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Speakers' Biographies

     Jayson Antonoff is a sustainable energy expert who most recently has been researching sustainability in northern Europe, including Denmark's remarkable transformation from dependence on foreign energy sources to its current status as an energy exporter. As co-founder of International Sustainable Solutions Jayson has spent the last three years meeting with experts on sustainability issues throughout Europe and South America, and leading groups of civic leaders, real estate developers, and design professionals on Urban Sustainability Study Tours to Scandinavia, Germany and Brazil to learn about best practices there. He began his career as a consulting engineer, working within the building envelope to design and implement energy management systems. His present work focuses on sustainability issues both at the building scale and the neighborhood scale, and he is currently leading an effort to develop an action plan for an energy self-sufficient, Energy Plus neighborhood in Seattle, Washington.

     Dave Atkins works for the State and Private Forestry branch of the US Forest Service. His area of emphasis is in utilization of biomass. He is the Program Manager of the Fuels for Schools initiative, which highlights the use of small-scale biomass heating systems, in the Northern and Intermountain Regions of the Forest Service. He has a B. S. in Forest Science from Humboldt State University - 1979 and an M. S. in Forest Ecology from the University of Montana - 1996, where he did a thesis on definitions of Old Growth forests. He has worked as a certified silviculturist, forest ecologist, and regional forest health monitoring coordinator among other positions in his career, which started as a seasonal technician in 1976.

      Bruce Babbitt served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001, as Governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987, and as Attorney General of Arizona from 1975 to 1978. Mr. Babbitt is the son of a northern Arizona ranching family. With degrees in geology, geophysics, and law, Bruce Babbitt was elected to statewide office in Arizona at the age of 36. In 1978 he became governor, was twice reelected to that office and served nine years. In 1988, Babbitt was a candidate for the presidency of the United States and from 1988-1993 he practiced law and served as head of the League of Conservation Voters.

     Timothy Beatley is Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for the last eighteen years. His primary teaching and research interests are in environmental planning and policy, with special emphasis on coastal and natural hazards planning, environmental values and ethics, and bio diversity conservation. Beatley’s most recent book Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age, explores how communities can nurture a unique sense of place, build resilient locally-based economies, and strengthen connections between and among people. Beatley has also examined the experiences of some 30 European cities, in twelve countries, in developing and implementing sustainability strategies. The findings of this study have been published in a recent book entitled Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities (Island Press, 2000).

     Mike Bowman is a fifth-generation Coloradan, born and raised on a Yuma County Farm and Ranch. He was a founding board member for the Wray Rehabilitation and Activities Center. Mike is on the National Council of Advisors for the Heartland Center for Leadership Development in Lincoln, NE and Holistic Management International (HMI) of Albuquerque, NM. He is a member of the current Colorado Ag and Rural Leadership program and is a Bighorn Fellow, a member of the most recent fellowship that focused on sustainability in Colorado and is a Bighorn Fellow, a member of the most recent fellowship that focused on sustainability in Colorado. Mike currently heads up the State Alliances formation for 25x25.

     Daniel Kemmis is a senior fellow at The University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West. A past director of the Center, Mr. Kemmis was formerly Mayor of Missoula, Montana, and a former Speaker and Minority Leader of the Montana House of Representatives. Mr. Kemmis is the author of 3 books: Community and The Politics of Place; The Good City and the Good Life; and This Sovereign Land: A New Vision for Governing the West. He was recognized by the Utne Reader in 1995 as one of its "100 Visionaries." In 1997, President Clinton awarded Mr. Kemmis the Charles Frankel Prize for outstanding contribution to the field of the humanities. Also in 1997, he was the recipient of the Society for Conservation Biology's Distinguished Achievement Award for Social, Economic and Political work. In 1998, the Center of the American West awarded him the Wallace Stegner Prize for sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the West. In the fall of 1998 he was awarded a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics.

     Hans Peter Fagagnini As Director general of the Swiss Federal Railways SBB, Dr. Fagagnini served as head of the largest Department of Transportation, which contained 30,000 employees and encompassed passenger and freight traffic, operations, rolling stock and the investment programme “Railway 2000." During his six-year-long tenure, numerous restructuring's were undertaken. Dr. Fagagnini focused on the program “Railway 2000,” which brought a considerable expansion and better performance of the entire SBB railway infrastructure, fundamentally reconsidering passenger traffic, which included extensive acquisitions such as double-deck cars and tilting trains.
     Dr. Fagagnini also served as CEO of Hangartner, a mid-sized company located in 10 European states. Hangartner focuses on combined freight transport from the northern part of Europe to Italy. Prior to Hangartner, Dr. Fagagnini served as Deputy Director of the Federal Office for Transportation and was responsible for the financial management and supervision of all public transport concerns (railway, bus, ship). At that time, the federal budget amounted to approximately two billion Swiss Francs.

     Brian Halweil , a Senior Researcher, joined World watch in 1997 as the John Gardner Public Service Fellow from Stanford University. At the Institute, Brian writes on the social and ecological impacts of how we grow food, focusing recently on organic farming, biotechnology, hunger, and rural communities. Most recently, he describes the evolving local food movement in Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket. Brian's work has been featured in the international press, and he recently testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the role of biotechnology in combating poverty and hunger in the developing world. Brian has traveled extensively in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and East Africa learning indigenous farming techniques and promoting sustainable food production. Before coming to World watch, Brian worked with California farmers interested in reducing their pesticide use, and set up a 2-acre student-run organic farm on Stanford campus. He writes from Sag Harbor, NY, where he and his wife tend a home garden and orchard

     Ben Hamilton-Baillie is an architect, urban designer and movement specialist from Bristol, En gland.. As director of Hamilton-Baillie Associates Ltd. he provides consultancy advice on traffic and urban renewal for a wide range of local authorities, government agencies and community groups. Following 13 years working in housing renewal and development, Ben served as regional manager for Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity. He helped complete the first phase of the UK’s National Cycle Network, and to develop transport initiatives such as ‘Safe Routes to Schools’ and home zones. He has since researched and promoted new approaches to traffic management and street design, and was awarded a Winston Churchill Traveling Fellowship in 2000. He has taught extensively in the UK and USA, and was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow for 2001. He serves on the expert team for the European Union project developing “Shared Space” with projects in Belgium, Denmark, Germany and The Netherlands.. He has recently provided research and drafting consultancy for the “Streets for All” guidance produced by English Heritage. Recent technical papers include “Improving traffic behavior and safety through urban design” (with Phil Jones) in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (May 2005)

     Robin Chase is founder and former Chairman and CEO of Zipcar, a company whose innovative use of the Internet and wireless technology enables rental cars to emulate personal cars. Zipcar's disruptive technology gives its members on-demand access to cars by-the-hour, revolutionizing people's relationship to their cars and improving the quality of urban life for all. Robin is also known for the evangelical virtual community she created among the members. Robin Chase is also founder and CEO of Meadow Networks which applies innovative wireless technologies to the transportation sector, reducing dependency on fossil fuel, minimizing CO2 emissions, and creating more adaptable, resilient, and cost-efficient economies. Robin lectures widely and has been frequently featured in the major media including the Today Show, The New York Times, National Public Radio, Fast Company, Wired, and Time magazines, as well as several books on entrepreneurship. She has received many awards, including the Massachusetts Governor's Award for Entrepreneurial Spirit, Start- up Woman of the Year, Fast Company's Fast 50 Champions of Innovation, and others.

     Betsy Hands Betsy Hands has been the Program Manager at homeWORD for the last three years. homeWORD, located in Montana, is a Community Housing and Development Organization that uses innovative, sustainable and replicable methods to develop affordable housing and asset building strategies for those most in need. As Program Manager, Betsy is involved in a myriad of projects at homeWORD including fund development, green building advocacy, and home ownership programs. Betsy Hands received her B.A. at the University of Michigan in Social Science with a focus on sustainable development, spending a year in Senegal working with a local NGO. She worked over four years with Outward Bound in Texas, Montana, and Minnesota before returning to Africa in 1996 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa. In Togo, she worked as a rural development extension agent coordinating projects in health, education, and agro-forestry. In 2003, Betsy received her Master's of Science from the University of Montana?s Environmental Studies program. As a part of her master?s program, she was selected as a Doris Duke Environmental Fellow and worked as a summer intern with the Rocky Mountain Institute. Her thesis research focused on the opportunities and obstacles to building sustainable, affordable housing. In the fall 2005, Betsy was an adjunct professor at the University of Montana, teaching a course called "Community and the Environment" for the Environmental Studies Program.

     Torbjörn Lahti is a community planner, adjunct teacher at Umeå University, and founder / co-owner of the environmental consulting firm Esam AB (The Human Ecology Company) based in Umeå, Sweden. Torbjörn is the initiator and former co-ordinator of the Eco-municipality movement in Sweden and has been working professionally with sustainable development during the last twenty three years. Within Esam he has done work, mainly training's, in more than half of the 288 municipalities in Sweden and has assisted with the development of more than 60 Eco-municipalities. Training's are based on The Natural Step (TNS), a scientifically based consensus framework developed in Sweden for addressing environmental challenges. Lahti completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in economics, administrative education and city planning at Umeå University. In 1990 he facilitated Sweden's first conference (in Orsa) launching the eco-village and eco-municipality movement. In 1990 he co-founded Esam; his work has included eco-villages, city housing, Umeå's Eco-City Project, ecological building, waste handling, and housing materials re-use project. In co-operation with the municipality of Umeå and The Association of the Swedish Eco-municipalities he developed a planning-instrument called The Agenda 21-guide that combines an aim for high quality of life and democracy with sustainability.

     Dale Medearis is currently the program manager for western Europe and the Middle East in EPA’s Office of International Affairs. In his capacity as program manager for western Europe, Dale oversees all bilateral collaboration with countries in western Europe. He is currently working to identify, interpret, and test innovative brownfields and urban water infrastructure policies from Europe with beneficial applications in the U.S. From 2003-2004, Medearis was seconded to the National Park Service where he coordinated the American Heritage River Initiative for the Potomac River - a Presidential initiative developed to assist local communities within the watershed promote sustainable development. From 1995-2003, Medearis was the EPA program manager for EPA’s international urban environmental initiatives where he led efforts to test and apply innovative urban environmental policies from OECD-member countries to U.S. urban regions. In that context, he also served as the Vice-Chair of the OECD Committee for Territorial Development Policy and was Chair of the Working Group on Urban Affairs. From 1994-1995, Medearis was a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, where he studied redevelopment of contaminated lands in Germany at the Federal Ministry of the Environment and the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Bonn. From 1998 to 2002, Medearis served as a representative of the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, where he instituted one of the first international regional partnerships between the NVRC and the Regional Planning Authority of Stuttgart. Medearis has also worked at EPA to coordinate technical assistance efforts in Eastern Europe. Medearis has received fellowships to study urban environmental planning and development in Europe and the U.S. from the European Union, American Council on Germany, Fulbright Council, and Aspen Institute.

     Michael Mehaffy Michael Mehaffy serves currently as the Co-Founder and Managing Director of The Centre for Environmental Structure ? Europe, a research centre affiliated with the University of Cambridge, England. He was past Director of Education for The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, London in partnership with the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and leading UK and international universities, agencies and professional organizations. Mehaffy served previously as the Project Manager for Orenco Station, Oregon. A New York Times op-ed called Orenco Station "Perhaps the most interesting experiment in New Urbanist planning anywhere in the country." Mehaffy speaks internationally .

     Luther Propst co-founded and directs the Sonoran Institute, with offices in Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona; Bozeman and Helena, Montana; Grand Junction, Colorado; and Mexicali, Mexico. The Sonoran Institute promotes community decisions that respect the land and people of the West. Since 1990, the Institute has become recognized as a leading practitioner of community-based, collaborative, and innovative conservation efforts to integrate conservation and economic values throughout the West. The Institute has helped to establish and strengthen over two dozen local and regional conservation organizations and has helped numerous western communities establish and carry out a vision for a sustainable future. Propst has co-authored three books, including Balancing Nature and Commerce in Gateway Communities, published by Island Press, and frequently speaks and writes on Western conservation, growth management, economic development, and state trust lands. He is an adjunct professor in the School of Renewable Natural Resources at the University of Arizona.

     Mark Sardella is a professional engineer and the co-founder of Local Energy, a nonprofit organization working to help Santa Fe develop self-reliance in energy by utilizing local, renewable resources. At Local Energy, Mark manages research, development, and education programs designed to protect local residents and businesses from the hardships of rising energy costs, including a $1.8 million study to maximize the community value of installing biomass-fired district heating in downtown Santa Fe. Mark recently returned from presenting the project to the Central European Biomass Conference in Graz, Austria. www.localenergy.org.

     Ambassador Richard N. Swett, FAIA was nominated by President Clinton to be Ambassador to Denmark in 1998. Ambassador Swett served in the U.S. House of Representatives, being elected in 1990. In Congress, he served on numerous committees, including the Committees on Public Works and Transportation and the U.S. Congressional Delegation for Relations with the European Parliament. He authored the Transportation for Livable Communities Act, of which key provisions were included in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). He also introduced legislation to encourage energy conservation and use of renewable energy, which were included in the Energy Policy Act of 1992. Ambassador Swett’s business experience encompasses architectural design, project management, corporate management, project development, and finance. Areas of activity have been in real estate, alternative energy development and production, energy conservation, industrial development, and international export promotion. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and Design Futures Council, past state chair of the U.S. Olympic Committee, among other affiliations. He is the author of the book, Leadership by Design: Creating an Architecture of Trust, and a contributing author to A Nation Reconstructed; A Quest for the Cities That Can Be. The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Ambassador Swett one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans in 1993.

     Susan Zielinski recently joined CARSS (Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society) as Managing Director of the SMART project, which stands for Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation. Just before joining SMART / CARSS she spent a year as a Harvard Loeb Fellow focusing on New Mobility innovation and leadership. Susan brings twenty years of experience catalyzing innovative, collaborative partnerships for sustainable transportation and healthy cities. Prior to 2004, Susan co-founded and directed Moving the Economy, a Canada-wide ?link tank? that works to catalyse and support multi-sectoral New Mobility (sustainable transportation) industry development. As a transportation planner at the City of Toronto, she worked for over 15 years establishing and leading transportation, green economic development, and air quality policies and initiatives with a primary focus on New Mobility. Among these initiatives: the City of Toronto Anti-Smog Strategy; the Green Tourism Association; the City of Toronto Bicycle Commuter Program and the Community Bicycle Network; Detour Publications, the Integrated Mobility Systems (IMS) Consortium, the New Mobility Hubs project, and the Urban Goods Movement Initiative. She received a Masters in Environmental Studies (MES) from York University. She is a Registered Professional Planner (RPP) and member of the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP).

     John McBride always loved the West and moved permanently to Colorado in 1962. He was involved in the initial development of both Vail and Snowmass. Later, as an entrepreneur, he created the Aspen Business Center and the North Forty employee housing project. He cares deeply about preserving community and open space, and commits his time to agencies that promote this vision. He lives on a working cattle ranch and is a longtime pilot. Such activities give him an unusual perspective to ponder the future of the West. As a developer, he knows how easy it is to screw it up; as a rancher how hard it is to protect; and as a pilot how easy it is to see the difference.

     Piper Foster received her BA in Politics at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. She served as a legislative aide for Congressman George Nethercutt, Jr. in his Washington DC office, and lived in Barcelona studying music and Arabic. She worked in the Development office at Rocky Mountain Institute prior to joining the Sopris Foundation in May 2005. She works part time as the Executive Director of Tomorrow's Voices.

The Sopris Foundation was started by John and his daughter Kate Puckett, is managed by Piper Foster, and is dedicated to introducing new ideas for a better West.