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Tag: 2017

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Junior Faculty Advisor

Christa Madison

CHRISTA MADISON

Junior Faculty Advisor

Christa Madison is a Christian Conservationist who grew up in small-town Roanoke, Virginia. She developed her love for nature from her time growing up surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is currently a senior and will hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from George Mason University pending her graduation in the spring of 2020. Christa is also perusing a minor in Tourism and Events Management, and a concentration in Conservation. She just completed a semester at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation. Her professional interests involve photography and mending the relationship between humans and nature by community outreach and environmental education. Christa found her passion for the community and the environment through her faith and education.  Her faith leads her to believe humanity should be good stewards of the environment. Christa’s future ambitions are to continue to learn, grow, and advocate for the protection of the environment. She would like to explore careers in environmental education, the exotic animal trade, and environmental consulting in the private sector. She hopes for a future where humans interact peacefully with the environment and one another, it is her life goal to be a part of this process.

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Photographer

Kera White

Photography Junior Faculty Advisor

Kera is a rising junior at George Mason University from Newport News, VA, and is studying Communication with a concentration in Media Production Criticism and a minor in African American Studies and Film and Media Criticism. She attended the Washington Journalism & Media Conference in 2014, returned as a Junior Faculty Advisor in 2016, and will return for her third year as the photo junior faculty advisor. Kera currently works in the Office of Student Media as the General Manager for Mason Cable Network. Her freshman year, she held the titles of Assistant News Director, News Director, and the creator of “Freshmen’s Corner” before being promoted to General Manager her sophomore year. Her other on-campus involvements currently include Black Student Alliance, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Chase Dreams Not Boys, and the Black Literary Project Marketing Advisor. In her free time, Kera enjoys writing poetry, taking photos for her business “Amethyst Films” and hanging out with friends and family. She looks forward to meeting all of the Correspondents and capturing all of the beautiful moments that this conference has to offer!

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Advance Team

Laura Townsley

Advance Team Member

Laura is a senior at Virginia Tech studying Human Development and Psychology. She is on the leadership board for Cru at Virginia Tech, as the Production Manager where she has found her love of event planning and management. Laura is also involved in Chi Delta Alpha, a service sorority, where she has completed over 100 hours of community service. Laura studied abroad in Switzerland and Rwanda last fall, and after graduating hopes to continue to travel the world. She is very grateful for this opportunity to serve on the Advance Team and is looking forward to everything she will experience and learn through this position.

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Advance Team

Madison O’Conner

Advance Team Member

Madison will be a graduating senior at George Mason University in the Fall 2017 semester. She will be the first of her family to be completing her bachelor’s degree and hopes to inspire other first generation students to achieve the same. Madison is studying Tourism and Events Management within George Mason University’s School of Recreation Health and Tourism. She has had the unique opportunity to work with the Office of Admissions helping prospective students and working as an events intern. Throughout Madison’s undergraduate career she has been involved in many campus organizations and activities including Greek life, GMU Upcycling club, intramural sports and various dance clubs. She has held leadership roles in the GMU Upcycling club, as a member if her sorority’s executive council and will be a panhellenic recruitment counselor in the Fall 2017 semester. Madison cannot wait to help the students attending the Washington Scholars Program prepare for their future!

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Advance Team

Melissa Moore

Advance Team Member

Melissa Moore is from Fair Lawn, New Jersey and is a rising senior at George Mason University. She is a Communication major with a concentration in Public Relations in addition to minors in Journalism and Sport Management. On campus, Melissa serves as a staff writer for the news section of GMU’s student newspaper, The Fourth Estate, and plays on the women’s rugby team. At home, she serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Cutting Edge, a biannual Board of Education newsletter for her district. Melissa was named the 2014 New Jersey High School Journalist of the Year as a senior and has won several other awards for her writing. She attended the Washington Journalism and Media Conference in 2012 where she fell in love with journalism and the university she would soon attend, and returned as a Junior Faculty Advisor in 2015 and 2016. She looks forward to working with the Advance Team this summer and meeting students from each conference!

Connect with Melissa on the WSP Forums ›

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Intern Youth Advisory Board

Gabrielle Chapman

Conference Intern

Gabrielle is a Junior at Bay High School in Panama City, Florida. She attended WYSE as a delegate in 2016, and is thrilled to come back as an intern for WYSE 2017. Gabrielle lives near the Gulf of Mexico and enjoys scuba diving to see the marine life in her area. She also spends her time studying for school, being active in school clubs, and playing volleyball. She has always cared deeply about the environment and plans to major in Biology in college. Gabrielle cannot wait for WYSE 2017 and all of the new opportunities it will bring her as an intern. She is excited to share her passion for the environment with those attending this year’s Summit.

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Speakers

Jonathan Tourtellot

Destination Stewardship Working Group, Global Sustainable Tourism Council

Jonathan Tourtellot is a consultant specializing in sustainable tourism and destination stewardship. He is also a journalist and editor with a focus on travel, geography, and science. Motivated by his desire to encourage protection of distinctive places, Tourtellot originated the concept of geotourism, defined as “tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place—its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.”

Tourtellot launched and ran the National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations (CSD) for nine years. He is the primary author of the Geotourism Charter, a set of stewardship principles adopted by various world destinations from Norway and Guatemala to Portugal’s Douro Valley and the city of Montreal. He initiated and supervises the Destination Stewardship surveys reported annually as the cover story in National Geographic Traveler magazine’s November/December issue. In helping to expand Traveler’s coverage of tourism and destination management, he wrote the magazine’s first two feature stories on the topic, “The Two Faces of Tourism” and “The Tourism Wars,” both winners of the Lowell Thomas award. As geotourism editor for Traveler, he has written on such topics as resort sprawl, nature tourism, heritage travel, and climate change.

Prior to his work in the tourism field, he contributed to several National Geographic books and served as project editor for several others, including Britain and Ireland, Into the Unknown, the first National Geographic Photographer’s Field Guide, and Exploring Our Living Planet, with Dr. Robert Ballard. In books and magazines, he has covered places ranging from Icelandic volcanoes to Amazon rain forests and from the desert valleys of Nevada to the marshes of Botswana’s Okavango Delta. He lives on a mountainside in northern Virginia.

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Speakers

Durwood Zaelke

Founder & President, the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development

Durwood Zaelke is founder and President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) in Washington, DC and Geneva; Director of the Secretariat for the International Network for Environmental Compliance & Enforcement (INECE) in Washington, DC and Geneva; and the co-Director and co-founder of the Program on Governance for Sustainable Development at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara.

He is the author of the leading law school textbook on International Environmental Law & Policy, as well as a paper with Nobel Laureate, Dr. Mario Molina, as part a Special Feature on climate tipping points, Reducing abrupt climate change risk using the Montreal Protocol and other regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US) (2009). He is a graduate of Duke Law School (1972), where he was an Editor of the Duke Law Journal, and UCLA (1969), and a member of the bar in California, Washington, DC, and Alaska. Mr. Zaelke received both an Ozone Protection Award and a Climate Protection Award in 2008 for his contribution to the successful effort to maximize the climate benefits of the Montreal Protocol. He was a leading architect of the effort to strengthen climate protection under the Montreal Protocol, including through the 2007 decision to accelerate the phase-out of HCFCs, and the October 2016 amendment to phase-down HFCs, the fastest climate pollutants, know as the Kigali Amendment, which will avoid up to 0.5C of future warming, and perhaps twice that if the energy efficiency of air conditioners and other products and equipment is improved during their switch to climate friendly refrigerants.

Mr. Zaelke currently directs IGSD’s efforts on fast-action climate mitigation strategies including: reducing short-lived climate forcers (black carbon, ground-level ozone, and methane); expanding biosequestration through the use of biochar; increasing urban albedo; and further strengthening the Montreal Protocol to protect the climate by phasing out production and consumption of HFCs with high global warming potential.

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Junior Faculty Advisor

Emilee Wooldridge

Junior Faculty Advisor

Emilee Wooldridge is a rising senior at the University of Connecticut located in Storrs, Connecticut. She is majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and minoring in Anthropology. She has many interests including reptile behavior, paleoichnology and evolutionary systematics. Outside of this she is a member of the University of Connecticut Marching Band and enjoys spending time with her assortment of pets. Emilee was a delegate for WYSE in 2012 is excited to return as part of the team and is looking forward to WYSE 2017!

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Junior Faculty Advisor

Jesse Wong

JESSE WONG

Junior Faculty Advisor

Jesse is a senior at George Mason University from Brandywine, Maryland studying Environmental Science with a concentration in Conservation and a minor in Computer Science within the Honors College. He attended the Washington Youth Summit on the Environment in 2014 and returned as a Junior Faculty Advisor in 2017 and 2018. Jesse previously worked as an intern in George Mason Office of Admissions for the Washington Scholars Program and as a research assistant for the Department of Environmental Science and Policy as a research assistant focusing on wetland ecosystems. Currently, Jesse is an intern for the United States Geological Survey National Climate Adaptation Science Center examining how our changing climate is affecting food and water resources. While on campus, Jesse works with a variety of research projects with the George Mason Department of Biology and Department of Environmental Science and Policy. During his free time, Jesse enjoys going outside and bird-watching or hiking.