Sustainability 101 for Government Speakers

Winter Session Speakers

Eric Friedman, Director, MA Office of State Sustainability:Greening an entire state government

The MA Office of State Sustainability didn’t even exist a few years ago; Eric was a key player in its creation, and has gone on to have a hand in creating it’s Planning and Implementation Guide, many other useful tools, and helping agencies understand the environmental and public health impacts of their day-to-day decisions and actions. The Office provides agencies with broad-based goals and specific actions that they can take to initiate sustainability efforts and assist agencies in writing their Agency Sustainability Plans.

Betsy Rosenbluth, Director, Burlington Legacy Project, Burlington, VT: Tapping citizens and youth to create & adopt a city sustainability strategy: surprises and lessons learned shaping a city’s future

Sustainability in Action - Burlington's strategy of fostering a culture of sustainability has demonstrated the importance of adopting a long-term, integrated approach to sustainable development and grounding a city's sustainability framework in a set of principles which are defined by the community. Nurturing broad citizen participation, including youth, and collaboration with community organizations in the visioning and implementation processes are key factors of success, as well as adopting a system of accountability.

Ira Leighton, Deputy Regional Administrator, U.S. EPA: Partnering with progressive business

Ira W. Leighton is the Deputy Regional Administrator for EPA Region 1 in Boston, MA. Before this he was Director of the Office of Environmental Stewardship, responsible for enforcement of all environmental laws and regulations, and for providing compliance and pollution prevention assistance to the regulated community. In his 30 year career, he has held technical and management positions with the EPA and Commonwealth of MA. Most recently, he played a key role in SSNE’s Business-Government Roundtable Project, during which state government leaders listened and asked questions as some of Massachusetts’ most forward-thinking business leaders discussed practical, near-term changes that government can make to help all businesses in the region do more public good, including:

• Sustainable business branding
• Using “CEO Ambassadors” to spread knowledge of the business value and jobs created by renewable energy and co-generation to policy makers
• Increasing government green purchasing.

Spring Session Speakers

Lynn Stoddard, Environmental Analyst, CT Dept. of Environmental Protection and 2004 Sustainability Institute Donella Meadows Fellow, State Action on Climate Change: Leadership Through Collaboration

Katie Stebbins, Deputy Director, Economic Development, Springfield, MA, Raising $2 million in new money to create integrated eco-industrial development, housing and community in MA's third largest city

Marcia Deegler, Manager, MA Environmentally Preferred Purchasing Program Operational Services Division, How we grew MA Environmentally Preferred Purchasing Program from $8 to 140 million