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Smith College alumnae
are creating change and doing innovative work around the world. They are shaping
national policy, raising global standards, influencing citizens' behaviors, and educating
the world on reproductive rights, climate change, environmental justice, water rights,
international trade, and wetlands restoration. The list goes on...
Ann Coburn has held numerous offices in Lincoln,
Massachusetts and Sewickley, Pennsylvania. She is perhaps most recognized for her
conservation work with the Garden Club of America and the current position on the
statewide board of directors of the non-profit Pennsylvania Environmental Council.
Her special interests are plant conservation and environmental legislation. Among
the projects undertaken by the Council are the development of greenways along the
Delaware Riverfront in Philadelphia and along the Susquehanna River, as well as plans
for conservation along rivers throughout Pennsylvania.
Amy Bunting designed her home on Camino Chico
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to run completely on solar energy, She uses the sun to heat
her water, run her refrigerator, spark her natural gas oven and switch on her lights.
Everything in her 1,777-square-foot home is powered by the sun.
For many years, Amy has been active in
environmental activities and educational programs in Santa Fe. Her house, which took
two years to plan, is a model of conservation. Her vigas were made from recycled
wood, a drainage system gathers rainwater from her carport to use in her organic
garden, and a green rocking chair in her foyer was made from 100 recycled plastic
milk cartons. The 16-inch thick walls offer significant insulation capacity and are
made of pumice-crete, an organic material taken from the hills near Espanola. Bunting
researched the origin of all of the building materials to ensure that she bought
products of the highest quality with the lowest environmental impact.
Susan Maxman is a nationally recognized expert
in sustainable design and historic preservation and principal of Susan Maxman & Partners,
Architects (SMP) of Philadelphia. The firm has received numerous awards for its work
from professional and non-profit organizations throughout the country, including
the Committee on the Environment of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In
1993, Ms. Maxman became the first woman president of the AIA in its 136 years. For
her advocacy of sustainable design in both new designs and restoration of historic
structures, she has received honorary doctorates at Ball State University and the
University of Detroit-Mercy. Her work has been cited in professional journals, newspapers
and magazines including "Architecture," "Energy Focus," Historic
Preservation," and "Progressive Architecture." The scope of the firm’s
work can be seen at www.maxmanpartners.com.
After more than 20 year’s working for
women’s reproductive rights and health care, Sherley Young took a fateful trip
to Kenya. While she saw the tremendous need for AIDS prevention, she also learned
the impact and value of providing houses for people. She now focuses on building
houses for Global Village, the international arm of Habitat for Humanity. The houses
are very simple: two or three rooms with no electricity or running water. They can
be built quickly, which is fortunate, as Sherley also plans to help build in Tanzania,
Australia, Botswana, Chile (with Smith Travel), Ethiopia, Mongolia and Egypt.
Professor Babcock received her LL.B. from Yale
and is currently professor of law at Georgetown University. She served as General
Counsel to the National Audubon Society from 1987-91 and as Deputy General Counsel
and Director of Audubon's Public Lands and Water Program from 1981-87. Previously,
she was a partner with Blum, Nash & Railsback, where she focused on energy and
environmental issues, and an associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby &
MacRae, where she represented utilities in the nuclear licensing process. From 1977-79,
she served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy and Minerals in the U.S. Department
of the Interior. She was a member of the Standing Committee on Environmental Law
of the American Bar Association, Chair of the Natural Resources Law Section of the
AALS (2004), and served on the Clinton-Gore Transition Team.
Paula Young Smith and her husband are involved
in environmental causes and are also working on a recovery plan for an endangered
plant, the Texas snowbell that grows on their ranch in the Texas Hill Country. Paula
is a life member of The Nature Conservancy, and her husband is the Ernest E Smith,
Rex G. Baker Centennial Chair in Natural Resources Law at the University of Texas,
Austin.
Chellis Glendinning, author of the award-winning Off
the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy, lives in Chimayó.
A sprawling village, home to about 3,000 people, Chimayó is the spiritual
centre of the Río Grande in the upland desert of northern New Mexico; to
the despair of its townspeople, it has also been one of the most drug-ridden towns
in the U.S. The fight to regain the town led her to write Chiva: A Village
Takes on the Global Heroin Trade. Glendinning has a history of activism stemming
from childhood and running through all the major political movements from the Sixties
on. Her writing reflects her awareness of the impact of technologies, power, and
separation from the land. Waking Up in the Nuclear Age (1987) focused
on the psychological effects of the nuclear arms race. When Technology Wounds (1990)
looks at people made sick from exposure to dangerous technologies. My Name
is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization (1994) traces modern
society from the domestication process and how addiction is embedded in a nature/human
split. She is currently working with other residents of Chimayo in their battle
against wireless towers and in favor of the preservation of a land-based Chicano
culture in northern New Mexico.
Mary Zinn Raynard and husband Richard share
their home in Santa Fe with five cats and two dogs. Mary is human resources director
for the Cadmus Group, an environmental consulting firm headquartered in Watertown,
MA. She has volunteered on the board of directors of their water district in an area
where water rights are of critical importance. Mary notes that,” Our little
community felt so strongly that our water system should be a public, not a private,
system that we intervened in a pending sale of the system and prevailed through many
years of litigation. [The community] now owns and operates the system for the good
of the ratepayers. In every element of the system’s operation we see the difference
between public and private ownership writ large. Good stewardship and long-term thinking
are far more likely in the public sector.”
C. Suzanne Reed is a senior policy analyst
in California for the Center for Clean Air Policy, an environmental think tank based
in Washington, DC. and has over 35 years experience in environmental public policy.
She first served as a Professional Staff Member on the US Senate Interior and Insular
Affairs Committee (now Energy and Natural Resources) then chaired by Senator Henry
M. (Scoop) Jackson. She relocated to California where she became Senior Energy Advisor
in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and was then appointed by
the Governor to The California Energy Commission. There she oversaw energy conservation
and alternative energy programs and presided over development of the Commission’s
first-in-the-nation residential energy conservation standards. Suzanne majored
in biology and environmental sciences at Smith. She holds a Masters Degree from Yale
University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Susan Soloyanis worked for many years with
Noblis (formerly Mitretek Systems), a nonprofit science, technology and strategy
organization that deals with complex systems, process and infrastructure problems
for clients in various business industries, including criminal justice, environment
and energy, health care, homeland security, public safety and transportation. She
has recently started Sologeo LLC, her own environmental consulting company, where
she will provide the same type of technical oversight for federal environmental cleanups
of sites as varied as contaminated fractured rock aquifers and military base closures.
Virginia Kay Tippie is Director of Coastal
America, a large partnership that involves more than a dozen governmental agencies
and numerous major corporations in an effort to “protect, preserve, and restore
America’s coastal heritage.” Projects are in progress on ocean coasts,
as well as the Great Lakes region and other areas where major river systems connect
to the sea. Among Coastal America’s programs are the Corporate Wetlands Restoration
Partnership (CWRP) and International Corporate Wetlands Restoration Partnership (ICWRP),
the network of Coastal Ecosystem Learning Centers (CELCs), and the Coastal America
Partnership Awards Program. Ms. Tippie was honored as a Smith Medalist in 1999.
Patricia Bliss-Guest is Deputy CEO of The Global
Environment Facility (GEF). The GEF, established in 1991, helps developing countries
fund projects and programs that protect the global environment. GEF grants support
projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation,
the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants.
Since its inception, GEF has committed
$6.2 billion in grants to more than 1,800 projects in more than 160 developing countries
and transitional economies. Between 2006 and 2010, GEF expects to commit another
$3.13 billion. The GEF staff is based in Washington, D.C. and administers funded
programs on behalf of the Council, an independent board of directors that represents
16 developing countries, 14 developed countries, and two countries with transitional
economies.
For more than 15 years, Alison Quoyeser has
been teaching elementary school children how to care for their communities in her
classes at Ross School in California. She and her partner received a Golden Bell
award for their fourth grade environmental studies program. Some of Alison’s
students’ work may be seen at www.bay.org/virtual%20summit04/Ross/ross_school.htm
Ellen Watts is a principal in her own Boston
architectural firm, Architerra, which she founded in 2004. With a grant from the
Boston Foundation for Architecture, her firm surveyed 11 private colleges in Boston
(all members of the Boston consortium) to learn what motivated colleges to adopt
environmentally sound practices. Ms. Watts presented findings from the State of Sustainability
in Higher Education at the July 2005 meeting of the Society for College and University
Planning.
Alma Boylan Garnett lives in Portland Maine
and founded Hunter Panels, a manufacturer of polyisocyanurate roofing insulation
panels. These are considered the most energy-efficient form of roofing insulation
available, with the highest R-factor per inch of thickness and have become the product
of choice for buildings that are seeking LEED certification as “green” buildings.
In just 10 years, Hunter has become known for both its products and levels of customer
service.
Erica Frank, MD, MPH, is a tenured Associate
Professor and Vice Chair for Academic Affairs of the Department of Family and Preventive
Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. Following a transitional internship
at the Cleveland Clinic, she was in residency at Yale and fellowship at Stanford
and is trained and board certified in preventive medicine. While primarily a researcher,
she directs Emory's Preventive Medicine Residency Program and has an indigent clinical
practice in cholesterol management.
Dr. Frank was co-editor in chief of the journal Preventive
Medicine (1994-99), and served on the editorial boards of the American Journal
of Preventive Medicine and the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. She has written
for Vogue magazine, was the health reporter for the central Georgia ABC
affiliate, a medical editor for Lifetime Medical Television, and a health reporter
for Medical News Network.
She serves on the national boards of the American
College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) and Physicians for Social Responsibility. She
is also involved in the environmental movement, and lives in an eco-sensitive co-housing
home during the week and a totally energy independent wilderness home on the weekends.
On behalf of Physicians for Social Responsibility, she has testified about the dangers
of mercury from coal-fired plants in Georgia and the dangers of methyl mercury to
fish and humans who consume them, particularly pregnant women. High doses of methyl
mercury can result in low birth weight, small head circumference, severe mental retardation,
cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness and seizures. Severely affected children may
be born to mothers who exhibited no symptoms of methyl mercury exposure during pregnancy.
Miranda Magagnini founded IceStone, a terrazzo-like,
environmentally friendly countertop material produced solely from recycled glass
and concrete. IceStone has caught the attention of major corporations like Starbucks,
Whole Foods, and Liberty Mutual, who are among IceStone’s clients. The material
is extremely durable and can be used outdoors, where it does not fade. Miranda and
her business partner raised over $4 million to launch the product, build out the
factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, increase the capacity, and brand the material.
Some of the investment money came from social pioneers like the founders of Ben & Jerry’s
and Odwalla. Her product is certified Cradle-to-Cradle for sustainability and has
been featured in numerous business and home decor publications. The product may be
seen at www.icestone.biz/new.
Simran Sethi is director of the video and audio
divisions of Treehugger.com, one of the top environmental multimedia Web sites. She
is an award-winning journalist who produced and anchored the news for MTV Asia, co-created
the MTV India news division, and developed programming for the BBC and Doordarshan
through her independent production company SHE TV. Ms. Sethi is the host/ writer
of Ethical Markets, a weekly half-hour TV series and the first national program reporting
on corporate social responsibility and sustainable business practices. The news,
features, interviews, roundtables, and expert commentary are aimed at creating new
definitions of wealth and success for investors, especially Baby Boomers concerned
with social and environmental issues. Ms. Sethi is also a contributing author to
the book Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy. She holds an MBA in
sustainable management from the Presidio School of Management and a B.A. in Sociology
and Women's Studies from Smith. She serves on the board of directors for the National
Radio Project and on the advisory board for New York's NPR affiliate, WNYC.
Siobhan Doherty is the Green-e representative
for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Regions. Green-e is the nation's leading independent
certification and verification program for renewable energy and companies that use
renewable energy. It is a program of The Center for Resource Solutions, a national
nonprofit “working to build a robust renewable energy market by increasing
demand and supply of renewable resources through a networking approach that relies
on collaborative efforts and partnerships with stakeholders from businesses to government
agencies and NGOs. Green-e publishes The Green-e News, an extensive collection of
information for the renewable energy community. |
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