Covering the Green Economy: Featured speakers

Award-winning journalists and pioneering academics are scheduled to present at the Reynolds Center’s ” Covering the Green Economy” seminar, and the agenda for the all-expenses-paid workshop on June 28-30 is almost complete.

If you haven’t applied already, you have until April 26 to submit your application for a chance to grab a spot at this specialized reporting institute, which is funded through a grant from the McCormick Foundation.

Session topics will include tracking stimulus money earmarked for green efforts, covering the growing industry of eco-friendly cars and following trends in food sustainability. We’ll also host sessions that dig into how to quantify sustainability in a variety of industries including health care, construction, solar, water and coal.

The agenda will be released within the next few days, but until then, here’s a sampling of some of our featured speakers:

George Basile is the executive director of Arizona State University’s Decision Theater, a research facility and decision lab for exploring and understanding decision making. He is an internationally recognized creative thinker and practitioner in the field of sustainability and helped develop “Green MBA” programs in the U.S. and Sweden. He’s an associate professor at ASU’s School of Sustainability, the first of its kind in the nation, and  advises Fortune 500 clients on sustainable business practices.

Russ Choma, an investigative reporter who focuses on climate and energy issues, transportation and stimulus spending. He’s a contributor at several publications including the Investigative Reporting Workshop, Nieman Watchdog and Grist.org. His recent series, “Blown Away: America’s billions for clean-energy jobs are flying overseas,” found that more than 80 percent of the first $1 billion in grants to wind-energy companies went to foreign firms.

Angel Gonzalez is Houston Bureau Chief for Dow Jones Newswires, where he helps lead the Newswires’ coverage of the global energy industry. He has written about OPEC, hurricanes, Big Oil companies, renewable energy and the BP oil spill for Dow Jones Newswires, WSJ.com and the Wall Street Journal. Previously he covered green energy and biotechnology for the Seattle Times, and worked as an oil reporter for Dow Jones. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, he’s a graduate of the University of Paris and obtained a master’s in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jeff Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to New York Times Magazine. He is the author of five books, including the New York Times bestseller “Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith,” based on the terrifying hours nine Quecreek miners spent trapped underground and “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future,” which is the basis for an upcoming feature documentary. His latest book “How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix the Earth’s Climate” is the daring—some would say crazy—effort to adjust the Earth’s thermostat and save us all from global warming.

Timothy James is the director of research and consulting at the L. William Seidman Research Institute and a professor in the department of economics in the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. He  has extensive experience in consulting and research for both the public and private sectors, including the Prime Minister of the UK and the European Commission. He is current working on AZSmart, a collaborative project between utility companies and academics to map a solar grid for Arizona and the Southwest.

Shaun McKinnon is an award-winning reporter who writes about climate and environmental issues for The Arizona Republic. He also blogs and reports on water, including the Central Arizona Project, a $4.7 billion canal that delivers water to Phoenix and Tucson and regional issues surrounding the Colorado River. For his series, “Ruined Rivers,” McKinnon traveled more than 5,000 miles throughout Arizona and Mexico to report the in-depth stories of six rivers.

Jim Motavalli is a freelance environmental reporter and author. He blogs for The New York Times, Mother Nature Network, BNET and The Daily Green, and is a regular contributor to The New York Times’ “Automobiles” section, and has a weekly syndicated “Wheels” column. He also writes for NPR’s Car Talk and his work has appeared in publications that include Popular Mechanics, The Nation, The Boston Globe, Salon and Grist.

Bryn Nelson is a freelance science writer and editor with a special interest in technology, biomedicine, and ecology. Formerly an award-winning science writer for Newsday and a weekly columnist for MSNBC.com on science and technology innovation, his work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Nature, Science News and portfolio.com.

Craig Pittman is a award-winning environmental reporter at the St. Petersburg Times and the author of two books. His stories on Florida’s vanishing wetlands garnered national attention after it showed how government policy failed, resulting in many acres being lost to development.

Susanne Rust is a Knight Fellow at Stanford University and a former reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. At the Sentinel,  she co-authored the Chemical Fallout series, a groundbreaking investigation into toxic consumer goods. The series won the Meeman, Polk and Oakes awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.

Colin Tetreault holds a Master of Arts student from Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, the first program of its kind in the United States. For his applied project, he works as the director of sustainability for Atlasta Catering and Event Concepts, where he is charged with changing organizational structure and culture to be more sustainability minded.

Irene Virag is a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter,  journalism professor at Stony Brook University and author of three books. She’s a former Newsday gardening columnist, Neiman Fellow at Harvard University and her work has been featured in the ASNE’s Best Newspaper Writing.

Gary Cohn, a freelance investigative reporter, is an adjunct journalism professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism and winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.