeles Municipal and Superior Courts as well as a federal prosecutor and chief of the white-collar crime unit at the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, California. Oxford University Press published her coauthored book, Building a Resilient Tomorrow, in 2019. She currently serves on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund and Munich Re Group’s U.S.-based companies. In 2020, Yale University and the Op-Ed Project awarded her the Public Voices Fellowship on the Climate Crisis. Hill’s new book, The Fight for Climate after COVID-19, will be published in summer 2021.
Dr. Michael Mendez is an assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. He previously was the inaugural James and Mary Pinchot Faculty Fellow in Sustainability Studies and Associate Research Scientists at the Yale School of the Environment. Michael has more than a decade of senior-level experience in the public and private sectors, where he consulted and actively engaged in the policymaking process. This included working for the California State Legislature as a senior consultant, lobbyist, and as vice chair of the Sacramento City Planning Commission. In 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Dr. Mendez to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. The board regulates water quality in a region of 11 million people. During his time at UC Irvine and Yale, he has contributed to state and national research policy initiatives, including serving as an advisor to a California Air Resources Board member, and as a participant of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s workgroup on “Climate Vulnerability and Social Science Perspectives.” Michael is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Environmental Change and Society (BECS), and is on the board of directors of the social justice nonprofit, Alliance for a Better Community. He also serves as a panel reviewer for the National Academies of Sciences’ Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). Dr. Mendez holds three degrees in environmental planning and policy, including a PhD from UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning, and a graduate degree from MIT. His research on the intersection of climate change and communities of color has been featured in national publications including Urban Land (published by the Urban Land Institute); the Natural Resources Defense Fund Annual Report; the American Planning Association’s Planning Magazine; Green 2.0: Leadership at Work; USA Today; and Fox Latino News. His new award-winning book “Climate Change from the Streets,” published through Yale University Press (2020), is an urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy. The book was the winner of the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, sponsored by the International Studies Association (ISA).
Vann R. Newkirk II is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is the host of The Atlantic’s podcast Floodlines, a narrative series about Hurricane Katrina. Vann was a 2020 James Beard Award Finalist, a 2020 11th Hour Fellow at New America, and a 2018 recipient of the American Society of Magazine Editors’s ASME Next Award.
Aaron Ng serves as a Program Analyst on the Recovery and Critical Energy Infrastructure team in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Electricity. In this role, he manages Energy Transitions Initiative (ETI) projects, which aim to advance self-reliant communities through the development of resilient energy systems. These efforts include the Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project, a program that applies ETI’s many tools, resources, and methods to help communities across the United States. Aaron’s place-based work continues to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he leads the Department’s long-term energy sector recovery efforts. Aaron began his career at DOE as an ORISE Science, Technology, and Policy Fellow in the Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs Office, where he managed the development of the State and Local Planning for Energy (SLOPE) Platform. Prior to DOE, Aaron served as a Speechwriter and Legislative Aide for a U.S. Senator. Aaron holds a Master of Arts in International Economics and Energy, Resources, and Environmental Policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and History from the College of William & Mary.
Ezra David Romero is a climate reporter for KQED News. He covers the absence and excess of water in the Bay Area (sea level rise, flooding and drought). For nearly a decade he’s covered how warming temperatures are altering the lives of Californians. He’s reported on farmers worried their pistachio trees aren’t getting enough sleep, families desperate for water, scientists studying dying giant sequoias, and alongside firefighters containing wildfires. His work has appeared on local stations across California and nationally on public radio shows like Morning Edition, Here and Now, All Things Considered and Science Friday.