Inspiring Rally Speakers

Tuesday Plenary

Andrew Bowman is president of the Land Trust Alliance, a national land conservation organization that works to save the places people need and love by strengthening land conservation across America. Based in Washington, D.C., the Alliance represents more than 1,100 member land trusts supported by more than 100,000 volunteers and 5 million members nationwide.

Before joining the Alliance in February 2016, Andrew served as the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s program director for the environment. In that capacity, he oversaw all environmental grant-making for the foundation. During his 11 years at the foundation, Andrew developed and obtained approval of more than $100 million in grants and program-related investments. He also served as director of the foundation’s Climate Change Initiative, a five-year grants program focused on climate change mitigation.

Prior to his work at the foundation, Andrew practiced law in Oregon for Defenders of Wildlife and at the law firm Perkins Coie LLP. He remains an active member of the Oregon State Bar.

In 1995, Andrew earned a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley as well as a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco. In 2003, he received a Master of Law in environmental and natural resources law from the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. His undergraduate education was at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a Truman Scholar.

Wednesday Plenary
*Live access only

Dr. Dorceta Taylor is a professor at the Yale School for the Environment, as well as adjunct faculty at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability.  Her past experience includes the former director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at SEAS, environmental justice specialization coordinator at SEAS, the James E. Crowfoot collegiate professor of environmental justice at the University of Michigan and field studies coordinator for the Environmental Justice Program in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan. Dr. Taylor received doctorate and master’s degrees from the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the Department of Sociology at Yale University.

Dr. Taylor’s most recent book, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement:  Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection (Durham:  Duke University Press), examines how race, class and gender influenced the movement. Her 2014 book, Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility (New York University Press), examines the connections among residential segregation, zoning and exposure to environmental hazards. Dr. Taylor is also the author of The Environment and the People in American Cities: 1600s-1900s. Disorder, Inequality, and Social Change (Duke University Press). The book received the Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award given by the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association in 2010.

Dr. Taylor is the recipient of several awards including the Rachel Carson Award from the National Audubon Society, the National Science Foundation Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, the Freudenberg Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Environmental Science and Studies.

Thursday Plenary

Mark directs The Nature Conservancy’s Center for Resilient Conservation Science, which provides science leadership, ecological analysis and landscape assessments for conservation efforts across 50 states. He holds a Ph.D. in ecology from University of New Hampshire and has worked as a conservation scientist for over 30 years (29 with The Conservancy). Over the last decade, Mark led the effort to identify and map climate resilient lands and waters across the continental U.S. and has published widely on climate resilience, large landscape conservation, biodiversity conservation, and forest dynamics. One of the original authors of the National Vegetation Classification, his current research focuses on the intersection between biodiversity, ecological services, and climate change in terrestrial and aquatic systems. He manages a team of six spatial ecologists and tries (mostly unsuccessfully) to keep up with all their amazing work. In 2017, Mark received The Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Achievement award.

Outside of TNC, Mark serves as board chair for Northeast Wilderness Trust, a regional land trust dedicated to conserving forever-wild places where nature can evolve and thrive. Born in Colorado and addicted to the outdoors at an early age, he has worked as a naturalist in the Okefenokee swamp, developed a multi-cultural ethnobotany program in San Francisco, directed National Wildlife Federation’s Earthtrek program in the Smoky Mountains, and run a small mountaineering program in the Southern Rockies. He now lives in Massachusetts with his wife, two kids (when they are around), three cats, two goats, one dog, occasional chickens, and a wild patch of native plants.

*The Nature Conservancy and Northeast Wilderness Trust are accredited land trusts