Bill Hohenstein

Bill Hohenstein serves as the Director of the Climate Change Program Office (CCPO), and is responsible for coordinating climate change research and program activities for the Department. The Climate Change Program Office provides coordination and policy development support for the Department’s climate change program. It serves as a focal point for support to the Secretary of Agriculture on the causes and consequences of climate change, as well as strategies for addressing climate change.

Jenny Frankel-Reed
At USAID’s Global Climate Change Office, Jenny coordinates the USAID and NASA SERVIR program focused on building capacity of governments and other key stakeholders to utilize remote sensing data and geospatial information for development decision making. She provides technical assistance to USAID’s regional and country missions to develop strategic climate change adaptation programs under the US Government’s Climate Change Initiative in Bangladesh, Central America, Ethiopia, East Africa, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Pacific Islands, Peru, the Philippines, Senegal, Tanzania, Timor Leste, Vietnam, and West Africa.

Dawnita Altieri
Dawnita Altieri is the founding co-chair of GW’s Urban Food Task Force. The task force supports research, scholarship, and instruction on food, nutrition, and health issues including sustainable food practices and other food-related outreach activities on campus and in Washington, DC.

M.J. Altman
MJ Altman is the Senior Content Manager at World Food Program USA, where she oversees editorial content about communities across the globe fighting chronic hunger. Prior to joining WFP USA, Altman worked at TIME magazine in New York, where she wrote about social justice, politics and culture. She also served as public affairs producer at the Smithsonian, where she researched, wrote and pitched stories about Native American history, culture and contemporary issues. Next month, she is traveling to Tanzania for a film project on WFP’s programs.

Lydia Botham
Lydia Botham is Executive Director of the Land O’Lakes Foundation and Director of Public Relations for Land O’Lakes, Inc. Botham has more than 30 years of experience in food and agriculture. Under her direction since 2007, the Land O’Lakes Foundation has helped rural communities prepare for the future by providing resources to develop and strengthen organizations dedicated to human services, education and youth, civic and art endeavors. As Land O’Lakes Public Relations Director, Botham helps Land O’Lakes contribute to the vibrancy of the many communities it calls home.

Haley Burns
Haley is a senior in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at the George Washington University. The intersectionality of food sustainability and urban farming with environmental and personal health has become her main interest. Haley interned at the National Parks Conservation Association, managed the GroW Garden on campus this summer, serves on the eboard of the Food Justice Alliance and the GW Urban Food Task Force, and is a staff member of the GlobeMed GW chapter.

David Courard-Houri
David Courard-Hauri currently serves as Director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Drake University. He has co-authored a series of three environmental science textbooks, and has published modeling work in fields as diverse as carbon sequestration, butterfly movement, cell-signaling, and the psychological drivers of overconsumption. His current research focus is in the field of ecological economics, where he has challenged conventional metrics in benefit-cost analysis. David Courard-Hauri studied chemistry and government at Georgetown University, received a Masters of Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Stanford.

Vance Crowe, Director of Millennial Engagement, Monsanto

Dennis Dimick
Dennis Dimick serves as an Executive Editor of Environment – National Geographic Magazine of National Geographic Society. Mr. Dimick leads National Geographic’s coverage of environment, energy, and climate issues and been key to shaping the magazine’s award-winning environmental reporting since 2003. Mr. Dimick regularly presents slide-show lectures on the collision between energy and climate. Mr. Dimick holds degrees in Agriculture and Journalism from Oregon State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Francesco Fiondella
Francesco Fiondella heads IRI’s communications, which includes developing web stories, videos and overseeing IRI’s presence on social media. Through his writing and photography, he shares how some of the world’s most vulnerable people struggle with the realities of droughts, extreme weather, epidemics and other climate-related risks, and what IRI scientists are doing about it. Francesco is the co-creator of the 2014 Climate Models, and before joining Columbia, worked as an information graphics editor and staff writer at The Wall Street Journal. He holds Masters Degrees from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, as well as a Bachelor of Science from Brown University, where he studied environmental science.

Angela Fritz
Angela Fritz is an atmospheric scientist who hails from the city of rock and roll and burning rivers – Cleveland, Ohio. She knew from a young age that weather was her true calling. She received her B.S. in meteorology from Valparaiso University, and then attended the Georgia Institute of Technology for her M.S. in earth and atmospheric science. While at Georgia Tech, she focused on hurricanes and climate change, and the intersection of the two. Angela has previously worked as a meteorologist at CNN and Weather Underground. She joined the Washington Post in 2014 as the Deputy Weather Editor. When she’s not forecasting hurricanes or reading the latest climate science papers, Angela enjoys outdoor adventures, public transportation, and Oxford commas

Tony Fratto
Tony Fratto has two decades of experience in Washington, making him an expert on economic, legal, political, and public policy issues. After serving as Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Treasury Department, Fratto moved to the White House in September 2006 as Deputy Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Press Secretary. He worked directly with the President and senior Administration officials, the national press corps, opinion leaders, foreign news media, regularly briefed reporters from the White House podium, and participated in on-camera cable and network interviews. Today, he is an on-air contributor with the CNBC Business News Network, in which his columns can be found on CNBC.com.

Sarah Gonzalez
Gonzalez is a journalism graduate from Iowa State University, where she wrote extensively for the Iowa State Daily, putting her minor in biology to work covering the university’s science departments and developments in the plant sciences, meteorology, chemistry and physics fields. Gonzalez interned for the Iowa State University Extension, served as the Public Relations Director for the Iowa State chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America, and spent one year working in the Public Relations/Marketing Department of the Iowa State Daily. From her office inside USDA she has established trusting relationships with many of the key influencers impacting Ag and rural policy.

Marcus King
Marcus D. King is John O. Rankin Associate Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Elliott School’s Master of Arts in International Affairs Program. As Director of Research, he supported the Elliott School’s research enterprise, including eight research institutes, through building contacts with external partners, and developing multi-investigator projects. Dr. King joined the Elliott School from the CNA Corporation (Center for Naval Analyses), where he led research projects on topics including global climate change and national security, state stability, adaptation to climate change, and Defense Department energy policy.

Diane Knapp
Diane Robinson Knapp received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in human nutrition and education from Cornell University.  She worked for 25 years as a Registered Dietitian in clinical dietetics and food services at several hospitals in New York and California, including Children’s Hospital, Oakland, where she served as director of clinical nutrition. In 2007, she moved to Washington, D.C. with her husband Steven Knapp when he became president of the George Washington University.  Her many activities at GW have included serving on the university’s Sustainability Task Force and chairing its Urban Food Task Force.

Rick Leach
Rick Leach serves as president and CEO of World Food Program USA (WFP USA). From 2008-2010, Rick served as a senior advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) where he developed an initiative to halt the production and trade in counterfeit drugs. As part of this effort, he helped establish an international task force comprised of national drug regulatory agencies, the pharmaceutical industry, law enforcement authorities and other key stakeholders. Rick also established a program for WHO to ensure that essential health technologies are incorporated into the health systems of developing countries.

Tom Linthicum, Seneca Ayr Farms

Robin Reed
Robin has been chief meteorologist at WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia for over thirty years. He is also Director of Weather Operations, leading the market’s only team of four full-time meteorologists. Reed also serves as an adjunct instructor at Virginia Tech teaching broadcast meteorology in the College of Natural Resources and Environment. He’s an active member of the American Meteorological Society, most recently helping develop the continuing education requirements for AMS broadcasters.  He holds the Certified Broadcast Meteorologist designation, and was the sixth meteorologist in the country to complete this certification.

Charles Richardson
Charles W. Richardson, Jr. is currently an Assistant Professor in the Marketing Department, where he teaches Marketing Principles, Marketing Management, Consumer Behavior and Project Management. He earned an M.B.A. in Marketing, an M.S. in Operations Research & Statistics and a B. S. in Mathematics and Data Systems Management. In addition, he has earned Masters Certificates in Finance and Project Management. In October 2008, he successfully defended his dissertation, entitled “Ethnicity or Nationality? An Extension of the Animosity Model of Foreign Product Purchase” at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business.

Brad Rippey
Brad Rippey is an agricultural meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Chief Economist, and the managing editor of the Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin.  He is one of eleven rotating authors of the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor and a contributor to the monthly North American Drought Monitor. Prior to joining USDA in 1998, Rippey worked at various positions as a meteorologist for the U.S. Department of Commerce for more than 10 years.  Since 1994, he has been a columnist and contributing editor for Weatherwise magazine.

Mayumi Sakoh
Originally from Washington, D.C., Mayumi holds a J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree from McGill University in Montreal. While at the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) lobby efforts to successfully integrate language on sustainable livestock production into the UN Conference of Sustainable Development/Rio+20 debate and outcome document, making this the first time the link between farm animals, sustainable agriculture, and sustainable development has been recognized on a global level.

Gwyn Schramm, US Agronomy Lead, Monsanto

Jagadish Shukla
Jagadish Shukla was born in 1944 in a small village (Mirdha) in the Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh, India. This village had no electricity, no roads or transportation, and no primary school building. Most of his primary school education was received under a large banyan tree. Because none of the schools near his village included science education, his father had him read all the science books for grades 6 through 10 during the summer before he was admitted to the S.C. College, Ballia, to study science. After passing the twelfth grade from S.C. College, he went to Banaras Hindu University (B.H.U.) where, at the age of 18, he passed BS (honors) with Physics, Mathematics, and Geology and then earned the MS in Geophysics  in 1964. He received a PhD in Geophysics from BHU in 1971 and ScD in Meteorology from MIT in 1976.

Jeff Troike
Jeff Troike is the president and CEO of Ceres Solutions, a diverse agriculture, grain and supply partnership. Jeff is chairman of both Cooperative Pension and Savings Plan and the Cooperative Health Benefits Plan. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Agriculture from Purdue University, where he also completed the Advanced Executive Development Program. He is a board member for the Food Finders Food Bank, Inc. in Lafayette, Ind. Jeff is a deacon of Williamsport Christian Church and also chairman of its Finance Committee. Jeff and his wife Lisa have three children.

Del Unger, Unger Farms 
Del Unger of Carlisle, Indiana and his wife, Tammi are owners of Del Unger Farms, consisting of 5,000 acres in southwestern Indiana. Unger has organized it into functional units that involve various combinations of owners, equipment, and land to manage risk and pave the way for the farm’s passage to the next generation. He has hosted international visitors and state officials, and his operation has been featured in several agricultural publications. Unger Farms also hosted the Indiana Farm Management Tour in 1996 and again in 2011.