Natural Resources Symposium

SCOTTIE APLIN, Staff Attorney, Office of General Counsel, Texas General Land Office

Scottie Aplin is a staff attorney for the GLO, the oldest agency in the state of Texas (the State) which was established in 1836.  GLO is responsible for managing state lands and minerals and manages and protects the State’s submerged lands and coastal resources.  She advises her agency clients on coastal resource management, real estate, commercial leasing and easements, submerged land, and boundary laws. Ms. Alpin has worked with NRDA since 2015 working with and collaborating with agency clients and State NRDA Trustees, advising them on spill response and assessment questions, negotiating memorandums of agreement and settlements, and helping to facilitate planning and implementing natural resources projects, among other things.

JOEL BEAUVAIS, Managing Director, North America, National Audubon Society; Former Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Exelon Corporation

Joel Beauvais serves as Audubon’s Managing Director, North America. In this role he oversees Audubon’s conservation and climate efforts across the United States and Canada, helping to integrate implementation of Flight Plan, Audubon’s strategic plan to protect birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow. Mr. Beauvais works as a conservation leader at Audubon is informed by over 25 years of experience, including over a decade of public service spanning all three branches of the federal government and extensive private sector and non-profit work. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Exelon, a Fortune 200 company, and prior to that as a partner with the global law firm Latham & Watkins. Previously Mr. Beauvais held senior leadership roles at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he led both the Office of Policy and the Office of Water. He began his legal career clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court and for Judge Harry T. Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Before law school, he worked with The Nature Conservancy in Nicaragua, advocating for indigenous land rights and conservation in the remote BOSAWAS Biosphere Reserve. Mr. Beauvais holds a B.A. in political science from Yale University, J.D. from NYU School of Law, an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and a certificate in Leadership and Performance Coaching from Brown University.

KEGAN BROWN, Partner, Lowenstein Sandler LLP

Kegan A. Brown is a partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP in New York City.  He develops and implements proactive, strategic solutions to the most complex environmental, health, and safety challenges companies face.  His practice focuses on environmental litigation, environmental regulation, product liability, toxic torts, ESG, and transactional due diligence. He has successfully defended claims in numerous federal and state courts across the country, including the first two natural resource damage actions to ever go to trial in New Jersey (both of which resulted in complete defense verdicts). Mr. Brown has extensive experience addressing litigation and regulatory matters involving natural resource damages, contaminated sediments, and emerging chemicals of concern, particularly per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).  He has been recognized by both Chambers USA and Legal 500 for his expertise in environmental and toxic tort litigation, including PFAS litigation. He holds a B.S. from The College of New Jersey and a J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law.

CARL BRUCH, Senior Attorney; Director, International Programs, Environmental Law Institute

Carl Bruch is a Senior Attorney and Director of the International Programs at the Environental Law Institute (EL).  His research focuses on making environmental law work. He has helped countries across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia develop and implement laws, policies, and institutional frameworks to effectively manage water resources, biodiversity, forests, and other natural resources. Mr. Bruch is an authority on the means to manage natural resources to support post-conflict peacebuilding, on environmental governance and institutions, and on ways to prevent, reduce, mitigate, and compensate for damage to the environment during armed conflict. In addition to working at ELI, Mr. Bruch has been an attorney with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW). He is an adjunct professor with American University School of International Service, where he teaches a master’s-level course on environmental peacebuilding. Mr. Bruch holds a B.S. from Michigan State University, an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College.

MARGARET BYRNE, Northeast Region Spill Response Coordinator and Northeast Region Natural Resource Damage Assessment & Restoration (NRDAR) Coordinator, US Fish and Wildlife Service

Margaret Byrne is the Regional Coordinator for the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration (NRDAR) and Spill Response programs with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Northeast Region. She leads interdisciplinary teams of tribal, state, and federal biologists, economists, and attorneys in assessing injuries from contaminants and implementing restoration projects. Since 2021, her team has restored nearly 15,000 acres of habitat and completed over 110 projects, including improving recreational access to 221 acres of land and 30 miles of waterways. Margaret is an experienced instructor, having taught courses for the National Conservation Training Center including NRDAR 101, Advanced NRDAR, and Inland Oil Spill Response for DOI. She holds degrees in Biological Sciences (Mount Holyoke College), Environmental Health and Toxicology (University of Minnesota School of Public Health), and Public Policy and Administration (University of Massachusetts Amherst). Her favorite animal is the freshwater mussel.

LAUREN DANIEL, Partner, Arnold & Porter

Lauren Daniel is an environmental litigator handling a wide range of disputes across the Country. She represents clients in some of the largest high-profile environmental matters in recent history and has experience litigating under all the major federal environmental statutes, with particular focus on federal and state cleanup laws, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the Oil Pollution Act (OPA), and the Clean Water Act (CWA). She is adept at navigating multi-pronged risk related to environmental issues, including in multi-jurisdictional disputes, mass torts, and cases with inter-related regulatory, litigation, and public relations components. She takes particular pride in mastering, digesting, and simplifying for decision-makers the knotty scientific issues that underpin many environmental disputes. 

ANNIE GIBBS, Senior Environmental Consultant, Barr Engineering

Annie Gibbs is a Senior Environmental Consultant at Barr Engineering. Sheprovides expertise in assessing injury to natural resources and their services, developing compensatory restoration, and determining overarching project strategy. Ms. Gibbs has served as both a testifying expert and consulting expert on NRDA matters. Specific NRDA tasks include habitat and resource equivalency analysis, case strategy development, coordination with natural resource trustees, analysis of toxicological and other biotic effects data, and literature review. Ms. Gibbs also has extensive experience working with federal, state, and local agencies; tribes; and stakeholder groups to engage them on various topics including remediation processes, restoration projects, and oil spill planning and response. In her previous role as a contractor to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Ms. Gibbs provided support to NRDA trustee councils. She provided technical support on multiple NRDA cases on behalf of NOAA, including cases concerning Kalamazoo River, St. Louis River Interlake/Duluth Tar, and Sheboygan River and Harbor. She holds a B.S. in Aquatic and Fisher Science from the University of Washington and a M.S. in Environmental Sciences, Toxicology and Chemistry from Western Washington University.

BARBARA J. GOLDSMITH, Executive Director, Ad-Hoc Industry Natural Resource Management Group; President, Barbara J. Goldsmith & Company LLC

Barbara J. Goldsmith is Executive Director of the Ad-Hoc Industry Natural Resource Management Group and facilitated its founding in 1988 with a group of major multinational corporations. She is also President of Barbara J. Goldsmith & Company LLC, which has provided consulting services to major companies, law firms and others for over 25 years on high-level national and international energy and environmental policy matters and corporate environmental management strategy. In 2005, Ms. Goldsmith was appointed by the Interior Secretary to serve on the Department’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration (NRDAR) Advisory Committee.  Ms. Goldsmith has had substantial experience with business and industry associations, major companies in all industrial sectors, the US Government, international agencies, EU Member States and other countries worldwide. She is a frequent speaker on environmental, energy, and natural resource topics and collaborates with a wide set of both public and private sector entities. She has worked for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France, and she is the author of numerous publications on environmental regulatory issues affecting industry. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from The George Washington University and a Master of City Planning in Environmental Analysis from Harvard University, a joint degree program between the Harvard Schools of Public Health and Design and she is also an alumna of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

THOMAS GULBRANSEN, Senior Environmental Data Scientist, Battelle Memorial Institute

Thomas Gulbransen leads Battelle’s Environmental Data Systems practice which curates data and knowledge for attorneys and teams of subject matter experts facing environmental litigation, remediation or restoration. His 45 years of experience in environmental research coupled with development of novel decision support systems exemplifies Battelle’s hybrid approach to litigation support. Acquisition and integration of the plethora of field observations, lab results and imagery relevant to cases are closely scrutinized for relevance, provenance and defensible comparability. Mr. Gulbransen and his teams have assembled interdisciplinary lines of admissible evidence in NRDA cases spanning from Deepwater Horizon and Passaic River to the Exxon Valdez. In over a dozen legacy contaminants cases underway nationally, Mr. Gulbransen translates clients’ investigative goals into data quality objectives and acquisition tactics which create knowledgebases SMEs can interrogate. His techniques originally focused on relational databases and GIS and field instrumentation, followed by use of semantic methods and ontologies to increase interactive queries of data. He is currently assisting in refinement of agentic AI methods for forensic attribution of contaminants. Mr. Gulbransen managed software development and validation of the 186 data products for NSF’s National Ecological Observatory Network  and subsequently served as Program Officer in NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. His has degrees in B.S. in Zoology from Univ Rhode Island, M.S. in Marine Environmental Studies from Stony Brook Univ, and certificate of specialized studies in Quantitative Systems from Harvard Univ. He has served for 20 years on the Suffolk County Council of Environmental Quality, and is currently the Chairperson leading SEQRA proceedings.

KATHERINE HAUSRATH, Chief Legal Counsel, Montana Natural Resource Damage Program 

Katherine Hausrath is the Chief Legal Counsel at the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program in Helena, Montana. At NRDP, she provides legal support for pursuing new natural resource damage claims for the State of Montana and in implementing restoration actions with recovered settlement funds. She has been at NRDP since May of 2016. Prior to that, she was an attorney for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, working primarily on state and federal Superfund cleanups. Previously, she was an Assistant Attorney General conducting environmental enforcement for the State of Illinois. Katherine is a graduate of the University of Montana and a graduate of the Chicago-Kent College of Law and is admitted to practice in Montana and Illinois (inactive). Katherine does pro bono work in rural Montana through the Montana Legal Services Association. She has two children and loves to raft, ski, camp, and spend as much time as possible in Montana’s mountains and rivers.

TIMOTHY HOELZLE, Deputy Director, Office of Restoration and Damage Assessment, US Department of the Interior

Tim Hoelzle is the Deputy Director of the Office of Restoration and Damage Assessment (ORDA) at the US Department of the Interior (DOI). Tim has been with the ORDA since 2016, where he focuses on coordinating the work of the DOI Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Program (NRDAR Program) in partnership with other federal agencies, states, tribes, and industry. Before joining ORDA, Tim was Vice President at Great Ecology where he served as a client and sales manager for large-scale restoration and remediation projects in the energy and mining sectors across the country. He received his B.S. and M.S. in restoration ecology from Colorado State University.

WILLIAM JACKSON, Partner, Kelley Drye & Warren LLP

William (Bill) Jackson is a partner in Kelley Drye & Warren’s national Environmental Practice Group and is on the firm’s Executive Committee.  For over thirty years, Bill has represented both public and private sector clients in significant natural resource damages matters.  He has been litigating PFAS matters for states, sovereign governments, and water providers across the country for almost a decade. Bill was lead trial counsel for the State of New Jersey in its case against DuPont, Chemours, and 3M for natural resource damages arising from PFAS and other contamination from DuPont’s Chambers Works site on the banks of the Delaware River.  New Jersey recently settled its claims for statewide remediation, natural resource damages, and PFAS-related abatement costs with the DuPont entities for an estimated $2 billion in value, and with 3M for $400-$450 million.  New Jersey’s settlements with DuPont and 3M represent two of the five largest NRD settlements in history.  Bill has Chaired the State/Sovereign Committee in the AFFF MDL in Charleston, South Carolina since its formation in 2018.   Previously, Bill has represented a number of trustee agencies and public entities in significant natural resource damages and environmental matters, including representing the State of Louisiana in the BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the State of New Jersey in the Passaic River litigation, and the State of New Mexico in the Gold King Mine blowout, and he has also represented private sector clients such as Union Pacific Railroad as national environmental counsel, resolving significant natural resource damages claims arising from derailments and spills of hazardous substances.

MIKE JOHNS, PH.D., Senior Environmental Consultant, Barr Engineering

Mike Johns, Ph.D., is a Senior Environmental Consultant at Barr Engineering. Dr. Johns is an aquatic toxicologist and ecologist specializing in aquatic ecological risk assessments, natural resource damage assessments (NRD), and site restoration planning. Experience gained during his 40+ years of professional experience has given him a broad knowledge base on issues pertaining to the effects of toxic pollutants on aquatic organisms; on development of risk-based cleanup levels, NRD injury assessments, and methods and approaches to improving habitat function and resource services through restoration. Dr. Johns has worked in the NRD arena since 1986, with an early injury assessment at the Butte-Anaconda Superfund site. Since then, he has provided NRD analysis and strategic advice to clients at numerous sites across the US. Dr. Johns NRDA project experience includes cooperative assessments with site natural resource trustees, technical support durring successful settlement negotiations, and serving as both a consulting expert and a tetifying expert in NRD claim litigation. Recently, Dr. Johns was a testifying expert in both criminal and civil litigation related to the environmental consequences of the emerging contaminant, 6PPD-quinone. He holds a BS, Biology from The Citadel, 1972; a MS, Zoology, from the University of South Carolina, 1974; a PhD, Oceanography from the University of South Carolina, 1980 and a MBA, Management from the University of Rhode Island, 1985.

EMILY JOSEPH, Director, Office of Restoration and Damage Assessment, US Department of the Interior

Emily Joseph has been with the US Department of the Interior for the past 21 years and became Director of the Office of Restoration and Damage Assessment (ORDA) in April 2022.    ORDA is responsible for overseeing the Department’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration (NRDAR) program.  Before becoming Director, Ms. Joseph’s main responsibilities were supervising the annual allocation process for cases working on damage assessments, as well as managing the office’s Information Management System which houses information about all of the Department’s NRDAR cases.  Prior to joining the office in 2014, Ms. Joseph was in the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance working on environmental and disposal liability issues.  Before joining the Department, She worked at the University of Miami in the area of special education, where she also completed a Master's Degree in Public Administration.  Originally from the Washington, DC area, Ms. Joseph received her undergraduate degree from American University, majoring in psychology with a minor in sociology.

JASON KINNELL, Principal Economist and Founding Partner, Veritas Economic Consulting

Jason Kinnell is President and Founding Partner of Veritas Economics (Veritas) and has more than  27 years of experience conducting environmental and electricity economic research.  He has conducted environmental economic assessments and benefit-cost analyses for natural resource damage assessment and restoration evaluations, regulatory compliance, and exposure assessments at more than a hundred sites throughout the United States and Europe.  As part of his damage assessment experience, he has evaluated claims for human-use and ecological service, nonuse value, and property value losses.  He has evaluated the benefits of human-use and ecological restoration projects and worked on oil spill sites; single-party, single-chemical sites; and multiple-party, multiple-chemical sites on the East, West, and Gulf Coasts of the U.S., the Great Lakes, and numerous inland rivers and lakes.  The results of Mr. Kinnell’s research have been used by and/or presented and submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives, Electric Power Research Institute, USEPA, NOAA, USDOI, USFWS, USACE, the National Park Service, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and numerous state regulatory agencies.  Mr. Kinnell has written more than 80 peer reviewed reports and manuscripts including publications in Land Economics, Environmental Science and Policy, the Journal of Water Resource Planning and Management, Risk Analysis, Human & Ecological Risk Assessment, the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, and Current Urban Studies.  He holds a B.A. from Hampden-Sydney College and an M.S. from The Pennsylvania State University.

STEPHANIE MAGGIO, PH.D., Ecological/Environmental Risk Assessor, GHD

Dr. Stephanie Maggio specializes in ecological risk assessments and is adept in conducting human health risk assessments, quantitative environmental modeling, and litigation support. She is an ecotoxicologist that is experienced in conducting quantitative research, aquatic toxicity testing, statistical analyses, and advanced data analysis. With a diverse professional background spanning the fields of toxicology, chemistry, and environmental science, she is adept at collaborating with interdisciplinary teams to address complex environmental issues. Dr. Maggio earned her PhD from Oregon State University where she conducted research in the field of aquatic toxicology.

JEAN MARTIN, Senior Counsel, BP

Jean Martin is Senior Counsel, Litigation and Dispute Resolution with BP.  Ms. Martin advises the company’s in-house remediation management team, collaborating with in-house specialists, external experts, and legal counsel to evaluate, litigate, and resolve environmental remediation and natural resource damage claims against bp and its subsidiaries.  She has defended the company against some of the largest and most complex natural resource damage claims brought in the US, including claims arising from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  She also defends the company against remediation and restoration claims at complex mega-sites, including mining, smelting, refining and multi-party river contamination sites.  Ms. Martin has negotiated several settlements that coordinated remedy and restoration, in circumstances where coordination provided a cost-effective solution to disputed claims that also enabled restoration to begin at an earlier date.  Ms. Martin has been providing legal advice on remediation and natural resource damage issues to bp and its subsidiaries for over 20 years, working in their Los Angeles, Chicago, London and Houston offices.  Before that, she was an associate attorney at Sidley Austin and at Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop). Ms. Martin received her undergraduate degree in history from Cornell University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

NADIA MARTIN, Principal, Industrial Economics Incorporated

Nadia Martin is a Principal and Director with Industrial Economics, Incorporated. For over 16 years, she has specialized in the assessment of natural resource injuries, restoration planning, and ecological monitoring, particularly in the context of natural resource damage assessments and other similar regulatory frameworks. She applies her expertise in wildlife biology to provide technical and management support to Federal, State, and Tribal clients across a wide range of cases addressing complex environmental and restoration topics. Ms. Martin's experience spans assessments at mining sites, legacy hazardous waste sites, inland and coastal oil spills, and catastrophic wildfires. She often works with diverse groups, building consensus across conflicting priorities. Ms. Martin has supported some of the most complex cases in the United States including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and several Manhattan Project sites as well as internationally for oil spill assessments and modeling. She applies her science, communication, and organization skills to manage large field teams, conduct complex injury analyses, and support restoration planning, monitoring design, and restoration progress evaluations. She holds a B.A. in Wildlife Biology from Ball State University and a M.S. in Conservation Biology from the University of Michigan.

AL MCGARTLAND, Ph.D., Economic Policy Director, Institute for Policy Integrity, New York University Law School; Former Director, National Center for Environmental Economics, US Environmental Protection Agency

Al McGartland is the director of Economic Policy at New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity.  There, Al integrates science, economics and law to better inform public policy. He served as the Director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics from 2005 to 2025.  In this role, Dr. McGartland advised EPA’s senior leadership on regulatory analyses, science, economics, and environmental policy.  He developed interdisciplinary risk assessment, benefit assessment, and environmental justice methods to be used in EPA’s regulatory analyses. He also supported numerous interagency and White House initiatives, including projects on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, the Frontiers of Benefit Cost Analysis, and the valuation of reduced health risks from environmental contaminants.  Dr. McGartland is a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and of the Society of Benefit Cost Analysis.  Al holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and has published in numerous journals, including Science, the American Economic Review, the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, the Canadian Journal of Economics, the Journal of Environmental Management, the medical journal, Lancet, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 

ERIC MERRIFIELD, Program Leader and Executive Counsel, Environmental Program, GE Aerospace

Eric Merrifield leads the team managing GE Aerospace’s Environment, Health & Safety group, which manages the Company’s legacy environmental portfolio. With GE’s more than 125-year history as an industry leader in a broad and diverse range of manufacturing activities around the world, GE manages one of the world’s most complex portfolios of legacy environmental sites, including large sediment sites and more than 200 other active remedial sites around the world. The legacy site group ensures that these sites are investigated, remediated, and closed safely and in compliance with environmental laws. Before joining GE 14 years ago, Mr. Merrifield was a partner in the Environment and Natural Resource Group of Perkins Coie in Seattle, Washington, where he represented Fortune 100 companies in environmental counseling and litigation.

EMILY MORRISON, PH.D., Senior Environmental Scientist, ARCADIS

Dr. Emily Morrison is a senior environmental scientist at Arcadis. She has 13 years of experience in ecological and human health risk assessment, natural resource damage assessment, remediation projects, and environmental impact assessments. Dr. Morrison has extensive experience using statistical analyses, population ecology, and probabilistic modeling approaches for ecological and human health risk assessment and natural resource damage assessment. She has supported numerous aquatic and terrestrial natural resource damage assessments in a variety of settings. Dr. Morrison has B.A. from Clark University and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University.  

THOMAS PEARCE, Partner, Lowenstein & Sandler LLP

Thomas Pearce is a Partner with Lowenstein & Sandler LLP and provides strategic guidance to clients facing high stakes challenges involving environmental litigation, environmental regulation, product liability, and toxic torts. He has successfully represented clients in some of the most significant Superfund (CERCLA) and contaminated site litigation and regulatory matters in the country, including Centredale Manor, BKK Landfill, Diamond Alkali, Gowanus Canal, Hudson River, and Berry's Creek. Working with companies across a variety of sectors, including manufacturing, chemicals, paint and coatings, and oil and gas, Thomas advises on regulatory issues relating to state and federal environmental laws and transactional issues, such as due diligence and ESG. This includes counseling sponsors, lenders and tax equity investors on brownfield tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act for dozens of solar, battery energy storage, and onshore and offshore wind projects nationwide. He also counsels investors, sellers, buyers and underwriters on the environmental, health, and safety challenges that can impact their transactions. Recognized by both Chambers USA in the Environment - New York category and The Legal 500 United States Guide in the Environment: litigation category, Thomas is a frequent speaker at industry events and has published articles on such topics as PFAS regulation and remediation for the American Bar Association and other organizations. He holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

TONY PENN, Chief, Assessment and Restoration Division, US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Tony Penn is the Chief of NOAA’s Assessment and Restoration Division (ARD) and the co-lead of NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program.  As the Chief of ARD, Mr. Penn leads NOAA's nation-wide group of professionals, including scientists and economists, who are responsible for evaluating coastal habitats and resources injured by hazardous waste releases, oil spills, and vessel groundings. He has been with NOAA working on damage assessment issues since 1997.  Until assuming the Chief role in December, 2015, Mr. Penn was the Deputy Division Chief of the Assessment and Restoration Division for the previous eight years.  Formerly, Tony managed ARD's SE Region where he worked directly with scientists and economists to address coastal pollution and physical impacts from waste sites, oil spills, and vessel groundings.  Previous to this position, Mr. Penn was a natural resource economist conducting damage assessment work primarily in the Gulf Coast and Caribbean regions with a focus on restoration scaling, including Habitat Equivalency Analysis, and recreational impact assessment.  He received his B.S. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin and M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland.

EMILY PINDILLI, Ph.D., Director and Chief Economist, Science and Decisions Center, US Geological Survey

Emily Pindilli is the Director of the Science and Decisions Center and Senior Economist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. She focuses on a diverse portfolio of environmental and informational economics research topics including: the value of scientific information; ecosystem services assessment and valuation; methods to integrate multi-disciplinary analyses to support land use decision-making; and environmental markets. She recently served as the Assistant Director for Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital Accounting in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President, where she worked to implement the National Strategy to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Economic Decisions and co-chaired the Frontiers of Benefit-Cost Analysis Subcommittee. Her ecosystem services research focuses on wetlands and floodplains in various ecological settings and incorporates physical and economic methodologies and trade-off analyses. She was co-chair of the A Community on Ecosystem Services bi-annual conference for 2020-2022. She holds a B.A. in economics, M.S. in environmental science and policy, and PhD in environmental policy focusing on environmental economics.

CHRISTOPHER PRANDONI, Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director, US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Christopher Prandoni is Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources where he advises Chairman Lee on legislation, oversight, and nominations involving energy, public lands, environmental policy, and natural resources. He previously served as an Administrative Law Judge and at the U.S. Department of the Interior, Counselor to the Secretary of the Interior, and Associate Director for Natural Resources at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Across these roles, he has helped shape federal policy on energy infrastructure, permitting reform, environmental regulation, and public lands.

KATHERINE SCARLETT, Partner, CGCN Group; Former Chairman, White House Council on Environmental Quality

Katherine Scarlett has almost a decade of experience in federal permitting and environmental policy. Most recently, Ms. Scarlett served as President Trump’s Chairman at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Under her leadership, CEQ coordinated new agency procedures for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for more than 60 departments and agencies across the Federal government. She also led implementation of the President’s Memorandum on Updating Permitting Technology for the 21st Century. Prior to being confirmed as Chairman, Ms. Scarlett served as Chief of Staff at CEQ. She also worked as Senior Professional Staff at the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) under Ranking Member Shelley Moore Capito, covering a range of issues including permitting, wildlife, conservation, and economic development. During her time at EPW, she demonstrated strong expertise in environmental policy and worked on a number of bipartisan bills that became law, such as the Surface Transportation Reauthorization of 2021, the America’s Conservation Enhancement Act of 2024, and the Economic Development Reauthorization Act of 2024. During President Trump’s first term, Ms. Scarlett started her federal service at CEQ as Special Assistant to the Chairman and Deputy Associate Director for Infrastructure. In that role, she led implementation of the President’s interagency coordination for major infrastructure projects and worked to align agency policies to streamline permitting decisions.  She also was the first-ever Chief of Staff at the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council where she coordinated the permitting schedules for large-scale critical infrastructure projects across the country. An Ohio native, Ms. Scarlett is a graduate of Ohio University with a BS in Organizational Communication.

THEODORE TOMASI, Ph.D., Senior Principal - Natural Resources and Environmental Economics, Integral Consulting

Dr. Ted Tomasi is Senior Principal at Integral Consulting where he leads the natural resource and environmental economics practice. He has more than 40 years of experience valuing natural resources and the ecological services they provide and evaluating environmental and natural resource management decisions. He has particular expertise in natural resource damage assessment (NRDA), having worked on more than 80 NRDAs for oil spills and contaminated sites, serving as an expert on behalf of both natural resource trustees and responsible parties. Dr. Tomasi has authored numerous publications on economic methods on valuation and decision-making applied to resource management issues and is particularly interested in formally including a concern for fairness in resource policy analysis. He holds a BA in Environment and Public Policy and an MA in Economics from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Economics from the University of Michigan. Prior to his consulting career he held tenured faculty positions at the University of Minnesota and Michigan State University.      

WILLIAM YEATMAN, Director, The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center

William Yeatman is director of the GW Regulatory Studies Center and a research professor in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. A lawyer, he has spent almost two decades working on federal regulatory policy, with an emphasis on administrative law. Mr. Yeatman has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures, and his scholarly work has appeared in such academic journals as Georgetown Law Journal, Administrative Law Review, and the (forthcoming) Catholic University Law Review. His popular writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and Bloomberg. Mr. Yeatman came to the RSC from the Pacific Legal Foundation. Previously, he had been at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. From 2004 to 2006, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic. Mr. Yeatman holds a BA in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia, an MA in international studies from the Denver University Graduate School of International Studies, and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. He is a member of the Washington, DC Bar.