Academy Instructors
Leadership Series Facilitators
Bob Berkebile
Bob Berkebile
Sustainable Vision Session, Sustain KC Luncheon and Sutainable Solutions Session
Bob Berkebile is a founding principal of BNIM Architects, a firm that is setting new design standards for resource efficiency at the building and community levels. He is a board member of the U.S. Green Building Council, the Nature Conservancy and the Center for Global Community. The recipient of many awards and accolades, Berkebile has conducted numerous sustainable design workshops for the White House, Department of Defense, Department of Energy and the National Park Service.
Doug Farr
Doug Farr
Sustainable Neighborhoods Session and Luncheon
Doug Farr is the founding principal of Farr Associates, an architecture and planning firm specializing in applying the principles of green building to neighborhoods and for urban contexts. The firm is the only one in the world that has designed three LEED Platinum buildings. Farr is on the board of the Congress for New Urbanism and also chairs the LEED Neighborhood Development project, a first ever leadership standard for sustainable land developments.
Jim Hartzfeld
Jim Hartzfeld
Sustainable Trends Session and Luncheon
Jim Hartzfeld is the managing director of InterfaceRAISE, a division of Interface Inc. that is dedicated to assisting companies to cultivate business growth by using sustainability as a core business model. Hartzfeld has served as the past chairman of the U.S. Green Building Council and on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. His expertise has been sought by Fortune 500 companies, including Wal-Mart.
Bob Mann
Bob Mann
Bob Mann is the founder of Bridging the Gap and co-director of the Colorado Shadowcliff eco-friendly mountain sanctuary, where he presents multi-day workshops as part of Shadowcliff’s Sustainability Series. He practiced law in Kansas City for 25 years prior to founding Bridging the Gap, one of the largest environmental education organizations in the Midwest. Mann has served as an environmental counselor to three Kansas City mayors, numerous elected officials and business leaders.
Gerould Wilhelm
Gerould Wilhelm, Ph.D.
Sustainable Design Session and Luncheon
Gerould Wilhelm is the principal-in-charge of the environmental services group of the Conservation Design Forum (CDF). In this practice, he leads sustainable watershed and community design projects throughout the Midwest. Wilhelm is co-author of Plants of the Chicago Region, one of only two such works in the world rated “excellent” by Robert Frodin, author of A Geographic Guide to the Floras of the World. He is noted for developing the Floristic Quality Assessment methodology, a quantitative technique for determining the natural quality of plant communities.
General Courses Instructors
Patti Banks
Banks is the president of Patti Banks Associates (PBA), a community and environmental planning and landscape architectural consulting firm whose work focuses on public participatory and ecologically based planning and design. PBA has assisted many communities in the Kansas City region to evaluate their natural resources and develop protection strategies that achieve important environmental goals while enhancing the quality of the built environment. PBA assisted MARC in the development of a regional Natural Resources Inventory (NRI), a series of GIS data layers providing information on the region’s most important natural resources, and in the application of the NRI to update the region’s greenway trails plan, MetroGreen.
Steve Chinn
Chinn is chairman of Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP's Public Law/Finance Division. Focusing on land-use issues, Chinn has represented public sector entities for 30 years. He has chaired the International Municipal Lawyers Association Land Development, Zoning & Planning Section, and is a member of both the City Attorney Association of Kansas and the Missouri Municipal Attorneys Association. He currently serves as city attorney for Fairway and Mission Hills and advises the Roeland Park Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals.
Marci DuPraw
DuPraw is a nationally known facilitator and mediator with 20 years of experience in public involvement, consensus-building, dispute resolution, training, and coaching. Currently a senior member of SRA International’s Conflict Management and Dispute Resolution Practice, DuPraw served as director of RESOLVE’s Washington, D.C. office.
DuPraw holds a Masters in Natural Resource Policy, Economics, and Management from the University of Michigan, as well as a Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies from the University of California. She has worked all over the United States, as well as in Russia, Estonia, and Cyprus, and has worked on five cases involving Indian Nations. She is a member of the International Association for Public Participation and the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR), and has recently been elected to the Leadership Council of ACR’s Environment and Public Policy Sector.
Richard Gordon
Gordon, Clean Commute project manager for Bridging the Gap, has a Ph.D. in physics and was a founding member of the Risk Prediction Initiative of the Atlantic Global Change institute. A specialist in time-series analysis, Gordon has 20 peer-reviewed research publications including work on hurricanes, El Nino, climate change, intelligent systems and cyber security.
He has been quoted or profiled in Scientific American, Fortune magazine, The Scientist and The Journal of Commerce. Gordon’s current research includes work on the predictability of climate change effects and the relationship between the Southern Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation and the Transpolar Oscillation pressure indices.
Maureen Hart
Maureen Hart
Hart is an internationally recognized expert on sustainability measurement and author of the Guide to Sustainable Community Indicators.
She consults on sustainability and measurement issues with communities, non-profit organizations, federal, state, regional, and local governments, foundations and the private sector. She is currently assisting ICMA in developing a Sustainability Management System, intended to establish a new standard for community management and governance based on measurable, results-oriented sustainable development practices.
Amy Malick
Malick opened the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives' (ICLEI) Midwest Regional Capacity Center in Chicago in November 2007. She is responsible for supporting all ICLEI members and participants in the Cities for Climate Protection® Campaign within the Midwest and furthering the momentum of greenhouse gas emission reductions within this region.
Formerly with the Chicago Transit Authority, Malick worked on a wide variety of transportation planning and environmental initiatives for nearly six years. Prior to her work in Chicago, she served with the Seattle’s Strategic Planning Office to integrate land use and urban design with SoundTransit’s Link Light Rail. Malick earned a master's degree in urban planning from the University of Washington at Seattle, with specializations in environmental design and community development.
Kristin Riott
Riott, director of outreach for Bridging the Gap, has been trained as a facilitator for Al Gore's Climate Project. She is also the chairperson of Johnson County Climate Protectors, a member of the related Prairie Village Environmental Committee and a member of True Blue Women's environmental committee.
Riott came to Kansas City to work for Hallmark Cards, spending twenty years there in product management and creative writing. Recently Riott and her family spent two years in Asia witnessing the dramatic increase in pollution which has ignited her commitment to environmental issues.
Andy Sauer
Sauer, P.E., is a senior project manager and water resources group leader for CDM in Kansas City. He has over ten years of experience in water resources engineering with over eight years in private consulting and two years in public service with Johnson County, Kan. He has been the chair of the water resource committee of the KC Metro Chapter of APWA from 2004-2007. His water resources experience has included stormwater projects from watershed studies to wetland design and all stages of BMPs including planning, design, review, and standards.
