The Manhattan College Center for Urban Resilience and Environmental Sustainability (CURES) will host a panel discussion New York City Sustainability Priorities: What Should the Next Mayor Do? on Monday, Nov. 4.
Taking place on the eve of the mayoral election, the event will focus on sustainability priorities in New York City. The featured speakers include many prominent community-based environmental activists:
- Jessica Haller of Climate Reality Project is a sustainability champion and entrepreneur who, in her varied career, has started a business with a NASA climate scientist and worked at Major League Baseball on data strategy. She is a LEED Accredited Professional with the U.S. Green Building Council and former director of the Jewish Climate Change Campaign.
- Emily Nobel Maxwell is the first-ever director of the Nature Conservancy’s new Urban Conservation Program, where she helps develop and lead the Conservancy’s initiatives in New York City and other New York urban areas. Previously, Maxwell led a community greening initiative in Philadelphia, and then became the director of the Catalyst Program for the New York City Partnership for Parks.
- Dart Westphal, past president of the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality, is a senior associate with the Support Center for Nonprofit Management. He built playgrounds and gardens for the South Bronx Open Space Task Force before directing the West Tremont/Kingsbridge Neighborhood Preservation Office of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation & Development.
- Paul Steely White is the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit advocacy group at the center of New York City’s bike lane and public space boom. White joined Transportation Alternatives in 2004 after seven years as projects director for the New York City-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.
CURES launched in 2012 as a way to further promote the importance of urban sustainability and environmental justice within the academic community.