Anthony Leiserowitz
Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D., is the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the Yale Center for Environmental Communication, and a senior research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an expert on public environmental beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that influence them.
He conducts research at the global, national, and local scales, including many studies of the American public. He also conducted the first global study of public values, attitudes, and behaviors regarding sustainable development and has published more than 200 scientific articles, chapters, and reports.
He has served as a consultant to the John F. Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University), the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education and a Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research. He is also the host of Climate Connections.
Sara Peach
Sara Peach is the editor-in-chief of Yale Climate Connections. She is an environmental journalist whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Scientific American, Environmental Health News, Grist, and Chemical & Engineering News. For her reporting on environmental issues, she has earned awards from the National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year International, and the Society of Environmental Journalists. She joined the editorial team at Yale Climate Connections in 2016.
Previously, Sara taught for more than five years at the journalism school at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she led courses in environmental journalism and served as the associate director of the Reese News Lab, a media entrepreneurship program.
Sara holds a master’s degree in journalism and a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies, both from UNC-Chapel Hill. More by Sara Peach
Lisa Fernandez
Lisa Fernandez is the associate director of the Yale Center for Environmental Communication, YCEC, at the Yale School of the Environment. Lisa supervises outreach and communications related to YCEC research findings and oversees program strategy and operations.
Previously, she worked in urban environmental conservation and sustainable development in the U.S. and Latin America. She has served as a consultant to the United Nations Development Program, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Bank. She was a fellow at the World Wildlife Fund-USA and a city planner implementing solid waste prevention policy for the city of New York.
Her publications include “Toward a New Consciousness: Values to Sustain Human and Natural Communities” and “Institutionalizing Sustainability in Higher Education.”
She serves on the boards of the East Coast Greenway Alliance and the Farmington Canal Rail-to-Trail Association. She received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton and an MBA and a master’s in environmental studies from Yale.
Pearl Marvell
Pearl Marvell is a multimedia storyteller with over 10 years of experience as a writer, reporter, photographer, and producer. Pearl received her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Puerto Rico in 2011 and a master’s degree in journalism with a concentration in international reporting from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in 2014. Since then, she has reported in the Caribbean, the U.S., and Europe.
Pearl has reported radio stories for several NPR affiliates, including reporting and producing for a podcast on immigration called “Mosaic.” Her written work has been featured in The Providence Journal, 41ºN Magazine, and several other New England news organizations. Her photography has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and other regional publications. She moved to Rhode Island in 2015 and since then has run a storytelling marketing company and reported and produced stories primarily on the environment and immigration.
Besides English, Pearl also speaks Spanish and French.
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Perla Marvell es periodista multimedia que tiene más de 10 años de experiencia como escritora, reportera, fotógrafa y productora. Perla recibió su bachillerato en psicología de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto Río Piedras en 2011 y una maestría en periodismo con una concentración en reportaje internacional de la Escuela Graduada de Periodismo de CUNY en 2014. Desde entonces, ella ha reportado en el Caribe, Estados Unidos y Europa.
Perla ha producido reportajes para algunos afiliados de NPR, incluyendo reportar y producir un podcast sobre la inmigración que se llama “Mosaic.” Su trabajo escrito ha salido en The Providence Journal, 41ºN Magazine y algunas otras organizaciones de noticias de Nueva Inglaterra. Sus fotografías han salido en The Wall Street Journal y otras publicaciones regionales. Se mudó a Rhode Island en 2015 y desde aquel tiempo, fundó una compañía de marketing multimedia y reportó y produjo reportajes primariamente acerca del medio ambiente e inmigración.
Aparte del inglés, Perla habla español y francés. More by Pearl Marvell
Samantha Harrington
Samantha Harrington, director of audience experience for Yale Climate Connections, is a journalist and graphic designer with a background in digital media and entrepreneurship. Sam is especially interested in sharing how climate change is affecting people, animals, the ecology, and the economy across the U.S. Midwest. She has reported and written for Yale Climate Connections since 2016.
In 2015, after graduating from the University of North Carolina, where she studied journalism and Arab cultures, she founded Driven Media, a roving newsroom, and she was a regular contributor to Women@Forbes, where she wrote about women in business. She worked at ISeeChange as a global community manager from 2018 – 2022.
She has also worked on a number of international projects. In 2018, she illustrated and designed an educational workbook for Syrian children living in Jordan and Lebanon for the organization Project Amal ou Salam. In 2014, she traveled to Amman, Jordan, to study why Jordanian women study STEM subjects at twice the rate of American women, and she has reported on maternal health issues in Malawi and on counter-terrorism efforts in Morocco. More by Samantha Harrington
Jon Ozaksut
Jon Ozaksut is the digital director of the Yale Center for Environmental Communication, YCEC, at the Yale School of the Environment. He joined YCEC in 2017 with nine years of experience in the fields of digital marketing and advocacy through organizations such as Organizing for Action and Reverb.com.
In his work, Jon has developed communications strategies and marketing campaigns built around a user-centered experience and a desire to share stories in ways that resonate with audiences. Jon is inspired by the challenges inherent in communicating climate change and helps Yale Climate Connections reach a broad, diverse audience.
Jon has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and in his free time, he has a passion for writing and performing music.
Bridgett Ennis
Bridgett Ennis is co-founder of ChavoBart Digital Media, an audio and video production firm with a focus on scientific and environmental media. ChavoBart Digital Media contributes original reporting, audio production, and distribution to the Climate Connections radio program and podcast.
Prior to founding ChavoBart Digital Media, Bridgett was a vice president at Finger Lakes Productions International, a company that produced and distributed media to more than 600 radio stations during its 25-year history. In that capacity, Bridgett worked directly with representatives from the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, the Ocean Conservancy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the American Society for Microbiology, and others to meet their outreach needs. She also managed the planning and launch of the Everglades Radio Network, which highlighted the restoration efforts taking place in the Florida Everglades, and was project manager for Our Ocean World and MicrobeWorld, two nationally syndicated daily radio series.
Bridgett holds a bachelor of science degree from Ithaca College and a master’s degree from SUNY Empire State College. More by Bridgett Ennis
Erika Street Hopman
Erika Street Hopman is co-founder of ChavoBart Digital Media, an audio and video production firm with a focus on scientific and environmental media. ChavoBart Digital Media contributes original reporting, audio production, and distribution to the Climate Connections radio program and podcast.
Erika has diverse experience that includes work in radio, video, and print. An independent filmmaker, Erika has screened her work at film festivals around the world and on broadcast outlets such as LinkTV and Al Jazeera English. She is the director of The Orange Story, an award-winning multimedia project that educates students about the history of Japanese American incarceration during WWII.
Before founding CBDM, Erika served as a project manager at Finger Lakes Productions International, where she oversaw the writing, production, and distribution of nationally-syndicated radio series, including the EnvironMinute and Animal Instincts. Erika holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Cornell University and a master’s of fine arts degree in film production from Boston University. More by Erika Street Hopman
Sarah Kennedy
Sarah Kennedy is an editor and content producer with ChavoBart Digital Media, a production firm with a focus on scientific and environmental media. Her work on Climate Connections includes developing story ideas, conducting interviews, and writing and editing scripts.
After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2001, Sarah worked for seven years as managing editor of Wordsmyth, a company developing language-learning resources for K-12 education and ESL learners. There, she managed projects for clients including McGraw Hill, Scholastic, and Leapfrog.
In 2012, Sarah left Wordsmyth to pursue her own writing more intensively. She earned a master’s of fine arts degree in nonfiction from Rutgers University, Camden, where she subsequently taught undergraduate composition and creative writing courses.
Sarah’s research and narrative-driven essays and articles have been published in Post Road, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Under the Sun, Hidden City Philadelphia, Fodor’s Oregon, and elsewhere. In her work with Climate Connections, she hopes to help people make new connections between global warming and its impacts on people’s lives. More by Sarah Kennedy
Michael Svoboda
Michael Svoboda, Ph.D., is the Yale Climate Connections books editor. He is a professor in the University Writing Program at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he has taught since 2005. Before completing his interdisciplinary Ph.D. at Penn State in 2002, Michael was the majority owner and senior manager of Svoboda’s Books, an independent bookstore that served Penn State’s University Park campus from 1983 to 2000.
While operating the bookstore, Michael periodically served as a community columnist and book reviewer for The Centre Daily Times, and he also produced and hosted Libri, The Radio Book Revue, a weekly one-hour book program, for WPSU, the NPR affiliate owned and operated by Penn State.
Over the six-years of the program, he interviewed some 200 authors, including numerous leading nature/environment writers. An avid consumer of climate change-related reports, articles, and literature, Michael has published articles, book reviews, and review essays on ancient rhetoric and on philosophy, rhetoric and composition, and environmental communication. He is currently writing a book on Climate Change in American Popular Culture for Routledge. More by Michael Svoboda
Regular contributors
SueEllen Campbell
SueEllen Campbell created and for over a decade curated the website “100 Views of Climate Change,” a multidisciplinary collection of pieces accessible to interested non-specialists. She is especially interested in the lived human experience of climate change – and in how many different facets of our lives these changes touch on.
As co-founder and co-director of Changing Climates at Colorado State University, a decade-long program supported by CMMAP, an NSF Science and Technology Center, she organized some 120 talks on campus by as many different faculty members (drawn from over 25 departments and all 8 colleges); offered communication training for scientists and others wishing to speak clearly to non-specialists; and ran the 100 Views website.
With a B.A. in English and Art/Art History from Rice University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia, SueEllen spent over forty years teaching university students, most of them at Colorado State, where she focused on the (mostly nonfiction) literature of nature and the environment, a choice that led her into the topic of climate change. Her books include Even Mountains Vanish: Searching for Solace in an Age of Extinction (2003) and The Face of the Earth: Natural Landscapes, Science, and Culture (2011). Now happily retired, she lives near Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband and their dachshund. More by SueEllen Campbell
Osha Davidson
Osha Gray Davidson is a freelance writer, photographer, author, and desert rat who’s lived in the Southwest for two decades. He’s the recipient of several fellowships, including a Climate Media Fellowship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin, which supported reporting for his book, “Clean Break,” published by InsideClimate News.
Osha’s work has appeared in Scientific American, National Geographic, the New York Times, Discover, Sierra, High Country News, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, and Grist, among others. He served as contributing editor at Earthzine, a NASA-funded journal covering remote sensing, and blogged about the emerging clean energy market for Forbes.
His books include “The Best of Enemies,” which was a finalist for the NYPL’s Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism and was later adapted into a film starring Sam Rockwell and Taraji P. Henson. “The Enchanted Braid” was shortlisted for the UK Natural World Book Prize, often called the “Green Booker.” “Under Fire” was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and appeared on several “best books of the year” lists.
From 2016 to 2021, Osha was the lead photographer for the Central Arizona Conservation Alliance. Osha cowrote the screenplay for the award-winning IMAX documentary, “Coral Reef Adventure,” and produced the podcast, “The American Project,” about reparations for slavery and its legacy. He’s a longtime member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. More by Osha Davidson
Jesenia De Moya Correa
Jesenia De Moya Correa is an award-winning bilingual multimedia journalist who specializes in health and science reporting for Latino communities and their connections in the Americas.
She has written and produced audio segments, web series, reports, and engagement efforts at the intersection of science, community, and the environment for mainstream news media in the Caribbean and the United States. Her community reporting has been published by Listín Diario, Radio Santa María, Diario Libre, Salta Pa’Tras Films, Voice of America, El Diario NY, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, where she became the founder and manager for El Inquirer — an online Spanish-language news product she created to engage with bilingual Latino audiences in the Greater Philadelphia region.
Jesenia is a 2021 Science-Health-Environment Reporting Fellow and a 2018 New Economies Coalition Climate Solutions Fellow. She was awarded the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association’s 2022 Diverse Journalist Award and the Dominican News Media Association’s 2013 Sustainable Tourism Award. A 2020 Lenfest Constellation News Leadership Fellow, she contributed to the Nieman Journalism Lab’s 2022 Predictions for Journalism package.
Born in New York City to Dominican parents, she spent her formative years in the Dominican Republic, where she studied communication with a minor in brand management at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra. She earned a master’s degree in bilingual journalism with a minor in health and science reporting at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. More by Jesenia De Moya Correa
Bob Henson
Bob Henson is a meteorologist and journalist based in Boulder, Colorado. He has written on weather and climate for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Weather Underground, and many freelance venues. Bob is the author of “The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change” and of “The Rough Guide to Climate Change,” a forerunner to it, and of “Weather on the Air: A History of Broadcast Meteorology”, and coauthor of the introductory textbook “Meteorology Today”. For five years and until the summer of 2020 he co-produced the Category 6 news site for Weather Underground.
In 2018 Bob began a three-year elected term on the AMS Council, the governing body of the American Meteorological Society. His interests include photography, bicycling, urban design, renewable energy, and popular culture. A native of Oklahoma City, he earned a bachelor’s degree in meteorology and psychology from Rice University and a master’s degree in journalism, with a focus on meteorology, from the University of Oklahoma. More by Bob Henson
Nikayla Jefferson
Nikayla Jefferson is a political science graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, where her research focuses on the intersection of climate justice, the American environmental movement, democracy, and engaged spiritual traditions. She is interested in researching, writing, and living the questions related to what it means to be a human in this moment we call the Anthropocene.
Nikayla’s work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Nation, and others. Her essay, “From the Hunger Strike, With Love,” was selected for publication in the book “Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility,” edited by Rebecca Solnit and climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua.
Nikayla previously worked for the Sunrise Movement and cofounded the San Diego chapter. She was an Op-Ed Project/Yale Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis and Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign California co-chair. She is a lifelong Californian without plans to leave unless life asks otherwise. Nikayla spends much of her time with Rainer Maria Rilke and her journal at the beach.
Website here.
Karin Kirk
Karin Kirk is a geologist and freelance writer with a background in climate education. She’s a scientist by training, but the human elements of climate change occupy most of her current work. Karin is particularly intrigued by how people talk and think about climate change, how it divides them, and the many ways individuals and society can help carry the climate conversation forward.
Karin has worked in many facets of climate change, beginning with undergraduate and graduate studies in paleoclimatology and human influences on the climate system. Her climate-focused work includes teaching in the classroom, designing curriculum, and leading faculty workshops to strengthen teaching about climate and energy. She has migrated her efforts from the classroom to the general public, via her TEDx talk and writing for Yale Climate Connections, EARTH magazine, and other venues.
In addition to her writing work, Karin is part of CLEAN, a NOAA-sponsored project to improve teaching about climate and energy. She also worked with NOAA’s Climate Program Office to evaluate the effectiveness of the Climate.gov website. Previously, she worked for the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College, collaborating with educators and academics to improve science teaching practices. She works on civic engagement around climate and energy issues in her home state of Montana.
Karin holds a B.A. in geology from Skidmore College and an M.S. in geology from Montana State University. She is a professional ski instructor and guide. More by Karin Kirk
Michael Lowry
Michael Lowry is Hurricane Specialist for WPLG-TV, the ABC affiliate in Miami, Florida. He has 20 years of experience in tropical weather research, forecasting, and emergency management, including as senior scientist with the National Hurricane Center.
Michael’s wide breadth of experience also includes his role as Hurricane Specialist and Tropical Program Lead for The Weather Channel, where he guided a national audience through countless landfalling hurricanes. Prior to joining WPLG in his current position, Michael was an official with FEMA, where he directed response plans for disasters across the southeastern United States.
He holds a B.S. and an M.S. in meteorology from Florida State University. More by Michael Lowry
Jeff Masters
Jeff Masters, Ph.D., worked as a hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990. After a near-fatal flight into category 5 Hurricane Hugo, he left the Hurricane Hunters to pursue a safer passion – earning a 1997 Ph.D. in air pollution meteorology from the University of Michigan.
In 1995, he co-founded the Weather Underground, and served as its chief meteorologist and on its Board of Directors until it was sold to the Weather Company in 2012.
Between 2005-2019, his Category 6 blog was one of the Internet’s most popular and widely quoted sources of extreme weather and climate change information.
Media inquiries: Send an email to Jeff (members of the media only, please) More by Jeff Masters
Molly Matthews Multedo
Fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, Molly Matthews Multedo is the founding director of Acquazul, a nonprofit that creates multilingual broadcast and digital media on social and environmental issues for distribution throughout the Americas.
Her recent work includes Latino Verde, a Spanish-language radio and digital media series created to heighten public awareness of Latinx environmental professionals and their work through storytelling. Latino Verde was developed in collaboration with The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Project Drawdown, and Yale Climate Connections, and distributed nationally via Hispanic Communications Network (HCN).
She has been associated with Spanish-language educational media for much of her career. Her Spanish-language radio series on reproductive health garnered recognition from the Population Institute (World Media Award) and Planned Parenthood (Maggie Award) and she has developed science education media projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Human Genome Project and the National Science Foundation. She was Senior Vice President of Hispanic Radio Network from 1992-1997 and returned in 2017 as a consultant. In 2018, she joined World Voices Media (formerly Pinyon Foundation), a California nonprofit media organization that often partners with Hispanic Communications Network.
She holds two graduate degrees from Columbia University: an MA in International Affairs from the School of International Public Affairs and an MS in Journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism.
Molly has maintained a home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, since 1998 and raised her three children there. She is an avid hiker and especially enjoys swimming in the ocean along the coast of Rio de Janeiro with the Otreino open-water swim team. More by Molly Matthews Multedo
Dana Nuccitelli
Dana Nuccitelli, research coordinator for the nonprofit Citizens’ Climate Lobby, is an environmental scientist, writer, and author of ‘Climatology versus Pseudoscience,’ published in 2015. He has published 10 peer-reviewed studies related to climate change and has been writing about the subject since 2010 for outlets including Skeptical Science and The Guardian.
Dana received a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in physics from UC Davis before becoming an environmental scientist. He says he was inspired after seeing ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in 2006 to find out if the science presented in the film was accurate. He devoted several years to reading books, articles, and peer-reviewed studies about climate change.
In 2010, Dana began contributing to the climate blog and myth debunking website Skeptical Science, from which The Guardian picked up several of his timely debunkings of climate myths perpetuated by influential individuals and interest groups. In early 2013, he joined with John Abraham of St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Mn., on the Guardian’s new international environmental blogging network. From then through most of 2018, he co-published with Abraham on a weekly basis until the blog network was discontinued in late 2018. Dana has also published several climate-related studies, most notably on the 97 percent expert “consensus” among climate scientists that humans are primarily responsible for the observed global warming since 1950. More by Dana Nuccitelli
Cameron Oglesby
Cameron Oglesby is a youth environmental justice advocate, oral historian, ecologist, consultant, and multimedia storyteller. Cameron is passionate about integrating community-centered, equity-oriented perspectives into conservation, environmental policy solutions, and corporate decision-making.
Cameron received her bachelor’s degree in environmental science and policy from Duke University and is a graduate student at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. In her free time, she is a freelance reporter covering environmental racism in North Carolina’s rural communities and serves as an associate editor at Earth in Color, a creative studio created to affirm the deep-rooted connections between Black culture and nature. She is also the project coordinator and creative lead for the Environmental Justice Oral History Project, a storytelling hub at Duke that elevates the personal, place-based narratives of communities impacted by environmental injustices across the American South.
She is the first-place recipient of the Society of Environmental Journalists 2022 Outstanding Student Reporting Award, an Uproot Project Environmental Justice Fellow, an Op-Ed Project/Yale Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis, a Memorial Foundation Social Justice Fellow, and a Doris Duke Conservation Scholar alumna who has written for the Nation, the Margin, Grist, Southerly, Scalawag, Environmental Health News, the Wilderness Society, and the 9th Street Journal/INDY Week.
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Environmental Justice Movement in September 2022, Cameron organized a series of events that brought together movement icons and legends for discussions of environmental justice — past, present, and future. As a part of the celebration, she received the Sankofa bird symbolic torch on behalf of youth advocates across the state.
Post-graduation, Cameron will join one of the most prestigious management consulting firms in the country, McKinsey & Company, where she hopes to develop environmental justice-centered engagement and research opportunities in their growing sustainability practice. More by Cameron Oglesby
Neha Pathak
Neha Pathak, MD, FACP, DipABLM is dual board-certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine. She is on the medical team responsible for ensuring the accuracy of health information on WebMD and reports on topics related to lifestyle, environmental, and climate change impacts on health.
Pathak is co-founder of Georgia Clinicians for Climate Action and Co-Chair of the Global Sustainability Committee for the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She is a Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with the Op-Ed Project and Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Pathak is a graduate of Harvard University and Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She completed her certificate in climate change and health communication from Yale School of Public Health. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and three daughters. More by Neha Pathak
Kristen Pope
Kristen Pope is a freelance writer and editor who frequently writes about climate change, ecology, wildlife, conservation, and many other topics for a wide variety of publications. She has a masters degree in natural resources planning and interpretation from Northern California’s Humboldt State University (now known as Cal Poly Humboldt), as well as a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Davis.
Kristen enjoys spending time in the field with researchers, from those studying wildfires close to her home in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, to those collecting vital climate data at Greenland’s Summit Station.
She is particularly fascinated by the Arctic and Antarctic, and is always looking for a way to delve deeper into the realm of the cryosphere, including how climate change is impacting the world’s ice caps and glaciers – as well as what those changes mean for people living far from the poles.
Before becoming a full-time freelance writer and editor, Kristen educated park and museum visitors about science and history. In these roles, she did everything from teaching people about the past to helping excited kindergartners learn how to gently touch a Madagascar hissing cockroach. More by Kristen Pope
Daisy Simmons
Daisy Simmons is a freelance writer and editor with more than 15 years of experience in research-driven storytelling. In addition to contributing to Yale Climate Connections since early 2016, she also writes and edits for CurrentCast, a syndicated daily radio series devoted to Great Lakes water issues.
Previously, Daisy served as Editorial Director for EcoMyths Alliance, a nonprofit that partnered with scientists to make environmental issues accessible and empowering to a general audience. In addition to overall content development, she was responsible for co-producing monthly myth-busting segments for Chicago Public Media, and editing an environmental science curriculum in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation. She has also served as a Chicago-based editor for Disney’s Ideal Bite and NBC/Universal Chicago.
Now based in the foothills of Northern California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, Daisy is committed to applying her B.A. in Creative Writing from Colorado College to creatively, and credibly, write about new ways forward in confronting today’s environmental challenges. More by Daisy Simmons
Alexandra Steele
Alexandra Steele has more than 20 years’ experience as an on-air meteorologist. She has worked both nationally and in local television markets forecasting the weather, including on the Weather Channel and CNN.
Alexandra is a member of the American Meteorological Society and has earned the Television Seal of Approval. She is also an Emmy-nominated meteorologist.
Alexandra earned her bachelor’s degree from Brown University and has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She completed her meteorology degree in Connecticut concurrent to working at WJLA-TV.
Prior to her on-air television work, she worked in both London and New York City for ABC News.
Alexandra is married, has a daughter, and is pursuing a master’s degree in climatology. More by Alexandra Steele
Tom Toro
Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. In 2020, he was a finalist for the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for gag cartoonist of the year.
Tom wrote and illustrated the children’s picture book “How to Potty Train Your Porcupine” (Little, Brown 2020) and the political cartoon collection “Tiny Hands” (Dock Street Press, 2017). He illustrated the civics book “A User’s Guide to Democracy” (Celadon Books, 2020), and he is illustrating Simon Rich’s debut picture book “I’m Terrified of Bath Time” (Little, Brown 2022).
Tom has written short stories for the New Haven Review, Slush Pile and Litro (UK), as well as contributing a dozen essays to the New Yorker Cartoon Encyclopedia. His fiction has been shortlisted for the Disquiet International Literary Prize. Tom was an inaugural fellow at the Orchard Project Episodic Lab in screenwriting, where he developed a mixed animated TV series “The Strip.” He was also awarded a playwriting residency at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre Ground Floor. Tom is a lecturer on cartoon art, represented by the Cassidy & Fishman speakers bureau.
Tom attended NYU graduate film school, where he co-created films that played at Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes. Before that, Tom graduated cum laude from Yale, receiving the Betts Prize for his literary work while also serving as captain of the national-champion lightweight rowing team and cartoon editor for the Yale Herald. Tom grew up in El Cerrito, California. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, kid, and cat. More by Tom Toro
Sarah Wesseler
Sarah Wesseler is a writer and graphic designer. In addition to her work in climate journalism, she is an editor at the Architectural League of New York, a nonprofit focused on design, urbanism, and the built environment. Originally from suburban Cincinnati, she has lived in Italy, Japan, and the UK and is now based in Brooklyn. She holds undergraduate degrees in studio art and Italian from The Ohio State University and a master’s in cultural policy from Warwick University in England. More by Sarah Wesseler
Donald Wright
Donald Wright, PhD, teaches the politics of climate change at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in Fredericton, the capital city of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. He has written on climate change in The Globe and Mail, The Literary Review of Canada, The Network in Canadian History and Environment, and for CBC.ca. He is especially interested in climate books and podcasts, and in how climate change is communicated in both non-fiction and fiction.
Don earned his BA from Mount Allison University, his MA from McGill University, and his PhD in Canadian history from the University of Ottawa. In 1998 he was a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of History at New York University.
He is the author of several books, including Canada: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. He currently is writing a book about the late Canadian historian Ramsay Cook.
Don is an avid fan of trail running in warmer months, of cross-country skiing in colder months, and of climate podcasts year long. More by Donald Wright
Our founders
Bud Ward
Bud Ward was editor of Yale Climate Connections from 2007-2022. He started his environmental journalism career in 1974. He later served as assistant director of the U.S. Congress’s National Commission on Air Quality, before founding The Environmental Forum magazine in 1982. In 1988 he established Environment Writer for journalists covering natural resources and environmental issues.
A co-founder of the Society of Environmental Journalists in 1989, he served as a frequent environmental analyst for NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition,” and he founded and managed the foundation-funded Central European Environmental Journalism Program.
An advisory editor for the Oxford University Second Edition of Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather (2007), and an adviser in 2007/2008 to the United Nations Development Program, he administered the jury for the Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment throughout the six-year history of that prize. George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communications in 2009 named him its “Climate Change Communicator of the Year.”
An elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), he is a member of SEJ and of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Penn State University. More by Bud Ward
Jan O'Brien
Jan O’Brien was assistant editor and website manager at Yale Climate Connections from 2007-2022. She brought more than three decades of experience in environmental publishing and policy research and more than 20 years of experience in website management.
She started her environmental career in 1979 as special assistant to the assistant director of the U.S. Congress’s National Commission on Air Quality, under the Clean Air Act, and later served as assistant editor of the Environmental Law Institute’s monthly policy magazine, The Environmental Forum.
After two years as assistant editor with the Government Finance Research Association in Washington, D.C., she joined the nonprofit Environmental Health Center, a component of the National Safety Council. Jan was promoted to the newly formed position of manager of website communications in 1997 and relocated to the Council’s Chicago-area headquarters office, where she guided all web activities associated with Council divisions, members, chapters, board, and partnerships.
She established her own web management and communications business in 2004, and in 2007 began work with Yale Climate Connections. Her fields of expertise include website development and management; environmental communications, writing and editing; web analytics, design strategy and implementation, and project oversight.