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Keynote Events
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SENATOR LISA MURKOWSKI, U.S. Senate |
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Senator Lisa Murkowski is the first Alaskan born Senator to serve the State and only the sixth United States Senator from Alaska. Murkowski is a third generation Alaskan, born in Ketchikan and raised in towns across the state: Wrangell, Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage. Since joining the Senate in 2002, Senator Murkowski has already made many strides on issues facing Alaskans. As she advocates for legislation on the Senate floor, her passion for improving the state of health care, education, energy, Veteran’s affairs, and infrastructure development in Alaska is unquestionable. Only the 33rd female to serve in the United States Senate since its founding in 1789, Senator Murkowski has assumed leadership roles quickly in the Senate, being selected to serve as a Deputy Whip, to assist the Majority Whip on voting strategy and other leadership functions, and as Chairman of the class of new Senators elected in 2002. A member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Murkowski is the ranking member on the Energy Subcommittee. She also serves on the Senate Foreign Relations committee where she is ranking member for the subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Additionally, she is the Vice-Chair of the Indian Affairs Committee and is the first Alaskan ever to serve on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. She earned a BA in economics from Georgetown University in 1980 and then returned to Juneau to work as a legislative aide, also becoming active in state Republican politics. In 1985 she graduated with a law degree from Willamette University and became a member of the Alaska Bar Association in 1987. She served as Anchorage District Court attorney for two years and then worked in Alaska commercial law for eight years before opening her own practice. Murkowski was elected to three terms in the Alaska State House of Representatives, beginning in 1998, and was named House Majority Leader during the 2003-2004 term. While serving in the State House, Murkowski sat on the Alaska Commission on Post Secondary Education and chaired both the Labor and Commerce and the Military and Veterans Affairs Committees. In 1999 she introduced legislation establishing a Joint Armed Services Committee, where she also served. After being appointed to the Senate on December 20, 2002, Senator Murkowski was elected to a full six-year Senate term in November 2004. Lisa married Verne Martell, an Anchorage small business owner, in 1987 and they have two sons, Nicolas and Matthew. She enjoys spending time with her family, skiing, fishing, camping, and actively participating in community outreach programs. |
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JILL FREDSTON, Author |
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Jill Fredston, co-director of the Alaska Mountain Safety Center, is one of North America's leading avalanche experts. She has spent twenty-five years predicting avalanches, triggering them with explosives, teaching potential victims how to stay alive, and leading rescue efforts in Alaska. Then, every summer, she climbs into an ocean-going rowing shell and heads out on long expeditions in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. With her husband, Doug Fesler, in a small boat of his own, she has rowed the equivalent of the circumference of the earth more than 25,000 miles along the rugged coasts of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Spitsbergen, and Norway. Jill's most recent book, Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches is a brilliant look at the forces of human nature that lure us time and again into treacherous terrain. She is also the author of Rowing to Latitude: Journeys along the Arctic's Edge, which won the 2002 National Outdoor Book Award. With Doug Fesler, she co-wrote the authoritative and internationally acclaimed Snow Sense: A Guide to Evaluating Snow Avalanche Hazard. Taking advantage of her unique experience and a vast collection of photographic images, Jill has made a specialty of speaking about managing risks in high stakes environments, decision-making, and strategies for dealing with uncertainty and change. Bringing both credibility and humor to her talks, Jill's keynote presentations explore the ways in which we filter information, often becoming so distracted by our own agendas that we take unnecessary risks or miss key opportunities. When we make assumptions that go unchecked or pay attention only to the data that tells us what we want to hear, she says, "We are like the Texas sharpshooter who shoots the side of a barn and then draws bullís-eyes around the bullet holes." She outlines an approach for making objective decisions based on real bullís-eye data and details rules of engagement that help maximize our chances of success. |
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LYNN SCARLETT, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior |
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The Department of the Interior Climate Change Task Force Report Lynn Scarlett was confirmed as Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior on November 2005, a post she took on after 4 years as the Department's Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget. She served as Acting Secretary of the Department upon the resignation of former Secretary Gale Norton effective April 1, until the confirmation of Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on May 26, of 2006. She serves on the Executive Committee of the President's Management Council. Ms. Scarlett coordinates Interior's environmental policy initiatives to implement the President's executive order on cooperative conservation, serving on the White House Cooperative Conservation Task Force. From June 2003-2004, she chaired the federal Wildland Fire Leadership Council, an interagency and intergovernmental forum for implementing the National Fire Plan and 10-Year Implementation Plan. She co-chairs the President and First Lady's Preserve America initiative on historic preservation and heritage tourism. She also co-chairs the Recreation Fee Leadership Council, a federal interagency group to coordinate recreation fee policy and practices on federal lands. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Udall Foundation as the Department of the Interior representative. Ms. Scarlett is author of numerous publications on incentive-based environmental policies. Ms. Scarlett received her B.A. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also completed her Ph.D. coursework and exams in political science and political economy. |
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WALTER PORTER, Mythologist |
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Walter Porter is a Tlingit Indian from Yakutat, Alaska. He was born in Yakutat in 1944 and moved to Haines, Alaska in 1956. He graduated in 1962 and traveled for 10 years and moved back to Yakutat in 1972, married and has been there till 1998 and now resides in Kotzebue, Alaska. He spent a good deal of his boyhood years listening to his grand mother and other elders tell mythologies and legends that were handed down to them by their elders. When he moved to Haines, he joined the Chilkat Dancers performing dances that were Tlingit Mythologies put into dance. In the mid 80ís he was invited to be the host on the ìBox of Daylightî video put together by Sealaska Foundation, Alaska State Museum, Klukwaan Heritage, Alaska Humanities Forum and others. He discovered at that time similarities with the Box of Daylight and other spiritual information he had been studying over the years. He has since then put together presentations showing how elders understood these stories and how they successfully used them to develop leadership, social, economic and healing skills to build strong and stable communities. He lectures about the wisdom and knowledge that has been protected for us by our ancient Elders and how they cleverly disguised this information in mythology so it would come down safely to us through the ages. With rising crime, social problems, environmental impacts on commuities and illnesses at the forefront of our concerns today, he points out how mythology holds many answers for us to regain control of our communities and lives by understanding them. When lecturing or holding workshops, Walter invites his audience to look closely at the symbols in the story he is working with and gives them alternative meanings to choose from. By allowing the audience or students to participate, the experience becomes more meaningful as they begin to understand and see the wisdom and knowledge of our elders unfolding from ancient times to present. |
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SANDRA COINTREAU, World Bank |
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Sandra Cointreau, solid waste management advisor to the World Bank, has spent much of the past three years researching basic disease elements of Avian influenza and other zoonotic disease to develop excreta and animal/bird disposal guidance and to obtain grant funds for study of municipal live markets, municipal slaughterhouses, and municipal dumpsites as key links in the spread of animal/bird diseases. She has also spent considerable time working on the expansion and providing support for the Carbon Finance Program to enable sustainable financial support to upgrade waste disposal and transfer. A civil/sanitary engineer, Sandra has over 35 years of experience in waste management strategic planning and design, private sector participation, including related economic analysis, environmental assessment and water resource protection and remediation. Sandra received her BSCE in Civil/Sanitary Engineering from Northeaster University in 1971 before going to work with the U.S. Corps of Engineers assisting with river basin clean-up projects. She moved on to work with Arthur D. Little Applied Research and Strategic Engineering Consultants, where she represented a number of large industrial clients, helping them to obtain project permits. Sandra has regularly reviewed organizationsí methods and their effectiveness. For the past several years, she has been sought out to suggest organizational design improvements based upon examples she has found elsewhere in her consulting. She has authored more than 30 technical guidance publications that have been translated into several languages, a number of them for the World Bank; she regularly writes equipment specifications for international procurement; and has designed and conducted multi-day technical and organizational training courses for officials in various countries, including Syria, Indonesia, Pakistan and Czechoslovakia. She recently conducted the first outreach program to offer training to all 92 country offices of the World Bank in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese using webcams and webcast systems. In 2003, Sandra was awarded the National Leadership Award and appointment as an Honorary Chairman of the national Republican Congressional Business Advisory Council; a Corp of Engineers hazardous site remediation project (Marathon Battery, Cold Springs, NY), for which Sandra was the Project Manager in 1993 won: Grand Prize from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers, Award of Excellence for Military Projects from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Grand Award from the American Consulting Engineers Council, and First Prize from the New York Association of Consulting Engineers. |
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DR. HOWARD FRUMKIN, Director, U.S. Centers for Disease Control adn Prevention |
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Howard Frumkin is Director of the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR) at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. NCEH/ATSDR works to maintain and improve the health of the American people by promoting a healthy environment and by preventing premature death and avoidable illness and disability caused by toxic substances and other environmental hazards. Dr. Frumkin is an internist, environmental and occupational medicine specialist, and epidemiologist. Before joining the CDC in September, 2005, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, and Professor of Medicine at Emory Medical School, in Atlanta. At Emory he founded and directed the Environmental and Occupational Medicine Consultation Clinic, the Occupational Medicine Residency training program, and the Southeast Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. Dr. Frumkin previously served on the Board of Directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), where he co-chaired the Environment Committee; as president of the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics (AOEC); as chair of the Science Board of the American Public Health Association (APHA), as a member of EPAís Childrenís Health Protection Advisory Committee, where he chaired the Smart Growth and Climate Change work groups; and on the National Toxicology Program Board of Scientific Counselors. He currently serves on the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine. In Georgia, he was a member of the stateís Hazardous Waste Management Authority, the Department of Agriculture Pesticide Advisory Committee, and the Pollution Prevention Assistance Division Partnership Program Advisory Committee, and is a graduate of the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership.In Georgiaís Clean Air Campaign, he served on the Board and chaired the Health/Technical Committee. He was named Environmental Professional of the Year by the Georgia Environmental Council in 2004. He has served as a consultant to several corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Southwire, Georgia Power, and Polaroid, and to several unions, including the Chemical Workers Association and the Utility Workers Union. His research interests include public health aspects of urban sprawl and the built environment; air pollution; metal and PCB toxicity; climate change; health benefits of contact with nature; and environmental and occupational health policy, especially regarding minority workers and communities, and those in developing nations. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific journal articles and chapters, and his books include Urban Sprawl and Public Health (Island Press, 2004, co-authored with Larry Frank and Dick Jackson) , Emerging Illness and Society (Johns Hopkins Press, 2004, co-edited with Randall Packard, Peter Brown, and Ruth Berkelman) , Environmental Health: From Global to Local (Jossey-Bass, 2005), and Safe and Healthy School Environments (Oxford University Press, 2006, co-edited with Leslie Rubin and Robert Geller) Dr. Frumkin received his A.B. from Brown University, his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.P.H. and Dr.P.H. from Harvard, his Internal Medicine training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge Hospital, and his Occupational Medicine training at Harvard. He is Board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Occupational Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. |
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CRAIG ZABLOCKI, Humorist, Motivational Speaker, Author |
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Returning to the Alaska Forum on the Environment by popular request is one of favorite motivational and inspirational presenters... Craig Zablocki! A nationally known speaker and consultant, Craig has spoken to over 600,000 people internationally and in all 50 states. Craig has shared the platform with President George Bush, Al Gore, and Tom Peters. He was the first outside speaker to address the student body of Columbine High School after its tragedy. Craig presents to Fortune 500 companies, legislators, public service and healthcare professionals, college campuses, non-profit service organizations, and victim rights groups. He has authored Improv 101, Unleash Your Creative Spirit and co-authored the book, Humor Me as well as authored many articles for major publications. He has appeared on countless radio and television programs, including Nation Public Radio which gives practical tools to loosen up, become more creative, and live in the moment. A background in business, teaching in an inner-city school, and performing in a professional improvisational comedy troupe allows Craig to speak from a unique perspective. His unscripted style has been compared to a hybrid of Robin Williams and Wayne Dyer. One participant wrote, "We should harness his energy - it could power a small city. His passion and commitment to making a difference is contagious!" |
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