Concordia College

Speaker and Presenter Bios

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKERS

Brad Crabtree, program director
Great Plains Institute, Minneapolis

Brad Crabtree staffs regional energy projects focused on efficiency, renewable energy and advanced coal with carbon capture and storage. He currently coordinates facilitation and technical assistance for four regional advisory groups of the Midwestern Governors Association charged with implementation of energy and climate accords endorsed by 10 governors and two Canadian premiers. Crabtree was previously project director at the Consensus Council in Bismarck, N.D., managing projects in community development, flood mitigation, and natural resource management. His background includes environmental policy and project development work. A graduate of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, he has a master’s degree in history from Johns Hopkins University.

Christine Ervin, spokesperson for market-based strategies for slowing climate change

Christine Ervin is a nationally respected leader and spokesperson on market-based strategies for green buildings, clean energy and climate change. She has served as the U.S. Green Building Council’s first president and CEO, guiding its growth into one of the most influential industry collaborations in the country; as the U.S. assistant secretary of energy, leading the nation’s billion-dollar portfolio of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies for buildings, transportation, manufacturing, distributed generation and climate change; and as project director for the World Wildlife Fund/Conservation Foundation. A popular speaker, Ervin has been featured at more than 200 conferences and covered in a broad array of print and other media.

John Flicker, President
National Audubon Society

John Flicker became president of the National Audubon Society in 1995. Under his leadership, Audubon has expanded its influence and effectiveness as one of the nation’s preeminent environmental organizations. A native of Minnesota, Flicker developed an early affinity for being outdoors, and a strong commitment to conservation. Growing up on a farm, he learned “everything comes from the land. If you take care of it, it takes care of you.” Prior to becoming Audubon’s president, he spent 21 years with The Nature Conservancy, where, as Florida state director and then general counsel and chief operating officer, he helped preserve more than one million acres – the largest acquisition and preservation program ever undertaken in any state.

Scott Handy, President/CEO
Cass County Electric Cooperative Inc., Kindred, N.D.

Scott Handy has worked at Cass County Electric Cooperative Inc. since 1982, where his positions have included member service director, assistant general manager, senior vice president and chief operating officer. He was named president/CEO in 2002. Handy previously worked as an energy consultant for the North Dakota State University Cooperative Extension Service. He serves as chairman of the board for the Greater Fargo-Moorhead Economic Development Corporation’s Growth Initiative Fund and as director of the Quentin Burdick Center for Cooperatives at NDSU. Handy is also a board member of the North Dakota Alliance for Renewable Energy. He holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural systems
management from NDSU.

Carmen Miller, North Dakota representative
Pew Environmental Group, Bismarck, N.D.

Carmen Miller served as an assistant attorney general for the State of North Dakota from 1993 to 2002. During that time she represented more than 15 different state agencies. Her environmental practice with the state included regulatory enforcement, litigation, legislative action, and monitoring policy developments relating to agriculture, water law, air pollution, electricity deregulation, and green marketing of electricity. In 2006, Miller began consulting for the National Environmental Trust on federal environmental policy issues including automotive fuel efficiency standards and climate change legislation. In January 2008, the National Environmental Trust became the Pew Environment Group, for which she is now a North Dakota representative. Miller received her undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., and her law degree from Tulane Law School, New Orleans.

Dr. Ellen Mosley-Thompson, professor
Department of Geography, The Ohio State University, Columbus

Dr. Ellen Mosley-Thompson is a research scientist at Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University. She uses the chemical and physical properties preserved in ice cores collected from the polar ice sheets and high-mountain glaciers to reconstruct the Earth’s complex climate history. These records indicate that the Earth’s climate has moved outside the range of natural variability experienced over at least the last 2,000 years. Mosley-Thompson has led eight expeditions to Antarctica and six to Greenland to retrieve ice cores. She established Antarctica’s most extensive and longest running snow accumulation network at South Pole Station. Mosley-Thompson holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s and a doctorate in climatology.

Rev.Vy Nguyen, city coordinator
Lutheran Volunteer Corps, San Francisco Bay Area

The Rev. Vy Nguyen is a graduate of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He has a deep passion for raising awareness of global issues. With an undergraduate degree in religion, focusing on environmental science, from Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, Nguyen helped initiate and coordinate the Young Adult Ecumenical Forum on Globalization and Economic Justice, as well as served as a U.S. representative to the World Council of Churches Consultation on Global Climate Change in Tarawa, Kiribati Island. Before joining LVC, he interned with the office of Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America churchwide office in Chicago.   

Dr. Eugene Takle, professor
Department of Geological and Atmospheric Science, Iowa State University, Ames
            
Dr. Eugene Takle is a professor of atmospheric science and agricultural meteorology, and director of the Climate Science Initiative at Iowa State University. He has a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, and a doctorate in physics from Iowa State University. Takle has served visiting scientist positions at the University of Colorado in Boulder, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., Riso National Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. He frequently authors papers and conducts presentations, along with serving as atmospheric science editor for Earth Science Reviews. He has been a contributing author and reviewer of the third and fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr. Lonnie Thompson, distinguished university professor
School of Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus
            
Dr. Lonnie Thompson’s research has propelled the field of ice core paleoclimatology out of the polar regions to the highest tropical and subtropical ice fields. He and the OSU team have developed light-weight solar-powered drilling equipment for acquisition of histories from ice fields in the tropical South American Andes, the Himalayas and on Kilimanjaro. Thompson’s observations of glacier retreat during the last three decades confirm that glaciers around the world are melting and provide clear evidence that the warming of the last 50 years is now outside the range of climate variability for several millennia, if not longer. Thompson has a bachelor’s degree in geology from Marshall University, Huntington, W.Va., and master’s and doctorate degrees in geological sciences from The Ohio State University.

CONCURRENT SESSION SPEAKERS

Rev. Mark Peters, executive director
Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy, Minnesota

As executive director, a significant part of the Rev. Mark Peters’ work at the coalition has been to address global warming by establishing and providing faith-based resources to congregation creation care teams across Minnesota. He has also been instrumental in bringing polar explorer Will Steger’s “Eyewitness to Global Warming” events to faith communities. Last year the coalition was involved in 18 of these events, with nine in ELCA congregations. Peters manages his family farm in Wisconsin that has recently been awarded the Wildlife Habitat Stewardship Award for Richland County for conservation practices. His background includes a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Master of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees from Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn.

Richard Strong, research fellow
Center for Sustainable Building Research, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Richard Strong has worked in both private and public sectors, in governmental and university settings, during the past 30 years. He also practiced architecture with several Minneapolis firms and in his own firm. He taught sustainable design at Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., from 2003 to 2006. Currently, Strong is involved in monitoring the Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines and is the project manager for Sustainable Buildings 2030, along with teaching in the Graduate Sustainable Architectural Degree program at the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota. He has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from North Dakota State University, Fargo, a master’s degree in urban planning from McGill University, Montreal, and a master’s degree in design from Harvard University.

Steven Taff, associate professor and Extension economist
Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Steven J. Taff is also an adjunct professor with the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota. A former county extension agent and regional planner, Taff holds advanced degrees in urban and regional planning and in agricultural economics, all from the University of Wisconsin. At the University of Minnesota since 1986, he specializes in the economics of agricultural and natural resource policies, with emphasis on land management decisions in both rural and urban settings. Taff is widely known for his attempts to bring economic science to bear on practical policymaking. Some of his recent research examines the economics of conservation easements, the fiscal implications of preferential property tax programs, alternative energy systems and performance measures in landscape design.