SUSTAINABLE INVESTING

Daniel Esty

Dan Esty is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University with primary appointments at Yale’s Environment and Law Schools and a secondary appointment at the Yale School of Management. He serves as director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (www.yale.edu/envirocenter) and on the Advisory Board of the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (www.yale.edu/CBEY), which he founded in 2007. Professor Esty is the author or editor of ten books and dozens of articles on environmental protection, energy, and sustainability— and their connections to corporate  strategy, competitiveness, trade, and economic success.  His prizewinning volume, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, was recently named the top-selling “green business” book of the past decade.

Kate Gordon

Kate Gordon is a Senior Advisor at the Paulson Institute, where she provides overall strategy and coordination for the Institute’s climate change, air quality, and sustainable urbanization programs both in the US and China. She is also a nonresident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal as one of the paper’s “Energy Experts.” Gordon is a nationally recognized expert on the intersection of clean energy and economic development. Before joining the Paulson Institute, she was the Founding Director of the “Risky Business Project,” co-chaired by Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson, and Tom Steyer, and focused on the economic risks the U.S. faces from unmitigated climate change. Gordon took on this project in her role as Senior Vice President for Climate and Energy at Next Generation, a non-partisan think tank based in San Francisco, where she worked on California policy development as well as large-scale national communications and research projects. Earlier in her career Gordon served as Vice President of Energy and Environment at the Washington D.C.-based Center for American Progress, where helped develop and author policy recommendations related to the Congressional cap-and-trade negotiations, Gulf oil spill, and American Reinvestment and Recovery Act implementation. Prior to CAP, Gordon was the Co-Director of the national Apollo Alliance (now part of the Blue Green Alliance). She still serves on the Apollo Alliance board, as well as on the board of Vote Solar. Gordon earned a law degree and a master’s degree in city planning from the University of California-Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University.

Martin Kaplan

Martin S. Kaplan is a retired partner of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and has extensive experience advising public and private corporations, non-profit organizations and charitable foundations. Mr. Kaplan spent his entire career at Wilmer Hale in Boston and New York, and its predecessor Hale and Dorr, where he chaired its Corporate Practice. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School. As Managing Trustee of the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation (VKRF) and Trustee of the Germeshausen Foundation, he was instrumental in promoting their progressive grantmaking relating to the environment and other causes.

He played a key role in organizing the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, the EcoHealth Alliance, and Grist, the largest online environmental news service. At VKRF, he provided leadership in supporting environmental programs at Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Yale and other universities. As Chair of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1992-96), appointed by Gov. William F. Weld, he was a leader of the Education Reform Movement, and served as a member of the Education Commission of the States and a director of the National Association of State Boards of Education. For ten years, he was a member of the board of the Boston Foundation, one of the largest community foundations and chaired its Program Committee. He is an emeritus member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Board of Overseers. Mr. Kaplan is married to Wendy Tarlow Kaplan, an independent art curator. They live in New York and Lenox, Massachusetts and share five children, eleven grandchildren, and interests in art, music, travel and mediocre golf.

Mamie Parker

Dr. Parker is Founder and CEO of Ma Parker and Associates in the Washington, D. C. area. She is an efficiency executive coach, facilitator, and public speaker with clients in agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Wild Turkey Association, Ducks Unlimited and Maryland Department of Labor. Dr. Mamie Parker is the former Assistant Director of Fisheries and Habitat Conservation at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Prior to this position, she made history when appointed the first African American the FWS Regional Director of the 13 Northeastern states. She served as the Ecosystem Coordinator in the Great Lakes and Big Rivers Region and worked in many programs including the national fish hatcheries, national wetlands and coastal mapping, contaminants, invasive species, marine mammals, wetland restoration and protection programs among others. Parker is a leader in various organizations and serves as a Board of Directors of the National Wildlife Refuge Association; Defenders of Wildlife; and the Chesapeake Conservation Partnership Steering Committee. The Council of World Women Leaders awarded her with an Aspen Institute fellowship.