Alumni Association Board September 2012 - 2013

President

Holly Welles M.F.S. ’88 (2^nd term ends 2014)
Princton, NJ hwelles@princeton.edu

Holly Welles is Communications & Outreach Manager at the Princeton Environmental Institute at Princeton University. She held previous positions at Pacific Gas and Electric Company; USAID; Council on Environmental Quality; and Capital Hill. She earned her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and was a Switzer Environmental Fellow and a Morris K. Udall Dissertation Fellow.

Exec. Comm., Nom. Comm., AYA

Vice President

Brian Goldberg M.E.M. ’03 (2^nd term ends 2015)
Alexandria, VA brian.goldberg@aya.yale.edu

Brian is an environmental planner at AECOM, a global design and engineering firm. He focuses on both sustainable approaches to landbased planning and the AECOM corporate social responsibility program, which engages the firm's 45,000 employees. His volunteer efforts with the Alumni Association Board have helped launch the F&ES Branches Initiative. Brian is a former Hixon Center for Urban Ecology Fellow.

Exec. Comm., AYA

Secretary

Georgia Silvera Seamans M.E.M. ’01 (1^st term ends 2014)
New York, NY seatulip@hotmail.com

Georgia became a community and urban forester working with New Haven Urban Resources Initiative and Boston Parks as well as in Oakland, Berkeley, and New York City. She also serves on the Yale Alumni Fund board and Yale Blue Green and is a class agent for 2001. She lives in NYC with her husband and son.

Exec. Comm., Univ. Eng. Comm.
Yale Alumni Fund Board of Directors

Mohamad Chakaki M.E.M. ’06 (1^st term ends 2014)
Cambridge, MA mchakaki@yahoo.com

Mohamad has worked in parks and gardens across the United States, with the Peace Corps in Central Africa, and the United Nations in Syria. He has also consulted on environment and community development projects in both the U.S. and the Arab Middle East. He holds undergraduate degrees in Religion and Biology from George
Washington University. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT.

Nom. Comm., Affinity Groups

Nicole Chevalier M.E.S. ’99 (2^nd term ends 2014)
West Haven, CT nechevalier2003@hotmail.com

Nicole is Program Director at the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, a family foundation focused on supporting non-profit programs throughout the nation in the areas of contemporary visual art, climate change mitigation and learning disabilities. She resides in West Haven, CT, with her husband and daughter.

Chair, Nom. Comm., Affinity Groups, On-campus Initiatives

Ann Clarke M.F.S. '81, D.F.E.S. '92 (1^st term ends 2015)
San Jose, CA annhclarke@earthlink.net

Ann has recently become the Assistant Director of Operations at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., after serving as the Environmental Division Chief.  Prior to moving to California, she held positions at NASA Headquarters, Federal Aviation Administration, and the U.S.D.A. Forest Service in Washington, D.C.  She was the Henry Clepper Forest Policy Intern at the Society of American Foresters and the Vermont State Forest Resources Planner.  She earned her J.D. at the University of New Mexico Law School, where she was Lead Articles Editor on the Natural Resources Journal, an M.S. in geography at the University of Oregon, and her B.A. in geology at Colorado College. She is a Council for Excellence in Government Senior Fellow and a member of the board of the Federal Executive Institute Alumni Association.


Regional Events, AYA

Javier Dominguez M.F. ’94 (2^nd term ends 2013)
New York, NY javier.dominguez@dominguestein.com

Since moving to New York, Javier has worked as a consultant for GEF, in the back office of a day trading firm, and for one of the finest jewelry companies in New York. His next adventure is opening an online store, Shadony.com, to sell fine jewelry. He will use at least 10% of the profits for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation.

Regional Events

Olivia Glenn M.E.M. ’03 (2^nd term ends 2014)
Pennsauken, NJ oliviacglenn@yahoo.com

Olivia is Special Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner for Natural Resources at the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, assisting him in his role as the Department’s chief on natural and historic resource stewardship. She received her B.A. from Dartmouth College. She resides in New Jersey with her husband and son.

Affinity Groups

James Lyons M.F. '79 (1^st term ends 2015)
Edgewater, MD jim.lyons@yale.edu

Jim directs the Renewable Energy program at Defenders of Wildlife and is a lecturer and research scholar at F&ES.  Previously he worked with Oxfam America and as executive director of the Casey Trees Endowment Fund.  During the Clinton Administration, Jim served as USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment overseeing the Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.  Most of Jim's career has focused on natural resource conservation and public land policy issues, working in the Congress, as policy director for the Society of American Foresters, and beginning his career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Nom. Comm., Regional Events

Jen Molnar M.E.M. ’04 (1^st term ends 2014)
Washington, DC jen.molnar@gmail.com

Jen is the director of The Nature Conservancy’s Central Science Program, which identifies, tests and develops new approaches that improve how conservation benefits both nature and people. The program's projects relate to ecosystem services, human well-being, economic measures for conservation, corporate practices and urban conservation. Jen was editor and co-author of the Atlas of Global Conservation and has led global analyses of habitat conditions and threats, with a focus on marine and freshwater systems.

Nom. Comm., Regional Events

Eugene Peck M.E.S. ’96 (1^st term ends 2014)
New Haven, CT gene.peck@viridianalliance.com

Gene Peck is a specialist in coastal zone/watershed policy, sediment management and the restoration of urban estuaries. His work focuses on developing sustainable integrated cross-program solutions to regional and local sediment challenges that utilize watershed management, ecological restoration, decontamination technologies, beneficial use of sediment and economic drivers to manage sediment as a resource rather than a waste.

AYA at large, On-Campus Initiatives

Gregg Renkes M.F.S. '83 (1^st term ends 2015)
Seattle, WA renkesg@msn.com

Gregg works in renewable energy project development.  He earned his bachelor's degree from Vassar College in biology/environmental science, master's degree at Yale F&ES, and law degree at the University of Colorado concentrating on public land and federal Indian law. Past work includes Majority Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, private practice of law in Alaska and Washington D.C., Alaska's fifteenth Attorney General, Co-Chair of the Alaska Rural Justice Commission, Trustee for the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trust Fund and Trustee for the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation.

AYA 1^st Year, Univ. Eng. Comm.
 

Al Sample M.F. ’80, Ph.D. ’89 (2^nd term ends 2013)
Washington, DC alsample@pinchot.org

Al has served as President of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation in Washington, DC, since 1995. He is a Fellow of the Society of American Foresters, and a Research Affiliate on the faculty at F&ES. Author of numerous research papers, he has most recently published Common Goals for Sustainable Forest Management: Divergence and Reconvergence of American and European Forestry, with Steven Anderson. His professional experience includes assignments with the U.S. Forest Service, Champion International, The Wilderness Society, and the Prince of Thurn und Taxis in Bavaria, Germany. He was a Senior Fellow at the Conservation Foundation in Washington, DC, and later Vice President for Research at the American Forestry Association.

AYA Board of Governors 3^rd year, Univ. Eng. Comm.

Heather Wright M.E.Sc. ’04 (2^nd term ends 2014)
San Francisco, CA heather.wright@aya.yale.edu

Heather is an Environment Program officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation where she manages a conservation portfolio oriented toward mainstreaming ecosystem services in natural resource decision making.  A significant piece of her work is focused on forest conservation that aims to mitigate climate change impacts by addressing the drivers of deforestation and degradation. Prior to joining the Foundation, Heather was a Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) Manager at Conservation International where she led global biological assessments in critical ecosystems and developed conservation recommendations based on the results. As Program Manager at Friends of the Osa, Heather helped strengthen the new organization's focus on applied conservation and research In Costa Rica. Through her work at Moore she continues to cultivate her interest in the links between ecosystem services, landscape ecology and environmental policy. She was recently a member of the Board of Directors for the Women's Environmental Network in San Francisco.  She is also an active Conservation Measures Partnership Board Member. Heather received her B.S. in Biology and Minor in Scandinavian Literature from UCLA, her Master's degree F&ES and in 2010  became a Kinship Conservation Fellow.

West Coast Whip, Regional Events

Mark Ashton ‘85, Ph.D. ’90

Mark is the Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology and Director of School Forests. He conducts research on the biological and physical processes governing the regeneration of natural forests and on the creation of their agroforestry analogs.

Noel Aloysius Ph.D. 2013
Jaffna, Sri Lanka noel.aloysius@yale.edu

Patrick Hook M.F., M.B.A. 2013
San Diego, CA patrick.hook@yale.edu