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Melissa Hoffer

Melissa Hoffer is Massachusetts’ first ever Climate Chief. She joined the Biden Administration as a Day 1 political appointee, serving as the Acting General Counsel and Principal Deputy General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. She led the EPA’s Office of General Counsel through the transition until November 2021, and continued to serve as Principal Deputy General Counsel. Prior to that, she worked in the Massachusetts ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½’s Office as Chief of the Environmental Protection Division beginning in 2012 and was named Chief of AG Healey’s newly formed Energy and Environment Bureau in 2015. Hoffer oversaw the work of the Bureau’s attorneys on matters including prosecuting civil and criminal enforcement of environmental laws, proceedings before the DPU, energy policy, and defensive cases. She led the Office’s litigation against ExxonMobil for deceiving Massachusetts investors and consumers about the risk climate change poses to Exxon’s business and global financial markets, and the impacts of its fossil fuel products on climate change. Prior to joining the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½’s Office, Hoffer held senior roles at the Conservation Law Foundation and practiced for many years as a litigator and environmental lawyer at WilmerHale. She also served as a law clerk for the Honorable Magistrate Judge Joyce London Alexander, Boston Federal District Court. 

Gina McCarthy

A career public servant in both Democratic and Republican administrations, Gina McCarthy has been a leading advocate for common sense strategies to protect public health and the environment for more than thirty years. The first White House National Climate Advisor and former U.S. EPA Administrator, Gina is one of the nation’s most respected voices on climate change. McCarthy’s leadership led to the most aggressive action on climate in U.S. history, creating new jobs and unprecedented clean energy innovation and investments across the country. Her commitment to bold action across the Biden administration, supported by the climate and clean energy provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, restored U.S. climate leadership on a global stage and put a new U.S. national target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 within reach. &²Ô²ú²õ±è;
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Gina is a Senior Advisor at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Managing Co-Chair of the America Is All In coalition, and a Senior Fellow at The Fletcher School’s Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University. She is also an Operating Advisor at Pegasus Capital Advisors and a Senior Advisor at TPG Rise Climate Fund. She serves as co-chair of the India-U.S. Track II Dialogue on Energy and Climate Change, and on the Board of Directors for the Energy Foundation and the Resources Legacy Foundation. &²Ô²ú²õ±è;
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Previously, McCarthy was President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Professor of the Practice of Public Health in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and an advisor to five Massachusetts governors. &²Ô²ú²õ±è;
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Mary C. Waters

Mary C. Waters is the John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology and the PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her work has focused on the integration of immigrants and their children; the transition to adulthood for the children of immigrants; intergroup relations; the measurement and meaning of racial and ethnic identity; and the social, demographic, and psychological impact of natural disasters.  The author or co-author of 11 books and over 75 articles, she is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Her study of the children of immigrants, Inheriting the City: The Second Generation Comes of Age (with Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf and Jennifer Holdaway) (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008) won the 2010 American Sociological Association Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award, the Mira Komarovsky Award of the Eastern Sociological Society, and the Thomas and Znaniecki Award of the International Migration Section of the ASA. Waters is currently the chair of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on The Integration of Immigrants into American Society, and she is collaborating on a study of the role of government assistance in the integration of Latino immigrants in three American cities.  She also leads the RISK Study, a longitudinal study of survivors of Hurricane Katrina

Christina Christie

Christina Christie, Ph.D., is the Wasserman Dean of the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA and also a professor of education in the Division of Social Research Methodology. She is an internationally recognized scholar whose work focuses on understanding evaluation as a method for facilitating social betterment. As part of this work, she has developed studies to advance the theories and methods used to measure educational, social, and behavioral changes that result from program innovation and reform efforts. She has been recognized with distinguished career awards by two leading associations, as the recipient of the 2018 American Educational Research Association, Research on Evaluation Special Interest Group, Distinguished Scholar Award, and the 2019 American Evaluation Association, Research on Evaluation Distinguished Scholar. Before being appointed Wasserman Dean, Christie served for five years as Chair of the Department of Education and prior to that six years as Division Head of Social Research Methodology. &²Ô²ú²õ±è;

Rebecca Grainger

Rebecca Grainger served her first decade in education as department chair and high school science teacher at Sierra High School in Colorado Springs, CO. For over 20 years Grainger has created learning spaces designed to interrogate systems which bolster racial inequities and our contributions to their continued propagation.  She is driven by the belief that the role of educational spaces is not to save, but to act with intentionality to increase access to opportunity and provide space for informed choice.  
She is recognized as a Distinguished Educator and Hall of Fame Distinguished Alumna. As a Fellow at the Institute for Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Grainger served as a scholar practitioner bridging the divide between education research and the K-12 classroom. Through professional development, curriculum design, and partnering with researchers she pushed the boundaries between educator and student roles, asking learners to create the learning environment in partnership. 
Grainger holds her doctorate in Education Leadership (Ed.L.D.) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Prior to joining the Wu administration, Grainger led the instructional design for Black Futures Lab’s Black Policy Institute, a 30-week policy advocacy and leadership training fellowship designed to prepare selected Fellows to make legislative and policy interventions that advance Black political power, change the way power operates, and improve the lives of Black people. 

Christopher Martell

Christopher Martell is an associate professor of social studies education at the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½. He is particularly interested in social studies teachers in urban and multicultural contexts, and how they teach for social justice, use culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, and engage their students in critical historical inquiry. He is involved in several partnerships with the Boston Public Schools, including working on the UMass Boston CANALA Institute's BPS ethnic studies syllabi and case studies projects, supervising student teachers in the UMass Boston Teach Next Year BPS teacher residency program, collaborating with BPS district social studies leaders through the Big City Social Studies Group, designing an elementary social studies curriculum widely used across BPS, while also being a BPS parent of 4th and 6th graders in Dorchester.

Lorna Rivera

Lorna Rivera is Director of the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development & Public Policy, and Associate Professor in the Leadership in Education Department at the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½.  Rivera has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Northeastern University. Her research focuses on women’s and family literacy programs, social welfare reform policies, gender/racial/ethnic-based health disparities, and the education of Latinx students. She is the author of the award-winning book, Laboring to Learn: Women’s Literacy & Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era (2008, University of Illinois Press). Her recent publications include a Gaston Institute report “COVID-19 and Latinos in MA” (2020) and “The Impact and Outcomes of Integrating Health Literacy Education into Boston’s Adult Basic Education Programs” in Journal of Health Literacy Research and Practice (2019). Currently, Rivera is P.I. on three federally funded projects examining the impact of COVID-19 and Latinx and immigrant communities. She is also Co-P.I. on the study, “Community-Driven Environmental Assessment” in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Rivera oversees the Talented & Gifted (TAG) and Alerta afterschool programs for Latinx bilingual students in the Boston Public Schools. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Hyde Square Task Force, an arts-based Afro-Latinx youth agency in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and board member for the Inter-University Programs on Latino Research (IUPLR) in the US. Rivera serves on the editorial board of Signs: Journal of Women & Culture in Society. 2019.  In 2019, Rivera was inducted as an Honorary Member of Alpha Lambda Delta National Honor Society.

Emily Woods

Emily Woods, Ph.D. serves as Head of Education for the Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation. Previously, she was a teacher with the Boston Public Schools (BPS), senior co-trainer in the BPS New Teacher Development Program, and has served as Adjunct Lecturer in the UMass Boston’s Education Leadership doctoral program. 

She is the author of The Path to Successful Community School Policy Adoption (Taylor Francis, 2023) and is currently working on a book for principals about implementing community school strategies in their schools.

NiCole R. Keith

NiCole R. Keith, Ph.D., FACSM is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Indiana University and the executive associate dean in the School of Public Health - Bloomington. Keith is dedicated to research and programming that increases physical activity participation, improves fitness, and positively influences health outcomes while addressing health equity. She has served on the IU Bloomington faculty since 2023. She also is a research scientist at the IU Center for Aging Research in the IU School of Medicine and a Regenstrief Institute investigator. Keith was the 2020─2021 American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) vice president of membership, communication, education, and policy, the 2020─21 ACSM president, and serves on several other ACSM national committees. A Fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK), Keith serves on the NAK Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Presidential Committee, the Membership Committee, and the Editorial Board. She is currently the Chair of the National Physical Activity Plan and serves on the Physical Activity Alliance Advisory Committee. Keith earned a B.S. degree in physical education from Howard University in 1992, an M.S. degree in exercise science from the University of Rhode Island in 1994, a Ph.D. degree in exercise physiology from the University of Connecticut in 1999, and an M.S. degree in clinical research from Indiana University in 2011. She is trained in physical activity, community, and clinical research. 

Alexander More

Alexander More, PhD is an internationally recognized climate & health scientist, known for his groundbreaking discoveries of how climate change impacts pandemics, ecosystems, and the economy. His research has reset baselines for pollution standards, temperature, extreme weather by using ultra-high-resolution big data from multiple disciplines. Dr. More is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Public Health at the University of Massachusetts (Boston), with active research group leadership roles at Harvard University and collaborations with the Climate Change Institute (UMaine). He directs a center for climate & health research and communications (ECHO). Dr. More's research is routinely featured in news media including CNN, The Washington Post, Popular Science, the Pulitzer Center, the Financial Times, and 150 more news outlets worldwide. He’s a recurrent commentator on radio and TV news stories on climate and health and has been a keynote speaker at events such as the Pulitzer Center’s series on Crisis Reporting, Milstein Science Series at the American Museum of Natural History, the Theodore Roosevelt Institute, the Global Council for Science and the Environment, and the TED conference. Raised in Europe, Dr. More is a first-generation ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ and PhD graduate educated at Harvard University, having immigrated on his own at 17 to pursue higher education. He served in the US Senate on the staff of Sen. Ted Kennedy and is a current or past member of the board of directors of several non-profit organizations and foundations focused on improving sustainability and the health outcomes of minority populations most burdened by climate change worldwide. 

Ludmila Svoboda

Ludmila Svoboda, RN, BSN, MA, OCN is the Nure Director of the Cancer Care Equity Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She has spent 12-years building equitable treatment pathways for patients from historically marginalized communities. She is passionate about helping mitigate disparities in cancer care and believes that access to healthcare and cancer care is a matter of social justice. Before coming to Dana-Farber, Ludmila worked in various oncology settings from New York City to Indigenous Communities in New Mexico. She also workd alongside Dr. Paul Farber helping build oncology nursing programs in Rwanda and Haiti. Ludmila speaks five languages fluently and approaches patient care and community relationships with the deepest cultural humility.