Appendix C

Panelist Biographical Sketches

Panel 1: Equitable Community Development

Manal J. Aboelata

Manal J. Aboelata is deputy executive director at Prevention Institute, a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing effective strategies to achieve health equity, prevent illness and injury, and ensure safe and healthy communities. An epidemiologist by training, Dr. Aboelata advocates for health equity and racial justice. She writes and speaks on many issues, especially those pertaining to health equity and the built environment. She coauthored a chapter in the first and second editions of Making Healthy Places and wrote the foreword for Schools that Heal: Design with Mental Health in Mind. In the form of original articles, op-eds, and policy briefs, she has written extensively on timely, relevant public health justice issues. She has served on numerous health advisory boards, review panels, and expert councils. She is currently serving her third and final term as an appointee of Supervisory District 2 (South Los Angeles) to Los Angeles County’s Community Prevention and Population Health Taskforce. Dr. Aboelata graduated from UCLA, with a master’s degree in epidemiology (2001) and from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor of arts (1998). She was inducted into the UCLA Hall of Fame (2009) and was a Stanton Fellow of the Durfee Foundation from 2018 to 2020.

Nnenia Campbell

Nnenia Campbell is deputy director at the Bill Anderson Fund and a research associate with the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Campbell’s work with the Bill Anderson Fund supports leadership, professional development, and research training among historically underrepresented minority doctoral students studying hazards and disasters. Her work with the Natural Hazards Center translates empirical research on the social aspects of disasters into tools and information products designed for practitioners and decision makers, with an emphasis on inclusive engagement. Dr. Campbell’s research interests center on the intersections between disaster vulnerability and resilience within marginalized communities and on the role that community-based organizations play in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Her current research collaborations include projects related to disaster planning and response capacity among food banks and other community-based organizations, linkages between disaster scenarios and hazard mitigation efforts, risk communication in the context of concurrent and successive disasters, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth and older adults.

Joyce Coffee

Joyce Coffee is founder and president of Climate Resilience Consulting, a social enterprise that works with clients to create practical and equitable strategies that enhance markets and communities through adaptation to climate change. Ms. Coffee has 25 years of leadership experience in government, private, nonprofit, philanthropic, and academic sectors. She has

worked with more than 200 institutions to create and implement climate-related resilience initiatives. Specific areas of emphasis include resilience strategy, resilience finance, resilience measurement, and social equity. She is an appointed director or chair of 25 nonprofit boards and initiatives. She received a B.S. in biology, environmental studies, and Asian studies from Tufts University and a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Marissa Ramirez

Marissa Ramirez is the director of community strategies for the Equity, Environment, and Justice Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She believes that meaningful change happens locally. Since coming to NRDC in 2010, Ms. Ramirez has worked with neighbors and local leaders primarily in underserved communities of color on revitalizing communities by providing best practices and tools for a more equitable and sustainable future. She is a coauthor of 4-Steps to a Climate Savvy Community, which is designed for communities to find solutions to climate, health, and racial equity issues where they live. She is also author and coauthor, respectively, of Green Neighborhoods: Advancing Strategies that Create Strong, Just, and Resilient Communities and The Sustainable Square Mile Handbook: Cultivate Your Green Village with Community-Based Principles and Practices. She has led new research to uncover the links between climate change, displacement, and gentrification in U.S. cities. Ms. Ramirez has a master of environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she focused on urban environmental economics. She also holds a bachelor of science degree in biology from Yale University. She continues to bring her passion for both human and environmental health to her professional work in communities.

Panel 2: Equitable Physical Infrastructure

Carol Friedland

Carol Friedland is LaHouse director and associate professor of biological agricultural engineering at Louisiana State University AgCenter. Her research focuses on resilient and sustainable housing, disaster loss estimation, post-disaster damage assessment, hazard mitigation planning and mitigation decision-making. Her areas of expertise include hazard-resistant construction and mitigation, performance of housing and other built infrastructure subjected to natural hazards, combined wind and flood interactions on structures, post-event data acquisition, remote sensing of building damage, hazard-resistant and sustainable construction, integration of Geographic Information Systems in hazards research, hazard mitigation planning and mitigation decision-making, and loss estimation. She is a member of the American Association of Wind Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers, and Association of State Floodplain Managers. Dr. Friedland holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wyoming and master’s and doctorate degrees from Louisiana State University.

Kelly Kibler

Kelly Kibler is an associate professor of water resources engineering in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering at the University of Central Florida (UCF). She is faculty of UCF’s National Center for Integrated Coastal Research and a faculty fellow of UCF’s Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity. Dr. Kibler obtained her Ph.D. in

water resources engineering from Oregon State University and worked with the United Nations Environmental, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, before joining UCF faculty. Her Ecohydraulics Laboratory targets coupled biological and physical variables in river and estuarine systems. Research topics include flow-biota interaction and its influence on hydrodynamics and sediment transport at multiple scales. Applications for Dr. Kibler’s research include development pathways and infrastructure that minimize ecosystem disruption and promote the restoration or engineering of aquatic ecosystem services, including those related to climate adaptation. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and Florida Department of Transportation.

Rae Zimmerman

Rae Zimmerman is research professor and professor emerita of planning and public administration at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, following a full-time tenured professorship for many years, and she currently directs NYU-Wagner’s Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, past president and fellow of the international Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), and recipient of SRA’s 2019 Distinguished Achievement Award and 2015 Outstanding Service Award. She has authored or coedited a half dozen books, including Transport, the Environment and Security, and almost 200 other publications encompassing social and economic dimensions of infrastructure systems and their vulnerability to natural hazards, climate change, and accidents. She has had more than four dozen research grants funded by the National Science Foundation and other agencies through university centers, currently focusing on infrastructure interdependencies and sustainability, COVID-19-related food consumption patterns, risk communication, and behaviors that shape and are shaped by infrastructure services. Dr. Zimmerman holds a B.A. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.C.P. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in planning from Columbia University.

Panel 3: Deep Dive – Resilience Hubs

Kristin Baja

Kristin Baja is Urban Sustainability Directors Network’s (USDN) director of direct support and innovation. Ms. Baja is responsible for identifying, leading, and supporting innovative projects and trainings that actively transform local government processes and lead to proactive, respect-based change. She actively works to identify and compost archaic and discriminatory practices and to provide pathways for change rooted in courage, equity, and justice. She works across scales and actively helps facilitate deeper connectivity and collaboration between local government practitioners and their stakeholders while helping to shift to more transformational systems-level change. Prior to USDN, Ms. Baja served as the climate and resilience planner with the City of Baltimore where she led the city’s climate and equity work. She holds an M.U.P. and an M.S. from the University of Michigan and is actively working on a master’s in biomimicry from Arizona State University. She is an EPIC-N board member and serves on several local and international advisory committees. In 2016, Ms. Baja was recognized by the Obama administration as a Champion of Change for her work on climate and equity.

Jana Ganion

Jana Ganion is the sustainability and government affairs director for the Blue Lake Rancheria, a federally recognized Native American tribal government. She has established the tribe’s strategy for zero-carbon resilience. Her development experience includes low-carbon community-scale and facility-scale microgrids, electric vehicle infrastructure, strategic planning in sustainability, climate action (pairing mitigation with adaptation), emergency preparedness, and economic enterprise development. She is an appointee to and current (2021) co-chair of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Indian Country Energy and Infrastructure Working Group, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management California Intergovernmental Task Force, California’s Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resilience Program Technical Advisory Committee, the California SB 350 Disadvantaged Communities Advisory Group for the California Public Utilities Commission and California Energy Commission, among other roles. She works on policy, programs, and investments to achieve rapid, cost-effective transition to decarbonized and resilient communities for the resulting social, environmental, and economic co-benefits.

Shina Robinson

Shina Robinson, policy coordinator at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), is a bridge builder between passing transformative climate, energy, and housing policies, and implementing state policy through local models of Just Transition and Energy Democracy, rooted in local design and decision-making of APEN’s immigrant and refugee leaders. She leads policy and political education trainings, community engagement processes, joint advocacy, and coordination with local and state coalitions to advance these projects and collective vision. Her current focus is on implementation of policies, accessing investments, and engaging APEN communities as decision makers to build community-based climate resilience hubs in Oakland and Richmond. Ms. Robinson has served in many roles at APEN since 2012, but her deep commitment to environmental justice at the intersection of human rights, health, and equity started from a young age between visiting family in the Philippines and growing up in the shadow of a Los Angeles area oil refinery. She took on human rights and climate disaster relief campaigns while pursuing undergraduate degrees in international studies and political science at California State University, Long Beach.

Panel 4: Deep Dive – Housing

Emily Alvarado

Emily Alvarado is vice president and Pacific Northwest market leader for Enterprise Community Partners. In that role, she oversees Enterprise’s work in Washington and Oregon to create and preserve affordable homes and brings programmatic solutions to scale through policy advocacy. Her work includes directing Enterprise’s Washington Early Learning Loan Fund and the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account Early Learning Facilities Fund. Before joining Enterprise, Ms. Alvarado worked at Seattle’s Office of Housing, which she joined in 2014 and was named director in 2019. During her tenure, she stewarded more than $275 million in investments that supported affordable rental housing and homeownership opportunities for more than 3,600 families. She worked to implement community preference as a way to counter displacement, paved the way for new approaches to community-driven affordable housing connected to light rail and accelerated production of Permanent Supportive Housing. She also

forged partnerships with stakeholders across the city to advance housing production and preservation programs. She has extensive policy advocacy experience including leadership positions in nonprofits such as Pittsburgh UNITED, a coalition of community, labor, faith, and environmental organizations, and the Housing Consortium of Seattle-King County. She was named to the Puget Sound Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list in 2020. Ms. Alvarado also serves as a board member for the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance and the Washington Housing Alliance Action Fund. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Scripps College and a juris doctor from the University of Washington School of Law.

Anne Cope

Anne Cope, chief engineer at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) joined IBHS in 2009 just a few months before the groundbreaking for the construction of the IBHS Research Center in Richburg, South Carolina. As the chief engineer, she leads the development of research programs to improve the performance of structures in hurricanes, wildfires, severe thunderstorms, and hailstorms as well as the team of engineers, scientists, and skilled craftsman who conduct research on full-scale homes and commercial buildings. She is responsible for the team’s implementation of research findings into building codes and standards. Prior to joining IBHS, Dr. Cope was a project manager and structural engineer with Reynolds, Smith & Hills, Inc., designing projects for NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and commercial launch operations. Her research encompasses topics ranging from the full-scale simulation of wind effects on buildings to detailed studies of the vulnerabilities of buildings to natural hazards and the development of damage prediction models. She is also a proud veteran of the United States Army. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Clemson University and her doctorate from the University of Florida. She is a registered professional engineer in Florida and South Carolina.

Sarah Saadian

As senior vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Sarah Saadian oversees NLIHC’s broad congressional portfolio and policy team. Ms. Saadian has over a decade of experience working on affordable housing and community development. She has been quoted in major media outlets, and she has testified before Congress. She graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 2009 after receiving her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia in 2005. She has also been a member of the Virginia State Bar since 2009.

Panel 5: Deep Dive – Transportation

Genevieve Giuliano

Genevieve Giuliano is professor of urban planning, Margaret and John Ferraro Chair in Effective Local Government, and director of the METRANS Transportation Center at the University of Southern California. Dr. Giuliano’s research areas include relationships between land use and transportation, transportation policy analysis, travel behavior, and information technology applications in transportation. Current research includes examination of relationships between urban form, online shopping behavior, and local freight demand; market potential for zero-emission trucks; reducing local impacts of truck traffic; and applications for transportation

system analysis using archived real-time data. She has published more than 170 papers and given invited lectures around the world. Dr. Giuliano is a past chair of the Executive Committee of the Transportation Research Board, and of the Council of University Transportation Centers. She has received numerous distinguished scholarship and service awards including the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Distinguished Service Award (2006), the Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lectureship Award (2007), the Transportation Research Forum Outstanding Researcher Award (2012), the Council of University Transportation Centers Distinguished Contribution award (2013), and the Walter Isard Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Regional Science (2017). She is a former member of the Intelligent Transportations Systems Joint Program Advisory Committee and the National Freight Advisory Committee. She has participated in many TRB policy studies; most recently on the Committee on the Future of the Interstate Highway System. At the state level, she is working with Caltrans and the California Air Resources Board on the implementation of the California Sustainable Freight Action Plan.

Johana Clark

Johana Clark has a 19-year professional career with the public sector. She is currently the senior assistant director with Houston Public Works managing the Stormwater Operations Branch with Transportation and Drainage Operations. She is responsible for overseeing the daily operation of the city’s critical storm drainage system infrastructure with a team of more than 300 employees, including field and professional staff. She has previously managed the Traffic Operations Branch and supervised the signal timing and operations team with the city. Ms. Clark has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the National University of Colombia and a master of engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. She is a licensed professional engineer, a professional traffic operations engineer, and an Envision sustainability professional. She is an active member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Kingsley Haynes

Kingsley Haynes, the Ruth D. Hazel and John T. Hazel, M.D. Faculty Chair in Public Policy, Eminent Scholar, University Professor Emeritus, and Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, has been building academic programs for 50 years. After starting an Urban Institute at McGill University, he was a founding faculty member and played a central role in the development of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a faculty chair and major contributor to the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University and its third place national ranking. At George Mason University, Dr. Haynes served as graduate dean. He is active in the academic fields of regional science, geography and public administration. His research focuses on regional economic development, transportation, and infrastructure investment. He has authored more than 250 articles, 150 professional reports, and 10 books. He has been an active participant in economic development activities in Texas; the U.S. Midwest; and internationally in Malaysia, Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Dr. Haynes was awarded prizes for his Ford Foundation work on the Nile River. From 1995 to 1997, he was president of the 50-nation Regional Science Association International. He was executive secretary to the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Applied Geography (2010–2012). At The Hague, he was honored to present the UNESCO Megacities Foundation Lecture on his book Infrastructure: The Glue of Megacities in 2007. Also in 2007, he was awarded the Grosvenor Gold Medal for his

work in geographic education. He was elected to the National Academy of Public Administration in 2002. Dr. Haynes has served as visiting professor at the School of Geography, Planning and Environment, University of Queensland (2010) and at the Institute for Sustainability Studies, University of Melbourne (2011). He has been a senior scholar and visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Institute for Public Policy, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. From 2015 to 2019, he served as the inaugural president of Clarewood University in Reston, Virginia.