Upcoming Guests

Aneri Patel

Senior Associate, Energy Access
United Nations Foundation

Aneri Patel is a Senior Associate, Energy Access at the United Nations Foundation. Her experience includes spending two years on the ground in Bangladesh, India, and Uganda providing clean energy solutions for the low-income market. In South India, she started a social enterprise that created the first supply chain for solar lanterns, water filters, and improved cookstoves to a market of 90,000 rural households. She is currently working on setting up a non-profit to replicate this business model through an international fellowship program for young social entrepreneurs. She also has experience working with carbon finance. She has a Masters in Environment and Development from the London School of Economics and a BA in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kate Gordon

Director of Advanced Energy and Sustainability Program

Kate Gordon is a nationally recognized expert on the intersection of clean energy and economic development, most recently as Vice President for Energy and Environment at the Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington D.C.

She has worked on a variety of economic development and social justice issues for more than 15 years and is regarded as a leader in the national “green jobs” movement. At CAP, Kate led an energy team focused on developing policies and communications strategies to move the U.S. to a clean energy economy.  She has focused on issues related to clean energy manufacturing, regional economic development in clean energy sectors, and American competitiveness.

Kathleen Rogers

President
Earth Day Network

Kathleen Rogers, President of Earth Day Network, has worked for more than 20 years as an environmental attorney and advocate, focusing on international and domestic environmental public policy and law.

Kathleen has held senior positions with the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Law Institute, and two U.S. Olympic Organizing Committees. She has also worked for Garth Associates in New York City and the Beveridge & Diamond law firm, where she developed a white collar environmental crime defense practice. Kathleen was editor-in-chief of the University of California at Davis Law Review, and clerked for the Honorable John Pratt at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She also worked with the U.S. Delegation at the United Nations Conference on Women.

Under Kathleen’s leadership, Earth Day Network has developed a significant role in advancing the new green economy and has emerged as a dynamic year-round policy and activist organization. Earth Day Network now reaches into 192 countries, embraces new constituencies – including youth and people of color – and integrates civic participation into each of Earth Day Network’s programs and activities.

Darlene Pope

President/CEO
CoR Advisors®

Darlene Pope is Founder and Principal of CoR Advisors®. Ms. Pope has more than 20 years experience in commercial real estate and technology, including intelligent building solutions, energy management, sustainable building operations, automated business solutions, and advanced telecommunications services. Ms. Pope founded CoR Advisors® in 2009 to serve as a leading educator and trusted advisor to the real estate industry for the integration of technology into real estate management and operations. Under Ms. Pope’s leadership, CoR Advisors® has developed a market reach of over 30,000 real estate professionals.

Amy Fraenkel

Regional Director for North America
United Nations Environment Programme

Amy Fraenkel has more than 20 years of experience in environmental law and policy. She has worked in both the executive and legislative branches of the United States government, inter-governmental organizations, and the private sector. Her areas of expertise include climate change, ocean and coastal issues, hazardous substances, trade and environment, and international law.

Amy joined the United Nations Environment Programme as Regional Director for North America in January, 2008. Prior to joining UNEP, Amy worked for six years with the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation where she served as Senior Counsel of the Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard Subcommittee. There she worked on legislation related to a wide range of issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, ship and land-based sources of pollution, marine mammals and sea turtles, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Ana Goodman

Co-Founder/Strategic Director
Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future

Ann Goodman, Ph.D., an expert on business and sustainability, as an executive, social entrepreneur, communicator, commentator and educator, is co-founder and strategic director of the Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future (WNSF), which she launched and led for almost nine years as executive director.

Dr. Goodman is also president of Telesys, a strategic sustainability consulting firm more than a dozen years old advising for-profit, nonprofit and government clients.

WNSF, founded in 2002, is an international nonprofit organization that advances sustainability through the commitment, talent and leadership of businesswomen.  Under Dr. Goodman’s leadership, WNSF distinguished itself as the premier sustainability organization for women in business, growing from a handful of women executives at its base in NYC to Atlanta, Washington, D.C., California and the Pacific Northwest.  Notably, she forged an ongoing sustainability alliance and exchange with businesswomen in China.  She also created the annual Businesswomen’s Sustainability Leadership Summit, now going into its ninth year, along with a West Coast counterpart focusing on clean technologies, which attract the most senior women executives from corporations and government, including the White House.

Majora Carter

Principal, Majora Carter Group

Majora Carter hosts the Peabody Award winning public-radio series: The Promised Land. She has a long list of awards and honorary degrees, including a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship.

She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 when few were talking about “sustainability”; and even fewer, in places like The South Bronx.

Since 2008, her consulting company, MCG has exported Climate Adaptation, Urban Micro-AgriBusiness, and Leadership Development strategies for Business, Government, Foundations, Universities, and economically under-performing Communities.

Helga Flores Trejo

Principal External Relations Advisor for Brazil
Inter-American Development Bank

Helga Flores Trejo is the Principal External Relations Advisor for Brazil at the Inter-American Development Bank. She is an expert on foreign policy and climate and energy issues who has lived and worked in Bonn, Berlin, Belgrade, Washington and Brasilia. She currently works on Latin America, especially Brazil.

Ms. Flores Trejo also has been awarded fellowships by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Prince of Wales’ Business and Environment Program and the BMW Herbert Quandt Foundation. She holds a Master’s degree in Political Science and International Law from the Johann Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Juliet Eilperin

The Washington Post

A born-and-bred Washington, Juliet Eilperin graduated in 1992 magna cum laude from Princeton University, where she received a bachelor’s in Politics with a certificate in Latin American Studies. In the fall of 1992 she went to Seoul, South Korea on a Luce Scholarship, which allowed her to cover politics and economics for an English-language magazine. Returning to Washington, Ms. Eilperin wrote for Louisiana and Florida papers at States News Service and then joined Roll Call newspaper after the Republicans seized Congress in 1994.

Since April of 2004 she has covered the environment for the national desk, reporting on science, policy and politics in areas including climate change, oceans, and air quality. In pursuit of these stories she has gone scuba diving with sharks in the Bahamas, trekking on the Arctic tundra, and searching on her hands and knees for rare insects in the caves of Tennessee.

During her first year at the Post Ms. Eilperin was the most prolific writer on the news staff, writing more than 200 stories. In the spring of 2005 she served as the McGraw Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, teaching political reporting to a group of undergraduate and graduate students.

Rona Fried

Founder and CEO
SustainableBusiness.com

Rona Fried, Ph.D. is founder and CEO of SustainableBusiness.com, a global news and networking website dedicated to green business. Online since 1996, the website was one of the first in the world to focus on green business, green jobs and green investing.

Rona is known for her wide-ranging, deep knowledge of sustainable business and environmental issues in general. She is widely quoted as an expert in green business and green investing, and speaks and writes on those topics.

Known as a thought leader in the field, SustainableBusiness.com provides daily green business and daily green investor news that cuts across all relevant sectors including climate change, renewable energy, energy efficiency, green building, smart grid, water, the organic industry, and all subjects that impact sustainability and green economy.