Category: Speakers

Environmental Program Manager, ACWA

Mark Patrick McGuire joined ACWA in January 2016 as an Environmental Program Manager.  He manages the following ACWA committees and workgroups:  Nutrients Policy, Legal Affairs, Pretreatment,  and Water Quality Trading.  Patrick holds a J.D. from the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law and a B.S. in History from Northeastern University.  He is an active member of the Rhode Island and Massachusetts bars and came to ACWA after working for over three years as Associate Legal Counsel at the Narragansett Bay Commission in Providence, Rhode Island.

WYSE 2011 Alumna; Founder, Detox Dandy

Rebekah Ortiz is a WYSE 2011 alumna and environmental extraordinaire. She is a Certified Nutritionist and founder of Detox Dandy, an integrated holistic health business located at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront, with services in plant based nutrition, detox treatments and herbal spa therapy. Since her participation in WYSE, she has been involved in sustainability work expanding from activism, government research studies and community workshops. Detox Dandy partners with the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter to lead a monthly workshop series “Self Care & Sustainability” at our Virginia Beach location, focused on improved choices to benefit our environment and health.

 

Ralph Nader is an author, political activist, attorney, and consumer advocate who has worked for decades on consumer protection, environmental issues, and government reform. He focuses on empowering citizens to create a responsive government, and his activism has played an instrumental role in the passage of key environmental legislation such as the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Pure Food and Drug Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act.

Nader has founded and been involved in a number of organizations aimed at improving corporate and government accountability, and he has written more than two dozen books throughout his career. His first book, Unsafe at Any Speed, criticized the auto industry’s production of unsafe vehicles and helped pass key auto safety laws in 1966. This launched his decades-long career of investigating government and corporations to push for greater accountability. In 2006, a documentary called An Unreasonable Man was made about his life’s work establishing watchdog organizations and influencing citizens to hold government accountable.

Currently, Nader co-hosts the “Ralph Nader Radio Hour” and speaks at colleges and universities across the nation about civil justice, environmental, and consumer issues.

Research Director, Center for Science & Democracy

Gretchen Goldman is the research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In her role, Dr. Goldman leads research efforts on the role of science in public policy, focusing on topics ranging from scientific integrity in government decision-making, to political interference in science-based standards on hydraulic fracturing, climate change, sugar, and chemicals.

Dr. Goldman came to UCS from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she was a postdoctoral research fellow working on statistical modeling of urban air pollution for use in epidemiologic studies of acute human health effects.

She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in environmental engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in atmospheric science from Cornell University.

Dr. Goldman has authored pieces for Science, The New York Times, CNN.com, and The Guardian,and has been quoted in Nature, Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Boston Globe, Reuters, Politico, and Bloomberg. She currently serves as the vice-chair of the Air and Climate Public Advisory Committee for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Fishes Research Associate, Animal Science and Welfare Department – National Aquarium

Alan Henningsen is a Fishes Research Associate in the Animal Science and Welfare Department at the National Aquarium. Alan has been the staff person in charge of the Shark Alley: Atlantic Predators exhibit for many years. He is transitioning to more of a full -time Elasmobranch Research and Conservation role. Alan has a B.S. in Marine Science and Biology from the University of Miami as well as a M.S. in Marine Biology and Fisheries from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. He has earned up to the A.B.D. status in doctoral studies from the University of Maryland. Alan has authored or co-authored several peer-reviewed papers as well as chapters in books. He is a member of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, as well as the Vice Coordinator for the AZA Sawfish SSP.

Alan’s favorite animals are sawfishes, but has been blessed to work with a variety of sharks and rays for decades. Alan is blessed to have a wonderful wife as well as two great young men. They share their home with cats, a dog, a terrapin, and a pond full of fish and frogs. He gives all glory and honor to Jesus.

Foreign Affairs Specialist, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Dr. Katheryn Patterson is a Foreign Affairs Specialist with the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement whose work focuses on combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing through management and enforcement efforts, international engagement, and technical and capacity building assistance. She is also an accomplished marine ecologist whose previous research focused on topics related to coral reef disease mitigation, marine protected areas, and marine tourism. Dr. Patterson first became interested in marine policy while representing a non-profit during her first stakeholder meeting on a proposed marine protected area in Belize. Four years later, the Belizean Government established the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve. Knowing that her scientific findings influenced a policy was incredibly exciting and became a driving force for her desire to be involved in effecting change.

Dr. Patterson is a 2016 Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellow alumnae and holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Public Policy from George Mason University.

Adjunct Professor, George Mason University

Dr. van der Ham is an environmental scientist with general interests in community dynamics, marine and estuarine ecology, and invertebrate ecology. Specifically, he is interested in how biological communities change over spatial and temporal scales, and how they respond to and recover from environmental disturbances. Heemploys experimental approaches, field studies, and long-term monitoring data to investigate the community dynamics and its significance within its ecosystem.

Associate Professor, George Mason University

Dr. Peters’ expertise includes marine biology, coral reef ecology, aquatic toxicology, comparative histopathology, and quality assurance. Following postdoctoral research at the Smithsonian Institution on coral taxonomy and invertebrate diseases, she worked at Tetra Tech, Inc., an environmental consulting company. She began teaching at GMU as an adjunct in 1999, and joined the full-time faculty in 2008. She is teaching courses in histology and histotechniques at the undergraduate and graduate level, and developed a 2-semester course sequence to present basic biology and chemistry to non-biology graduate students in the environmental science and policy program. She has also taught courses on diseases of organisms and provides training in the histology and histopathology of corals.

Dr. Peters collaborates with Drs. Robert Jonas and Patrick Gillevet on understanding the molecular and microbiological aspects of disease processes through the study of cell and tissue alterations as a bridge to understanding population, community, and ecosystem consequences. She works with graduate students on diverse pathobiology research topics and manages the Histology Laboratory, training undergraduate and graduate students in the use of histological tools for their ecological and biomedical research.