Ruth Greenspan Bell joined ELI as a Visiting Scholar in June 2013.  Bell is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and the co-leader (with Elke Weber of Columbia University) of a program to harvest insights from behavioral social science research to motivate a variety of behavior changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and impact climate challenge. Her previous positions include Senior Fellow and Director of the US Climate Policy Objective at World Resources Institute (WRI); directing International Institutional Development and Environmental Assistance (IIDEA) at Resources for the Future (a program to build more effective systems of environmental protection globally, producing, for example, a highly acclaimed study of the policy process and changes –including the switch of all commercial vehicles from petrol and diesel to CNG -- that led to improvements in air quality in Delhi); Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs; and before that, various domestic management positions in U.S. EPA's Office of General Counsel. Bell publishes extensively about climate change and other environmental issues, addressing a wide range of policy and environmental audiences (Foreign Affairs, Issues in Science and Technology, Environmental Forum, Environmental Law Reporter, Environment, and Harvard International Review among them).  Bell is a graduate of UCLA and the School of Law of the University of California at Berkeley; serves on several boards (currently the International Senior Lawyers Project and The Mountain Institute) and is a long-standing member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Former ELI President (2003-2011) Leslie Carothers was appointed a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute in September 2014. Carothers has held legal and executive posts in government, business, and non-profit organizations over a long career in environmental protection and management. Her research and policy interests are informed by her experience in practice and include: 1) integration of environmental and sustainability objectives in business strategy and operations; 2) governance options for new materials and technologies; 3) the use of market-based tools and disclosure requirements to motivate organizational performance; and 4) methods to improve communication about environmental science issues and risks with non-expert audiences including the judiciary and the public.

She began her environmental career with the federal EPA in the air pollution program in Washington where she represented the agency in the development and defense of the agency’s first regulations to reduce the use of lead additives in gasoline. She later served as Enforcement Director and Deputy Regional Administrator of EPA’s New England Region and as Connecticut’s Commissioner of Environment from 1987-1991. In the business sector, she was chief environmental counsel for PPG industries in the early eighties and Vice President of Environment, Health, and Safety for United Technologies Corporation from 1991-2002.

She is a graduate of Smith College, summa cum laude, Harvard Law School,  and George Washington University (LLM in environmental law).

Carothers has participated in several committees of the National Academy of Sciences, including the Committee that produced the 2011 report Sustainability and the U.S. EPA. She is a past member and chair of the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Audubon Society and the Environmental Law Institute. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and the Board of Regents of the American College of Environmental Lawyers.

Ann E. Condon is a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute. Before her appointment to that role, Condon led GE’s efficiency, chemical stewardship and internal sustainability programs.  Her team worked closely with GE’s businesses on resource efficiency, chemical stewardship and life cycle management to achieve compliance, find competitive advantage and promote sustainable business growth.  The team supported GE’s Ecomagination initiative with regulatory, technical and life cycle expertise; setting and achieving the Ecomagination operating goals; and coordinating climate and chemical management policy. 

Condon developed and oversaw GE’s ethical supply chain program, was responsible for GE’s Sustainability web-site and was counsel to the GE Foundation. She worked with GE’s subject matter experts on environmental, social and governance reporting and stakeholder engagement.  Condon is a graduate of the University of Connecticut and George Washington University’s National Law Center, and over the course of her career she was deeply involved in the strategy and evolution of GE’s environmental and sustainability programs.

Michael Curley joined ELI as a Visiting Scholar in 2013.  He is a lawyer who has spent the majority of his career in project finance and the last 25 years in environmental project finance. He has published over 40 articles, has contributed to the Huffington Post, and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Press Club, where his sits on the Book & Author Committee.

In 1990, Curley was appointed to the Environmental Financial Advisory Board at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he served for 21 years. Over the last 20 years, he has taught environmental finance and law at the Johns Hopkins and George Washington Universities as well as Vermont Law School. He founded the Environmental Finance Centers at the University of Maryland, Syracuse University and Cleveland State University.

In the early 1980’s, he raised the venture capital for, founded, and served as president and CEO of the third financial guaranty insurance company in the world and the first to insure economic development projects.  He was also a partner in the New York City law firm of Shea & Gould.

Curley has also served in several roles in government. First, as Deputy Commissioner & General Counsel of the New York State Department of Economic Development; and then as President and CEO of the New York Job Development Authority (JDA), the State’s bank for economic development. He was also the General Counsel of the JDA and General Counsel of the New York State Science & Technology Foundation, the State’s venture capital agency. Prior to that, Mr. Curley served as Parliamentarian of the New York State Assembly and Associate Counsel to the Speaker and was also an Assistant to Congressman Richard D. McCarthy (D-NY) in Washington, DC. He also served as Adjunct Professor of Banking & Finance at New York University teaching Venture Capital and Capital Markets and was appointed to the Board of Directors of the United Nations Development Corporation by New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

For the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Curley developed national municipal bond banks for water, wastewater, district heating and other municipal infrastructure for both the Russian Federation and Ukraine, designed a revolving fund for safe drinking water for the Ministry of the Environment in the Republic of Georgia and built fifteen rural water systems and developed the national model for rural water finance in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Laleta Davis Mattis is a Visiting Scholar with the Environtmental Law Institute and is currently General Counsel at the University of The West Indies and has been a member of the Executive Management Team since she joined the staff of The UWI in March 2013. As General Counsel, Mrs Davis Mattis oversees the University’s legal engagements and contractual undertakings, and represents the University before key judicial, educational, ethical and governmental bodies. Mrs Davis Mattis is also directly involved with the compliance of The UWI’s subsidiaries and holds the positon of Secretary to these bodies. Mrs. Davis Mattis is a Teacher by profession, having had her beginnings in teacher education at Shortwood Teachers College. From there she branched off into media and communication after having completed a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication at the Caribbean School of Media and Communication, UWI. Later she pursued Law at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, and the Norman Manley Law School. Captivated by the rights of the environment, sustainable use and management of natural resources, she pursued a Master degree at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia Canada where she obtained the Master in Marine Management.

Mrs. Davis Mattis is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the Mona Campus where she lectures in the areas of International Environmental Law, and Caribbean Environmental Law. She is also an Adjunct Lecturer in the Faculty of Science and Technology in the Environmental Management Unit where she lectures in Environmental Law and Policy. 

Since embarking on her legal career, apart from her current position at The UWI, Mrs Davis Mattis has held positions of Chief Legal Counsel to the Natural Resources Conservation Authority; Director: Legal, Enforcement and Regulations Branch of the National Environment and Planning Agency; Company Secretary for the Natural Resources Conservation Authority; the Town and Country Planning Authority and  the Land Development Utilization Commission and Executive Director of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust.

Her current areas of research focus on Rights of Nature, Climate Change and Climate jurisprudence, The Law of the Sea; more specifically Deep Seabed Mining and Biodiversity beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction. Mrs Davis Mattis was instrumental in Jamaica’s application to Sponsoring State status under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea. She is a member of   The Code Project, a cooperative enterprise of scientists and legal scholars from 11 nations. The project’s mission is to provide analyses of the latest drafts of the rules and regulations that will comprise the Mining Code of the International Seabed Authority.

 Her professional focus outside of environmental management and higher education has been in the areas of culture including the preservation of Jamaica’s material and cultural heritage. She currently holds the position of Chair of the National Council on Reparation, and in this capacity sits on the CARICOM Reparations Commission. She is also Chair of the Committee on Culture on the National Commission on UNESCO. Her national contribution to heritage culture and the environment culminated in her being the recipient of a National Award, Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander (CD) for her contribution to The Jamaica National Heritage Trust and the development of environmental law in Jamaica.

Mrs Davis Mattis is a member of the Constitutional Reform Committee recently announced by the Prime Minister of Jamaica, the Most. Hon. Andrew Holness. The primary role of the Committee is to provide expert guidance and oversight to the Government and people of Jamaica during the constitutional reform process and to implement recommendations on the consensuses reached.

Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy and their use to enhance academic research and writing coupled with the protection of the marine environment have been additions to Mrs Davis Mattis’ repertoire of interests. 

From 2015 through 2021, Scott Fulton served as ELI’s fifth President. Thereafter, from 2022-23, he served as ELI’s President Emeritus and International Envoy. Prior to his time with ELI, Mr. Fulton was a Principal at the environmental law firm Beveridge & Diamond, P.C., and served in a number of high ranking positions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in both Republican and Democratic Administrations. These included EPA’s Deputy Administrator (second in command, by Presidential Designation), General Counsel (via Senate Confirmation), head of EPA’s Office of International Affairs, Judge on the Environmental Appeals Board, and head of the Agency’s enforcement program. He also previously served as Assistant Chief of the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Environment and Natural Resources Division. An international expert on environmental governance and rule of law, he has served as a member of the United Nations Advisory Council on Environmental Justice, has taught International Environmental Governance as an adjunct professor at George Washington School of Law, serves on the Steering Committee of Climate Crisis Commission established by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and serves as well on a number of NGO boards. He has played a pivotal role in the development of U.S. environmental law and policy through his various roles; has been a leader in identifying legal tools for enhancing environmental quality in historically underserved communities; and has served as a key contributor to the development and implementation of environmental law internationally, providing critical support to, among other things, the formation of the Global Judicial Institute for the Environment – a collaboration of judges around the world dedicated to building judicial capacity for environmental adjudication. He received the two highest awards given by the U.S. government for outstanding leadership—the Presidential Meritorious Executive Service Award, and the Presidential Distinguished Executive Service Award—and has been inducted into the American College of Environmental Lawyers.

Dr. Paul A. Hanle is a Visiting Scholar and the Founder of the Climate Judiciary Project of the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, DC. He retired in 2018 from his position as President and CEO of Climate Central. Paul has devoted his 50-year career to public understanding of science and environmental conservation. From 1987 until 2011, he served serially as chief executive officer of the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore, president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and first president of the Biotechnology Institute in Washington, DC. His volunteer services have included advising the Obama Administration on the attribution of extreme weather events to climate change, serving on the planning group for its “Educate to Innovate” initiative, and serving on the Steering Committee of the Business and Industry STEM Education Coalition. Hanle earned a Ph.D. in the History of Science and Medicine and an M.S. in Physics from Yale University. He earned his undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University.

Barry Hill joined ELI as a Visiting Scholar in May 2015. Previously, he was the Senior Counsel for Environmental Governance of the Office of International and Tribal Affairs at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He also served as the Director of the Office of Environmental Justice at the EPA; and the Associate Solicitor of the Division of Conservation and Wildlife, and Director of the Office of Hearings and Appeals of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Prior to that, he was Of Counsel at the international law firm of Dickstein Shapiro, LLP where he had an environmental law practice; Project Manager in the Superfund Business Unit of the consulting firm ICF international; Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the District of Columbia; Legal Counsel to the Inspector General of the EPA; Law Secretary to the Deputy Administrative Judge of New York City (Criminal Division); and an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn.

He has lectured in the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America, and the Caribbean islands on a variety of environmental law and policy issues. He has taught at Vermont Law School as an Adjunct Professor of Law for 21 years, and has served on the Environmental Law Center’s Advisory Committee since 1994. He has been the recipient of several distinguished achievement awards in environmental justice, and environmental law and policy. He has been the author of the three editions of Environmental Justice: Legal Theory and Practice (now in its 4th edition). He has authored/co-authored more than 20 articles on environmental law and policy, and environmental justice and sustainable development in scholarly and professional journals.

Hill received a B.A. in Political Science from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York; a M.A. in Political Science from Howard University; a J.D. from the Cornell University of Law; and an honorary doctor of laws degree from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

Carol Adaire Jones joined ELI as Visiting Scholar in September 2014, following a 30-year career as an environmental economist in both government and academia.

She is co-leading ELI’s project on Tropical Environmental Liability – her focus is on the valuation of damage claims. She is also co-leading ELI’s Food Waste Initiative, conducting research to inform the design of public policies and public-private initiatives to promote food waste reduction, edible food donation, and diversion of food waste from landfills and incinerators. To complement this research, ELI is working with public and private sector organizations in local communities that seek support for developing new food waste reduction, recovery and diversion initiatives.

Across her career, two major areas of emphasis have been valuing natural resource damages for federal and state environmental litigation, and conducting research to inform the design of environmental and resource conservation policy.

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from 1990-1997, Jones oversaw valuation of the natural resource damage claims for 36 cases brought by NOAA as a trustee for coastal and marine resources, which recovered over $190 million in addition to the $1 billion Exxon Valdez settlement.  As lead economist on the Oil Pollution Act regulations-writing team, she was an architect of the innovative restoration-based framework to value ecosystem services in natural resource damage claims, widely adopted by federal, state and tribal natural resource trustees and the EU. She also coordinated the "Blue Ribbon Panel on Use of Contingent Valuation in Natural Resource Damages."

Serving in several positions at USDA’s Economic Research Service from 1999-2014, Jones provided leadership for award-winning USDA research that has made timely contributions to policy debates on farm, agri-conservation, climate change, environmental markets, R&D and technology, water quality, and rural health policies. She also served on the faculty of the international business school INCAE in Costa Rica during 1998-1999, and the University of Michigan (Economics Department and the School of Natural Resources) during 1984-1990, and as a Gilbert White Fellow at Resources for the Future (1988-1989).

Jones received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, her M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She has published extensively on various topics, including climate change mitigation in the agriculture/forestry sector, food, resource recovery and the environment; environmental trading, valuation of natural resources and ecosystem services, and design of regulatory policies and enforcement. See her profile on ResearchGate to access her publications.

Linda Malone is a Marshall-Wythe Foundation Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School. She is a member of the American Law Institute and serves on the Board of Directors for the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law. Professor Malone has received a number of grants and awards for her research and work on international issues. She was awarded the 2009-10 Fulbright Chair in International Environmental Law at the University of Turin, Italy. Her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern and European comparative law, comparative and foreign law, environmental law, human rights law, international criminal law, international law, national security jaw, and transitional justice.

Renee Martin-Nagle joined ELI  as a Visiting Scholar in April 2011 after a 25-year career in aviation, which included more than 20 years as chief legal officer for Airbus Americas, from which she retired in January 2011 as Vice President, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, Head of Environmental Affairs, Corporate Secretary and a member of the board of directors. The birth of her first grandson in April 2007 inspired her to dedicate the rest of her life to environmental causes, and that year she enrolled in the LL.M. program at George Washington University Law School, graduating in May 2010 with highest honors. Her LL.M. thesis, which proposes that water in fossil aquifers be viewed as the common heritage of mankind, received the 2011 Jamie Grodsky Prize for Environmental Law Scholarship.

Attracted by Martin-Nagle’s scholarly work with ELI, the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, invited her to pursue a PhD in law through a multidisciplinary program that stressed both international water law and hydrogeology.  She moved to Glasgow in 2015 was awarded a Ph.D. in June 2019.  Her research on governance of offshore freshwater produced both a monograph (Transboundary Offshore Aquifers: A Search for a Governance Regime) and a book (Governance of Offshore Freshwater Resources), as well as a number of other publications.  Renée is currently collaborating on a book addressing unconventional water resources.

During her time with ELI, Martin-Nagle has published numerous articles and spoken frequently on environmental issues in both freshwater and aviation.  In addition, she has taught international environmental law and policy at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, the University of Strathclyde Law School and Saint Francis University.  Currently she serves as President and CEO of A Ripple Effect PLLC, Treasurer of the International Water Resources Association, Vice-Chair of the Mount Aloysius College Board of Trustees, member of the five-person Municipal Authority of Ebensburg PA, Special Counsel at Eckert Seamans, and co-chair of the Sustainability Committee of the ABA Forum on Air & Space Law.

Mikiyasu Nakayama, who has been collaborating with ELI for more than two decades, became an ELI Scholar-in-Residence on April 1, 2020.

He presently works with ELI on migration of people from the Pacific and other areas to the developed world. This research aims at securing findings which should be useful for migrants to re-establishment livelihood painlessly and successfully after their arrival at destinations. Nakayama and researchers at ELI have conducted field research for this research agenda in Majuro (Republic of the Marshall Islands), Pohnpei (Federal States of Micronesia), Springdale (AR), Portland and Salem (OR), and Fukushima (Japan).

Publications in this field include "Migration with Dignity: A Case Study on the Livelihood Transition of Marshallese to Springdale, Arkansas (McClain, Bruch, Nakayama & Laelan, 2019)" and "Addressing the Health Problems After Immigration Faced by the Marshallese in Springdale, Arkansas: Lessons Learned from the City of Vienna (Fujikura, Nakayama, McClain & Drinkall, 2019)".

Previously, Nakayama has also worked with ELI on management of internationally shared water resources and on natural resouces management in post-conflict settings. Academic articles published on these subjects include "Assessing the Assessments: Improving Methodologies for Impact Assessment in Transboundary Watercourses (Bruch, Nakayama, Troell, Goldman & Mrema, 2007)" and "Natural Resources, Infrastructure, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Lessons from the United States and Japan (Bruch, Nakayama, Leonelli & Leitch, 2010)."

Nakayama obtained his doctor degree from the Faculty of Agriculture, the University of Tokyo in 1986. He has worked for the World Bank, United Nations Environment Programme, Utsunomiya University (Japan), Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and the University of Tokyo between 1986 and 2020, focusing on management of natural resources and the environment.

LeRoy C. (Lee) Paddock is in his second stint as a Visiting Scholar for ELI. He was a Visiting Scholar from 1999-2002 working on issues related to the Clean Air Act acid rain program and environmental enforcement issues. He is also co-editor of the ELI book on Next Generation Compliance and Enforcement and co-author of a March 2019 ELR News & Analysis article on citizen science. Lee’s current work at ELI focuses on the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement, serving as Managing Director for the organization for which ELI is the host organization. He is also working with ELI on the ELI/George Washington University Law School “Reimagining Environmental Law” project.

Lee was Associate Dean for Environmental Law Studies at The George Washington University Law School from 2007-2019, Director of Environmental Law Programs at Pace University School of Law from 2002-2007, and an Assistant Attorney General for the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office from 1978-1999 where he was Director of Environmental Policy for several years. Lee continues to teach at GW Law part-time as a Distinguished Professorial Lecturer of Environmental Law. He also is a member of the Academic Advisory Group on Energy for the International Bar Association’s Section on Environment, Energy, Resources, and Infrastructure Law. He is also the Secretary of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Council.

Lee holds a degree in American History from the University of Michigan and his law degree is from the University of Iowa. He served as a law clerk for the Honorable Donald Lay of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Jeffrey Peterson joined ELI as a Visiting Scholar in 2022, after 40 years of experience in environmental policy development and program management, particularly focused on water issues. 

Most recently he was Senior Advisor in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Water responsible for climate change policy. In that capacity he co-chaired the EPA Sea Level Rise Workgroup and was a member of the Federal Interagency Sea Level Rise Workgroup. He also worked for almost four years at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) during the first Obama term. At CEQ, he co-chaired the Interagency Water Resources and Climate Change Workgroup and authored the first national plan addressing water resources management and climate change. Returning to EPA in 2012, he chaired the National Water Program Climate Change Workgroup and served for five years as the Federal co-chair of the Climate Change and Water Workgroup of the Federal Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI). Before joining EPA in 1995, he worked for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. He is also the author of A New Coast; Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas (Island Press, 2019) and a facilitator for the Coastal Flood Resilience Project, a coalition of nonprofits working to strengthen coastal flood resilience. 

Jeff has an undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Washington.

David Rejeski directs the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a non-partisan policy research institute in Washington, DC. The program's mission is to explore the scientific and technological frontier, stimulating discovery and bringing new tools to bear on public policy challenges that emerge as science advances.

He was a Visiting Fellow at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Between 1994 and 2000, he served as an agency representative (from EPA) to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Before moving to CEQ, he worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) on a variety of technology and R&D issues, including the development and implementation of the National Environmental Technology Strategy. Prior to working at OSTP, he was head of the Future Studies Unit at the Environmental Protection Agency.

He is the co-editor of the book: Environmentalism and the Technologies of Tomorrow: Shaping the Next Industrial Revolution, and has authored numerous articles for ELI's Environmental Forum on topics ranging from electronic commerce to nanotechnology.

David sits on the advisory boards of a number of organizations, including the National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee on Environmental Research and Education; the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the National Council of Advisors of the Center for the Study of the Presidency; the Journal of Industrial Ecology; and Games for Change. From 2004 to 2009, he was a member of EPA's Science Advisory Board. He has graduate degrees in public administration and environmental design from Harvard and Yale.

Bruce Rich is an attorney and writer who has published extensively on the environment in developing countries and development in general. He is the author of a major critique and history of the World Bank, Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development  (Beacon Press 1994,1995; Island Press 2013). Mortgaging was widely acclaimed in reviews ranging from the New York Times to Le Monde Diplomatique. More recently, Foreclosing the Future: The World Bank and the Politics of Environmental Destruction  (Island Press 2013) recounts, through the prism of the World Bank, the geopolitics of the global environment and examines the worldwide challenges of governance, climate change, corruption, and the tension between political economy and ecology.

Rich was awarded the United Nations Global 500 Award for environmental achievement for his research and advocacy concerning international financial institutions. He worked for three decades as an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, and has testified in numerous congressional hearings on U.S. participation in international financial institution and international organizations. He has written articles and opeds for a number of publications, including The Financial Times, Open Democracy, The Nation, The Ecologist, and he is a regular columnist to The Environmental Forum, the policy journal of the Environmental Law Institute, for which he has also contributed feature cover stories. He has written an historical and philosophical work on the need for a shared environmental and social ethic for our economically globalized era, To Uphold the World: A Call for a New Global Ethic from Ancient India (Beacon Press 2010). To Uphold the World garnered high praise from the Dalai Lama and Nobel Economics Laureate Amartya Sen, who contributed an afterword and a foreword. An expanded paperback version was recently published by Penguin South Asia as Ashoka in Our Time: The Question of  Dharma for a Globalized World (Penguin/Random House/Viking 2017), also available in the United States.  His analysis of Ashoka also appeared in a collection of the Best Buddhist writing in America 2012. 

Rich is an honors graduate of Yale College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. 

Kirk Talbott provides senior advisory services in governance to a range of organizations; including, recently, the World Bank, the Tenure Facility and Omidyar Network.  His career spans over 30 years in a diverse range of settings from a law firm to multi-donor regional environmental initiatives, policy think tanks, host government ministries and corporations.  

After earning a JD and MSFS from Georgetown University and joining the DC Bar, Kirk spent a decade at the World Resources Institute, concentrating on Africa and Asia. This led to senior positions at The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and a satellite radio non-profit enterprise, First Voice International (FVI). Kirk recently served as Senior Advisor for the World Bank and African government’s Partnership for Skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (PASET) and provided executive coaching for the Tenure Facility.

As Scholar-in-Residence and Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) since 2010, Talbott has concentrated on natural resource management and environmental security in Burm.a /Myanmar and Southeast Asia.  He has published several articles and conducted research and training in land tenure and natural resource governance; for example with Parliamentarians from Myanmar funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and International Republican Institute.

Juha I. Uitto has worked in the nexus of international development and environment for more than three decades. Prior to joining ELI as Visiting Scholar in April 2024, he served for a decade a Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the premier financial mechanism for several multilateral environmental agreements, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biodiversity, the UN Convention on Desertification, and two MEAs on harmful chemicals. He is considered a thought and practice leader in evaluating environment in international development. Since 1999, he has worked in senior positions with the GEF and UNDP, including as Evaluation Advisor and Deputy Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the latter. In these capacities he has managed and conducted numerous evaluations focusing on environmental management, poverty reduction and development. Throughout the 1990s, Juha was environment and sustainable development research and training program manager at the United Nations University based in Tokyo. He has held short-term visiting positions at Rutgers University and Kyoto University. He has published widely on topics related to sustainable development, environmental hazards, and evaluation. His latest books include Migrant Health and Resilience: Transnational Competence in Conflict and Climate Displacement Situations (co-authored with Peter Koehn, Phyllis Ngai and Diana Diaków; 2024) Transformational Change for People and the Planet: Evaluating Environment and Development (co-edited with Geeta Batra; 2022); and Environmental Evaluation and Global Development Institutions (co-authored with Geeta Batra and Osvaldo Feinstein; 2022). A native of Finland, Juha was educated at the universities of Helsinki and Lund. He holds a PhD in Social and Economic Geography.

Bud Ward founded ELI’s policy magazine, the Environmental Forum, in 1982 and was Editor-in-Chief during its first four years.

Ward spent nearly five decades in Virginia and Washington, D.C., as an environmental journalist and educator, the past two decades focusing exclusively on climate change. He retired in January 2023 after more than 15 years as Founding Editor of Yale Climate Connections. He also had worked as Assistant Director of the U.S. Congress’s National Commission on Air Quality, under the Clean Air Act.

The author of hundreds of bylined articles on journalism and environmental regulatory matters, Ward authored and coauthored numerous books and reports aimed at improving media coverage of climate change issues. In the mid 70s and early 80s, he worked as a regular analyst and commentator on environmental issues for NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” And in 2009, George Mason University named him its first “Climate Change Communicator of the Year.” In 2024 he authored the Foreign Policy Association’s “Global Trade and Green Energy” white paper as part of FPA’s Great Decisions briefing series.

An Advisory Editor for Oxford University’s encyclopedia of climate and weather and for seven years the manager of the $75,000 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment, he is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and communications from Penn State University.

George Wyeth became a Visiting Scholar at ELI in October 2018.  Before joining ELI, he was with the U.S. EPA for 27 years, in a variety of roles as an attorney and as an internal advocate for innovative approaches to environmental protection.  His work at ELI continues to focus on innovative strategies, particularly the potential for citizen science to impact policy and support agency programs.  

At EPA, George spent much of his career leading efforts to study, evaluate and adopt innovative strategies.  These included regulatory models such as performance-based approaches to air permitting that allowed greater flexibility for businesses to modernize production processes without sacrificing environmental protection, and a cost-effective strategy for regulation of small businesses.  Other initiatives were voluntary in nature, such as finding the environmental gains inherent in “lean” manufacturing strategies and assessing the relative roles of government and business in sustainability initiatives.  He also supported work to use new tools to promote compliance with environmental regulations and encourage planning for compliance throughout the regulatory design process.

Earlier in his career at EPA, George was an attorney in the Office of General Counsel where he was an expert on CERCLA, RCRA and other environmental statutes.  

In 2013, George was a Fulbright Scholar based in Pune, India, where he conducted research on the role of sustainability in Indian manufacturing firms. In 2010 he was Scarff Visiting Professor of Government at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. 

He has published on a variety of legal and policy topics, including the impact of citizen science on policy in the U.S., the relationship of sustainability to environmental regulation, the contrast between traditional and innovative models of environmental protection, and the economic theory of the takings clause.  His publications include:

• “A Framework for Community-Based Action on Air Quality,” 50 Env. Law Reporter 10808 (Oct. 2020).
• “The Impact of Citizen Environmental Science in the United States”, 49 Env. Law Reporter 10237 (March 2019) (with Leroy Paddock, Alison Parker, Robert Glicksman and Jecoliah Williams).
• "Regulating for Sustainability," 45 Environmental Law 663 (2015) (with Beth Termini).
• “’Standard’ and ‘Alternative’ Environmental Protection: the Changing Role of Environmental Agencies,” 31 William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review 5 (2006)
• "Regulatory Competition and the Takings Clause", 91 Northwestern Law Review 87 (1996)

Prior to joining EPA in 1989, George was a partner with the Minneapolis law firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard (now Stinson Leonard Street).  He holds a B.A. from Lawrence University (1973), M.P.P. from the University of California, Berkeley (1975) and J.D. from Yale Law School (1982).  He was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois and remains a midwesterner at heart.

Tatiana R. Zaharchenko was a Senior Staff Attorney and Advisor on the Eastern European Program at ELI in 1994-1995 and now splits her time between the US, Europe and Ukraine. Zaharchenko received her Ph.D. from the All-Union Research Institute of Comparative Law in Moscow (1988) and holds two other law degrees from Ukraine and the US. For twelve years, she was a tenured law professor at the Ukrainian Law Academy in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Concurrently, she served as Legal Counsel for the Ecological Commission of the Kharkiv Municipality. During perestroika, Zaharchenko became an outspoken academic introducing right to know, access to information and public participation into policy debate, legal writing and law drafting. In 1989, she was in the first group of 17 Soviet lawyers invited by the Soros Foundation and the American Bar Association for professional internships in the US. Upon her return to Ukraine, she published law reviews and newspaper articles and prepared course materials on US, comparative and international environmental law.

Since 1992, Zaharchenko has worked on the reform of legal systems, laws and polices in the post-socialist world. Transparency and accountability in environmental governance remain her primarily focus both as a scholar and a practitioner. Her areas of expertise also include regional seas, particularly the Caspian and the Black Sea, implementation of multilateral agreements, and approximation with EU environmental legislation.

In 1994, while with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Zaharchenko wrote the Russian-language Citizen Guide for Environmental Democracy in Russia, the first such publication in the post-Soviet region. In 1996-1999, as a senior program officer for the World Wildlife Fund (US), she was in charge of a USAID-financed project to promote biodiversity conservation in Ukraine. The resulting dual language book, Priority-Setting in Conservation: A New Approach for Crimea, documented a broad participatory policy shaping exercise and years later it continues to guide conservation efforts for this region. In 2009, her paper, On the Way to Transparency: a Comparative Study on Post-Soviet States and the Aarhus Convention, was published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where she was a Fellow.

Zaharchenko has assisted national governments, the European Commission, other multilateral and bilateral agencies such as UNECE, UNEP, the World Bank and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency on environmental projects and multilateral agreements. In 2007-2009, she was team leader for the EU-funded project "Environmental Collaboration for the Black Sea: Georgia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine," helping to bring environmental laws and policies of participating countries closer to EU standards, improving regional cooperation and amending the Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution (the Bucharest Convention). Besides delivering 21 major regional and national policy documents developed through participatory processes, it brought the voices of the Black Sea region’s civil society to the attention of an international audience and national governments.  In 2011-2012, Zaharchenko was key legal expert for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency on convergence of Ukrainian legislation with EU environmental laws in preparation for the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

Zaharchenko is the author of and/or contributor to over 60 publications and reports, and is a frequent public speaker and invited guest lecturer internationally. She volunteers on boards of international environmental organizations and national NGOs in Europe and currently is a trustee for the Center of International Environmental Law (CIEL).