Dr. Gail Christopher is president and founder of Ntianu Center for Healing and Nature. Prior to her Ntianu Center tenure, Dr. Christopher was senior adviser and vice president at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and, before that, vice president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Office of Health, Women and Families in Washington, D.C. She directed the Joint Center Health Policy Institute, a multi-year initiative created to engage underserved, racial, and ethnic minorities in health policy discussions.

Dr. Christopher has been a guest scholar in the Governance Studies Department at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and executive director of the Institute for Government Innovation at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass. In addition, Dr. Christopher served as director and naprapathic physician with the Naprapathic Health Centers in Chicago.

Dr. Christopher received her doctor of naprapathy degree from the Chicago National College of Naprapathy in Illinois and completed advanced studies in the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in holistic health and clinical nutrition at the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities at Union Graduate School of Cincinnati.

Dr. Christopher received a 2007 Leadership Award from the Health Brain Trust of the Congressional Black Caucus for her work with the Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and its impact on public policies to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities. She has authored and co-authored three books, a monthly column in the Federal Times, and has written more than 250 articles, presentations, and publications. Dr. Christopher is also a frequent national broadcast and print media news interviewee and content contributor.

The Rev. John C. Dorhauer, author and theologian, currently serves as ninth General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ.

Before his election at the 30th General Synod in June 2015, Dorhauer was the Conference Minister of the Southwest Conference of the UCC, the regional body that provides support and services to 47 local UCC congregations and clergy within Arizona, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas.

Prior to his role at the Southwest Conference, Dorhauer served as associate conference minister in the Missouri Mid-South Conference, and also served First Congregational United Church of Christ and Zion United Church of Christ, in rural Missouri. Dorhauer received a B.A. in Philosophy from Cardinal Glennon College (1983), and has a Master of Divinity degree from Eden Theological Seminary (1988), the same year he was ordained in the United Church of Christ. He received a Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary (2004), where he studied white privilege and its effects on the church. His second book, Beyond Resistance: The Institutional Church Meets the Postmodern World, was released in June 2015. His first book(written with Sheldon Culver), Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right is Hijacking Mainstream Religion, was published in June 2007.

Dorhauer is passionate about justice. Two statements that shape his theology are: "God is love. God is just." He is also passionate about the future of the denomination, insistent “that the Holy Spirit envisions a future in which the United Church of Christ matters.” During his tenure, he is calling on the denomination to rethink itself and to consider new ways of “being church” in light of reduced societal interest in institutional religion, and the steep decline in the membership of the UCC since the 1960s. He says alternatives to institutional churches, what some call the "emergent church," will not immediately supplant, but will grow alongside the institutional church for a long time.

Under his leadership during his first year in office, UCC congregations addressed racism through the Black Lives Matter movement and the denomination’s White Privilege curriculum, released in September 2016, which Dorhauer initiated; campaigned against discrimination, including that aimed at the LGBTQ community; and offered extravagant welcome and visible public support for Muslim neighbors through its Building Bridges initiative.

Vanessa Hauc is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and senior correspondent for Noticias Telemundo. From social, cultural and political events to natural disasters, Vanessa has been a valuable source of information for U.S. Hispanics, reporting the news from right from where it happens. From Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico to Matthew in Haiti Vanessa has covered the story. Recently she travelled to Rome to lead a conversation between Pope Francis and children from six countries affected by natural disasters. Her passion for environmental issues inspired her to create the “Alerta Verde” segment to inform and educate the community about the importance of protecting our planet.

Today she is leading the investigative unit on environmental issues at Telemundo Network “Planeta Tierra”.

Vanessa is the co-founder of Sachamama or “Mother Jungle,” a nonprofit organization that works to inspire, empower and educate the Latino community on climate issues and sustainable attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles. She has worked hand-in-hand with The Climate Reality project and Vice President Al Gore in his global initiative “24 Hours of Reality” for the past 7 years, the global broadcast reached 500 million people in 2017. This year she was name one of the ten Latinos leading on Climate by the HuffPost.

In addition to earning her degree in Communications and Journalism, Vanessa also received a master’s degree in Economy and International Politics from the University of Miami.

Tom Kiernan began as CEO of the American Wind Energy Association in May, 2013. Prior to joining AWEA, Tom was President of the National Parks Conservation Association for 15 years. Previous positions include Deputy Assistant Administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation where he assisted in leading the implementation of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, President of the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, and a senior consultant with Arthur Andersen & Co. Tom is a native of Arlington, VA, has an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in Environmental Computer Modeling, and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Ken Kimmell is president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based nonprofit that combines the knowledge and influence of the scientific community with the passion of concerned citizens to build a healthy planet and a safer world. Mr. Kimmell has more than 30 years of experience in government, environmental policy, and advocacy. He is a national advocate for clean energy and transportation policies and a driving force behind UCS’s “Power Ahead” campaign to build a large and diverse group of clean energy leadership states.

Mr. Kimmell serves on the Commission on the Future of Transportation in the Commonwealth, which will advise Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s administration on future transportation needs and challenges. Kimmell was one of 18 members the governor appointed to the panel charged with looking at five areas anticipated to have a dramatic impact on transportation: climate and resiliency, transportation electrification, autonomous and connected vehicles, transit and mobility services, and land use and demographic trends.

Prior to joining UCS in May 2014, Mr. Kimmell was the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), an agency with a $100 million budget and 800 employees, including a large staff of scientists and engineers. As commissioner, he also served as chairman of the board of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, helping to prod the nine member states to reduce power plant carbon emissions by almost 50 percent through 2020, reducing emissions in the region by some 90 million tons.

Mr. Kimmell has also served as general counsel at the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs in Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s administration, and spent 17 years as the director and senior attorney at a Boston-based law firm specializing in environmental, energy, and land-use issues.

Mr. Kimmell decided to focus his legal work on environmental issues after clerking for the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, where he assisted a judge in a case involving the health effects of Agent Orange. Originally from New York, he earned his bachelor’s degree at Wesleyan University and his law degree at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mr. Kimmell has been quoted widely, including by the Associated Press, the Boston Globe, Bloomberg Business, the New York Times and the Washington Post, and has appeared numerous times on E&E TV and National Public Radio.

Celinda Lake is one of the Democratic Party's leading political strategists, serving as tactician and senior advisor to the national party committees, dozens of Democratic incumbents, and challengers at all levels of the electoral process. Celinda and her firm are known for cutting-edge research on issues including the economy, health care, the environment and education, and have worked for a number of institutions including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Governor's Association (DGA), AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, IAFF, Sierra Club, NARAL, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, The Next Generation, EMILY's List, VoteVets Action Fund, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Her international work has included work in Liberia, Haiti, Ukraine, South Africa, and Central America. In 2008, Celinda worked as pollster for Vice President Biden.

Since its formation, Lake Research Partners has become one of the most respected Democratic polling firms in the country. The firm's work has moved the progressive agenda forward on a variety of issues. Working against the conservatives, Celinda’s research demonstrated that the phrase "religious political extremists” was much more communicative than the vernacular "religious right." In the healthcare arena, her research showed that talking about "reducing health care costs" and the 8 out of 10 working families without adequate health insurance was key. Her interviews and statistics have been quoted in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal as well as a variety of magazines, including Newsweek, Glamour and Marie Claire, and Celinda has appeared on numerous television and radio news programs, including CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News and NPR, discussing her work and providing expert commentary.

Celinda is one of the nation's foremost experts on electing women candidates and on framing issues to women voters. American Politics calls Celinda a "super-strategist or, better yet, the Godmother," and Working Woman says she is "arguably the most influential woman in her field." She is renowned for her groundbreaking research on single women voters in conjunction with the Voter Participation Center and has helped elect numerous female candidates, including Barbara Mikulski, the "Dean" of Women Senators, former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, Annise Parker the Mayor of Houston (the 4th largest city in the country), Patricia Madrid the first Hispanic woman Attorney General in New Mexico, and others.

Gina McCarthy is Professor of the Practice of Public Health in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE). In this capacity, she leads the development of the School’s strategy in climate science, health, and sustainability; strengthens the climate science and health curriculum; and liaises with climate science leaders across the University.

McCarthy has been a leading advocate for common sense strategies to protect public health and the environment for more than 30 years. She served under President Barack Obama as the 13th Administrator of the EPA from 2013–2017. Her tenure as EPA Administrator heralded a paradigm shift in national environmental policy, expressly linking it with global public health. She led EPA initiatives that cut air pollution, protected water resources, reduced greenhouse gases, and strengthened chemical safety to better protect more Americans, especially the most vulnerable, from negative health impacts. McCarthy signed the Clean Power Plan, which set the first-ever national standards for reducing carbon emissions from existing power plants, underscoring the country’s commitment to domestic climate action and spurring international efforts that helped secure the Paris Climate Agreement. McCarthy worked with the United Nations and the World Health Organization on a variety of efforts and represented the U.S. on global initiatives to reduce high-risk sources of pollution.

A longtime public servant, McCarthy was previously Assistant Administrator for the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, Deputy Secretary of the Massachusetts Office of Commonwealth Development, and Undersecretary of Policy for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. In the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, McCarthy strengthened collaborative efforts with public health agencies and organizations across the U.S. to identify and reduce threats to human health from harmful air pollution, including carbon pollution that fuels climate change, by updating health and technology based emissions standards, establishing greenhouse gas standards for cars and trucks, promoting energy efficiency and alternative fuels, and mitigating harmful exposures to indoor air pollution.

Christine McEntee is Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a worldwide scientific community that advances the understanding of Earth and space through cooperation in research. She is the third Executive Director in AGU’s 92-year history. Over 25 years she has made her mark as an association leader and innovator, building a steady record of achievement in leading large organizations through changes in governance, membership and the fluid public policies that confront them.

McEntee’s previous leadership experience has spanned the fields of aging, healthcare and architecture. She served as Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Institute of Architects and previously served as CEO of the American Collegeof Cardiology and its Foundation. McEntee began her career as a legislative representative for AARP and moved on to the American Hospital Association in 1986, where she rose to the position of Executive Vice President.

McEntee graduated from Georgetown University and holds a Masters in Health Administration-Health Policy from George Washington University. She serves on the board of numerous groups, including the MedStar Health Research Institute, where she serves as Chair, the American Board of Ophthalmology and the American Board of Medical Specialists Health Policy Committee, and she has served as a member of the ASAE Awards Committee and Innovation Task Force.

McEntee is a Fellow of ASAE, and her honors include CEO Update's CEO of the Year (2016), ASAE Women Who Advance Excellence, GWSAE’s Visionary and Executive Update “Smart CEO” Award, the Annual Achievement in Health Care Management Award from Women Health Executives Network, and Crain’s Chicago Business Under 40 Movers and Shakers. In 2011 she was chosen for America’s Top Women Mentoring Leaders and in 2012 she was featured in the “100 Women Leaders in STEM.” In 2013 she was invited to author a chapter on the role scientific societies can play in informing public opinion on climate change for a publication titled, “Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research: New Trends in Earth Science Outreach and Engagement: The Nature of Communication.”

Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Chief Science Advisor, Emmy-winning TV series, "Years of Living Dangerously"
Author, "Climate Change: What Everyone Needs To Know

Dr. Joseph Romm is a Senior Fellow at American Progress. He oversees the blog ClimateProgress.org, which was named one of Time Magazine’s Fifteen Favorite Websites for the Environment in 2007. In December 2008, Romm was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “distinguished service toward a sustainable energy future and for persuasive discourse on why citizens, corporations, and governments should adopt sustainable technologies.” In a March 2009 column in the New York Times, Tom Friedman noted that Dr. Romm is “a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org.” In March 2009, Rolling Stone also named him one of of “The 100 People Who Are Changing America” calling him “America’s fiercest climate-change blogger.” And in April, U.S. News & World Report named him “one of the most influential energy and environmental policymakers in the Obama era.”

Dr. Romm served as acting assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during 1997 and principal deputy assistant secretary from 1995 though 1998. In that capacity, he helped manage the largest program in the world for working with businesses to develop and use advanced transportation and clean energy technologies—$1 billion aimed at energy efficiency, hybrid vehicles, electric batteries, hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, renewable energy, distributed generation, and biofuels. Dr. Romm helped lead the administration’s climate technology policy formulation, and initiated, supervised, and publicized a comprehensive technical analysis by five national laboratories of how energy technologies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions at low-cost: Scenarios of U.S. Carbon Reductions.

He is author of Hell and High Water: Global Warming—The Solution and The Politics (William Morrow, January 2007). He is coauthor of the Scientific American article, “Hybrid Vehicles Gain Traction” (April 2006) and author of The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate, named one of the best science and technology books of 2004 by Library Journal. Romm holds a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T. and researched his thesis on physical oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Jalonne L. White-Newsome is senior program officer at The Kresge Foundation, responsible for the Environment Program’s grant portfolio on Climate Resilient & Equitable Water Systems (CREWS). Jalonne also leads the foundation’s work addressing the intersection of climate change and public health.

Before joining Kresge in early 2016, Jalonne served as director of federal policy at West Harlem Environmental Action Inc. (WE ACT), where she was involved with leading national campaigns and a 42-member national coalition of environmental justice organizations. Her work helped ensure that the concerns of low-income communities of color were integrated into federal policy, particularly on clean air, climate change and health issues. She is an adjunct professor at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and continues to engage in research on climate, health and equity. She was recently appointed to be a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Environmental Change and Society, and is serving as a lead author for the human health chapter for the 4th National Climate Assessment.

A native of Detroit, Jalonne earned a Ph.D. in environmental health sciences from the University of Michigan School of Public Health; a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Southern Methodist University; and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University. She serves on the board of US Climate Action Network, and is a steering committee member of the Health Environmental Funder’s Network. Jalonne is a 2017 PLACES Fellow with The Funders Network.

Rhode Islanders know they can count on Sheldon Whitehouse to fight for the middle-class values that matter most to us. Sheldon believes that every child deserves the opportunities provided by a good education, and that anyone willing to work hard should be able to find a good job. He believes in the promise of Social Security and Medicare to provide a basic measure of dignity for seniors when they retire.

Sheldon has hosted more than 100 community dinners in every corner of the state to hear the concerns of Rhode Islanders. He is dedicated to helping small businesses grow, making health care affordable for every family, and fighting to break through the barricade of special interests in Washington that are blocking action on climate change. The Providence Journal described Sheldon as “a strong-willed and articulate member of the Senate on national issues and an energetic champion of Rhode Island economic and other interests.”

The examples set by people like his father, a World War II veteran and diplomat, and by great figures in Rhode Island public life, like U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell and Governor Bruce Sundlun, taught Sheldon the good that public service can do for our country and our state. Throughout his more than thirty years in public service, Sheldon has focused on the basic issues that make a real difference in people’s lives.

A graduate of Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Sheldon served as Rhode Island’s Director of Business Regulation under Governor Sundlun before being recommended by Senator Pell and nominated by President Bill Clinton to be Rhode Island’s United States Attorney in 1994. He was elected Attorney General of Rhode Island in 1998, a position in which he served until 2003. On November 7, 2006, Rhode Islanders elected Sheldon to the United States Senate, where he is a member of the Budget Committee; the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW); the Judiciary Committee; and the Finance Committee.

He and his wife Sandra, a marine biologist and environmental advocate, live in Newport. They have two children.

Whether at one of his community dinners throughout the state, meetings with small business owners, or discussions at senior centers, Sheldon is listening to Rhode Islanders—and putting their ideas to work in Washington.

For the latest updates on Sheldon’s work, be sure to follow him on Twitter and “like” him on Facebook.