Charles Andersen developed an interest in sustainability through working on his family's organic vegetable and livestock farm near Philadelphia.  He has made the farm more sustainable through installing solar and biomass energy systems, developing a grass-fed livestock operation, and experimenting with energy use reduction strategies such as no-till organic.  He received a Pennsylvania DEP Energy Harvest grant for the construction of a solar powered, corn heated hoophouse (plastic covered greenhouse for winter vegetable production) which has saved many gallons of home heating oil and provided for a much longer and more productive growing season.  Charles is finishing his sophomore year at Amherst College where he is pursuing a double major in Geology and Political Science in the hopes of of combining his practical experience in sustainability with an understanding of how policies can be created to move us to a more sustainable future.

Zach Arnold, a native of lovely Swarthmore, PA, is currently a sophomore at Harvard College studying social theory and environmental policy. Outside of  the classroom, he's involved with several environmental groups on campus, working to push Harvard toward climate neutrality. Zach is particularly interested in small-scale and urban agriculture, and is way excited for the 2008 growing season to begin so he can start gardening again. He spends his spare time reading too many blogs and wandering around Boston and Cambridge, searching for good food.

Geena Berry, a native of southwestern Ohio, is currently studying at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.  Geena is moving toward a degree in Human Ecology, with a focus on human waste management and sanitation.  Currently a SustainUS Maine co-coordinator, she has been involved with SustainUS for a year and half, is an active member for COA's Committee for Sustainability, and is involved with creation of the Maine state youth coalition against climate change: Sustain Maine.  Geena is very excited to be a representative for youth at the Commission for Sustainable Development.   

Kristen Downs spent her early years in Okinawa, Japan and Palau, and ever since has had a penchant to travel and live abroad.  She graduated from the University of Florida in 2006 with a BS in Chemistry and recently returned from Kenya, where she was a math & science high school teacher in the Peace Corps. In the fall she will begin a Masters in Environmental Engineering.  Motivated by the grassroots development experience in the Peace Corps, Kristen aspires to pursue a career in international development through water and sanitation engineering in a manner that will cement initiatives as sustainable projects through community empowerment and involvement.

Kelley Greenman, originally from Marathon, Florida, is a junior at Washington University in Saint Louis, majoring in environmental studies with minors in economics and writing.  Her interest in climate change stems from working with other energized youth from the Florida Keys on federal lobbying initiatives for climate change legislation to protect their local coral reefs.  Currently, she is the program leader for Verde, an environmental education program that reaches out to Saint Louis youth.  Kelley is also very interested in international water issues, specifically in India, where she has focused her research for the past year. After attending COP11 in Montreal, Kelley witnessed the power of a coalition of youth lobbying for change and participated in the process again this December with the SustainUS delegation in attending COP13 in Bali.  She is excited to again be part of a SustainUS delegation and help as a delegation leader.

Jennie Hatch is a sophomore at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA, where she is working towards a degree in Peace and Justice Studies and Mathematics.  She is particularly interested in land use planning and climate change issues, and how mathematical modeling can be used for sustainable development applications.  She is an active member of the Sierra Student Coalition, where this summer she worked on the March to ReEnergize New Hampshire.  This past fall, she helped start Massachusetts Youth Climate Action, a youth network in Massachusetts dedicated to fighting global warming.  She is looking forward to attending her first CSD this May, as well as working with Fired Up Africa! to provide African youth with new media technologies this summer.

Sumi Kato, originally from Japan, graduated in 2007 from Ohio University with a Master's degree in International Development. Her focus was HIV/AIDS and gender in Sub-Saharan Africa, and interned in local NGOs in Botswana in 2006. One of the NGOs had a program for street children, and she wrote a proposal on agricultural gardening. After graduation, she worked at the Congressional Youth Leadership Council in Washington D.C., and taught leadership skills to middle school students. She went back to Japan in January 2008, and currently works at the Japanese Committee for UNICEF.

Nora King is originally from St. Paul, MN and is currently finishing her senior year at Boston University.  Nora’s studies have focused on community-oriented health care and social medicine; Nora hopes to attend medical school to be a family physician.  Although she has always been conscious and supportive of sustainable environmental practices, her passion for sustainable development began while researching clean water practices in a small Haitian town.  Nora has continued to collaborate with the town's water group, and looks forward to learning more about how to apply global issues to local contexts with SustainUS.  When she’s not studying physiology or learning about water purification techniques, Nora loves to read, ride her bike, and cook and eat interesting (and especially sustainably-grown) foods. 

Stephanie Kwan received her B.S. in Environmental Studies and Political Science in December 2004 from Emory University. During her time at Emory, Stephanie worked for a grassroots environmental group, an environmental consulting firm, and a government environmental agency. In August 2005, Stephanie began her M.S. in Environmental Engineering with a focus on Air Quality Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research focused on the effects of air pollutant emission sources and meteorology on air quality in Shanghai, China, as well as on the implications for local and multi-jurisdictional air quality management in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta region. Following receipt of her M.S. in December 2006, Stephanie began working at Trinity Consultants. She was also a SustainUS delegate to CSD-15 an the UN Climate Negotiations in Bali. Stephanie aspires to pursue a career in international environmental policy, focusing on the development and implementation of environmental policy frameworks and governance programs concerning air pollution issues on local, regional, and global scales.

Zhenyu (James) Liao is an undergraduate student at University of Virginia, where he is double majoring in Electrical Engineering and Economics. His passion lies in helping children in rural China and sustainable development for the environment. He hopes to apply his knowledge in the concept of social entrepreneur. He believes everyone can become a change-maker. Currently, he is the Promotion and Publicity officer for Dream Corps, an organization that sends volunteers to rural China in a one-month summer service program with a mission to promote education equity through quality resources and sustained participation. He spent every summer volunteering in a rural village in Henan Province, China. He and a team of volunteers built library, taught in local schools, and conducted family visits in hope to understand the community and help the children who are left behind. His work is guided by a Chinese motto that “Growing trees is a decade-long business. Cultivating persons is a century-long project.” He is also interning with Americans for Informed Democracy that help youth create events to increase global awareness on university campuses.

Rebekah McKnight will graduate from American University in Washington, DC in May 2008. She will earn a degree (BA) in International Studies with a concentration on International Development and Latin America. In addition to her coursework she has spent semesters in both St. Andrews, Scotland and Havana, Cuba. Time abroad has given Rebekah a strong interest in sustainability as it pertains to International Development, especially within tourism development. Rebekah's passion for sustainability has also lead her to co-author a tourism guide for Washington, DC which focuses on ways travelers can promote sustainability through travel. She currently is the associate at the US Committee for UNDP, a Washington, DC based non profit which works with coordinated fundraising and outreach for UNDP.  Rebekah hopes to continue her career in the field of environment and development.

Melissa Meade is originally from East Meadow, New York and is currently a student at the University of Miami studying Ecosystem Science and Policy, Economics and International Studies. She is very passionate about all three areas and hopes to extend her academic education into real life experiences through travel and internships. In the meantime she is involved in a student sustainability roundtable at UM as well as other environmental and service organizations. In her spare time she enjoys the outdoors especially SCUBA diving and hiking.

Nivedhya (Nivi) Ramaswamy is an Environmental Engineer whose expertise is in subsurface remediation. Nivi currently works with Geosyntec Consultants in Boston, MA, and is actively involved in Geosyntec’s Green Initiative, whose mission is to reduce carbon footprint by reducing wastes, while actively recycling. Born and raised in India, Nivi completed Graduate School in the United States, earning her M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Georgia Tech in Spring 2007. Her graduate research efforts were concentrated on subsurface remediation technologies with a focus on a Superfund site in Washington State.  Prior to graduate school, Nivi earned her Bachelors in Civil
Engineering and worked at the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, India. At IISc, she focused on sustainable building technologies, green buildings, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Nivi is eager to implement sustainable development not just at her workplace or local community, but globally. She strongly believes Sustain US's Agents of Change will endow her with the platform to accomplish her goal

Danielle Ravich is a graduate of the University of Michigan where she earned her B.A. degree in Psychology, with an Industrial/Organizational concentration. While still an undergraduate, she was involved with planning social action initiatives on campus as well as in the metro-Detroit area, and became more interested in environmental sustainability issues. Currently her primary focus is applying organizational change and best practices techniques to help organizations become more environmentally friendly. Now residing in New York City, she hopes to obtain a masters degree in Environmental Science and Policy in the next few years. She enjoys learning about new and exciting ways to promote sustainability and is looking forward to being part of the SustainUs community.

Rachel Rosenberg, originally from New Orleans and raised in North Carolina, received a B. A. in Environmental Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005. Rachel studied abroad in Joensuu, Finland in the Environmental Science and Forestry Program. For the past few years Rachel has worked as an Environmental Communications Specialist for Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG), an environmental consulting firm in the DC area. At ERG Rachel has supported EPA voluntary partnership programs on water efficiency, methane emission reductions, commuter benefits, and waste reduction. Rachel has volunteered as an EnvironMentor for the National Council for Science and the Environment, and as a Citizen Forester with the Casey Tree Foundation.  She was an intern with a local watershed association in NC, and an REU student in an interdisciplinary watershed program at the College of William and Mary. Additionally, she has worked as an organic farming specialist at a camp in Georgia. Rachel is also the co-chair of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society Young Leaders Advocacy and Events Committee.

After graduating from Lester B. Pearson College UWC in 2006, Juan Carlos Soriano Yabar spent last year volunteering for Youth Encouragement Services (YES). YES is a small NGO based in western Uganda that sponsors orphan children by not only providing them with an education, but also supporting them in their social and economic development. Juan worked with the rural development, agricultural training, and project management programs. Juan is currently attending College of the Atlantic and majoring in Human Ecology with a focus on project management and rural development.

                              Chloe Stull-Lane, a native of northern California, is a Masters candidate in international development and sustainable natural resources management at Lund University in southern Sweden. Her undergraduate studies at St. Olaf College in Minnesota led her to research and internship opportunities in Namibia, Kenya, Somaliland, and South Africa and have focused Chloe's interests on the complexities of water scarcity, global and local challenges for freshwater management and governance, pastoralist livelihoods in the Horn of Africa, and the role of international assistance in development processes. This will be Chloe's third year serving SustainUS as a delegation leader to the Commission on Sustainable Development, and she is especially excited to engage with the thematic issues of this particular cycle. 

                                        Allison Stewart is a student at Macalester College in St. Paul MN.  While she is originally from Rye NY, she attended boarding school at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, De, where she first got interested in environmental issues and organic gardening. After helping to re-write the school’s mission statement to address environmental concerns, Alli went on to study sustainability in an Indian eco-village called Auroville for a semester. Alli finally ventures to Macalester where she is involved in MacCares (the school environmental activist community), MULCH school organic garden, and the Experimental College though which she facilitates classes on knitting and eco-spirituality. Allison’s main interests are agriculture (policy and actual farming), sustainable development abroad and in the US, and eco-spirituality. When not involved in activist work or reading loads of environmental books, Allison spends her time knitting, traveling, taking pictures, and in particular, obsessing about tomatoes.

Nicole Wires, originally from Boulder, CO,  is a senior and MS candidate at Stanford University.  She is majoring in Earth Systems, an interdisciplinary approach to environmental science and policy.  The focus of her studies is on sustainable agricultural, with both an environmental and economic approach.  Nicole hopes to work in Sub-Saharan Africa with a grassroots NGO implementing sustainable agricultural extension and helping facilitate the institutionalization of effective agricultural development policies that preserve scarce environmental resources while simultaneously promoting poverty alleviation for some of the world's poorest people.  In her free time, Nicole loves to be outdoors--climbing, hiking, camping, surfing, and reading.