Jane Jacobs and Climate Readiness in Boston

Oliver Sellers-Garcia

Oliver Sellers-Garcia is Boston's first Green New Deal Director, serving as a Senior Advisor to Mayor Michelle Wu on climate action that addresses social, racial, and economic inequalities.  Since July 2024, he also serves as Commissioner of the Environment Department, the City’s agency responsible for environmental quality, climate change, and energy.  

Previously, Oliver was the Director of Resiliency and Equity at the MBTA and the Director of Sustainability and Environment in Somerville, where he managed programs related to climate, sustainability, and urban planning. Before his public sector roles, he consulted for cities worldwide on integrating sustainability into their operations. He holds a Bachelor's in Urban Studies from Columbia University and a Master's in City Planning from MIT.

Bill Driscoll

Bill Driscoll is a Massachusetts State Senator representing Norfolk, Plymouth, and Bristol. For eight years, he was a State Representative in the Massachusetts House, with four of those years serving as House Chair of the Committee on Emergency Preparedness & Management. He is the former Founder, CEO, & operations roles for Disaster Response & Recovery NGOs. For more than a decade, he has provided leadership in the U.S. disaster response and humanitarian aid sector, organizing volunteers and coordinating resources across organizations, emergency management professionals, and all levels of government to help families and communities rebuild following natural disasters.

Christian Dupont

Christian Dupont is Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Burns Librarian at Boston College. Prior to his arrival in 2014, he held curatorial and administrative positions in special collections at the University of Virginia, Syracuse University, and the University of Notre Dame, where earned graduate degrees in theology and philosophy. He has spoken and published on a wide variety of topics reflecting his interests in various fields, including philosophy, librarianship, Italian Studies, and Irish Studies. 

Tara Pasani Gareau

Tara Gareau is the Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Boston College and a Professor of the Practice. Her research aims to apply ecological principles to restore ecological function and resiliency to agricultural landscapes, while minimizing environmental externalities.  She is interested in understanding how farming systems can be more sustainable in light of climate change.  Her areas of interest are in conservation biological control, arthropod community diversity, wild bee pollination services, and interactions between climate and agriculture. 

Skye Grammas

Skye Grammas is a climate advocate dedicated to advancing climate education and creating healthy, decarbonized schools. She has worked across the nonprofit sector to empower school leaders, educators, students, and communities to take meaningful action on climate change. For five years, Skye served as both an educator and Program Director at a climate education nonprofit, empowering teachers to integrate climate education into their curricula using hands-on, place-based learning strategies, and inspiring students to take action in their communities. She currently works with the national nonprofit UndauntedK12, supporting communications and operations efforts to raise awareness and advocate for policies that help America’s education system modernize aging facilities with clean energy, reduce emissions, and improve learning environments for students nationwide. Skye’s work is rooted in the belief that climate action begins with equitable, high quality education—and that education must take place in healthy, efficient schools designed to meet the needs of today’s students.  Skye holds a B.A in Environmental Studies from Boston College (2019). 

Stacy Grooter

Stacy Grooters is the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Boston College and the Past President of the POD Network, the national organization of centers for teaching and learning. Prior to coming to Boston College, she spent eight years as the Founding Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Stonehill College, a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she also co-directed the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. Stacy’s research focuses on the ways that commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion are practiced within the field of educational development. Her current project seeks to define what it means to be an “equity-minded educational developer” and identify the pathways that educational developers take towards growing an equity-minded practice.

Courtney Humphries

Courtney Humphries is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Core Fellow at Boston College. She is a writer, journalist, teacher, and interdisciplinary scholar interested in decision-making about the built and natural environment in urbanized areas, particularly around climate change adaptation. She and has a PhD in environmental science from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she was a fellow in its NSF-sponsored Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program focused on the transdisciplinary study of Coasts and Communities. Prior to that, she earned a masters degree in science writing from MIT. Her science writing and journalism have appeared in the Boston Globe, Technology Review, Nautilus, Architect, and many other publications, and is author of Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan…And the World, a natural history of street pigeons by Smithsonian Books. She was awarded a prestigious Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2016-2017. Courtney continues to write articles, essays, and op-eds on the urban environment, and she has participated in public discussions about climate change in Boston. Her research on resilience planning in Boston’s Seaport District was recently published in the journal Urban Geography, and she has written a forthcoming book about the city’s efforts to mitigate and prepare for climate change, Climate Change and the Future of Boston, for a series on North American cities by Anthem Press.

Paul Kirshen

Paul Kirshen is Professor in the School for the Environment of the University ofMassachusetts Boston and Visiting Professor in the Department of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering at Tufts University. He has more than 40 years ofexperience serving as Principal Investigator of complex, interdisciplinary, participatory research related to water resources, coastal zone, andinfrastructure management, and adaptation to climate variability and change. He was a Lead Author of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (water resources of North America)and the 2014 US National Climate Assessment (Coastal Zone). He works at scalesranging from local to international and has received both academic and civic researchawards. Recent research includes use of nature-based approaches for coastal floodmanagement in Boston Harbor through the Stone Living Lab, multi-criteria floodmanagement of the Kosi River, Bihar, India, and management of groundwater andsurface water systems to minimize embankment failure on Cape Cod Massachusetts.His research on the impacts of climate change has been cited by the US Supreme Court. In addition, he teaches Climate Change Adaptation Planning. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and many technical reports. He received his ScB in Engineering from Brown University and his MS and PhD in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dave Kramer

Dave Kramer serves as Director of Green Programs and Partnerships at Boston Green Academy, Boston Public Schools’ only school with a mission-level focus on sustainability and environmental justice and environmental science CTE (career and technical education) program. Known as "Big Green Dave," he serves as a coach, advisor, and support for staff, faculty, and students on all things green - from classroom curriculum and experiential programming, to green workforce development and pathways, to the physical plant and systems, to marquis programs, events, and network building. He began his career in Colombia in the 1990’s, teaching grades 6 to 10 (English, History, and Environmental Studies / Outdoor Ed). Colombia’s stunning biocultural diversity and severe public security challenges inspired him to pursue graduate studies in environmental policy and international conservation and development. During the past 20+ years, he’s lived in Boston, Western Mass, Guatemala, and Texas. Dave previously served as program director for Planet Texas 2050 at the University of Texas at Austin (a climate resilience-focused interdepartmental “grand challenge”). Prior to UT, Dave worked for the voluntary carbon market leader Verra on an effort with the Rainforest Alliance to create a standard assessment framework for sustainable tropical landscapes called LandScale; he worked for over a decade in various roles with EcoLogic Development Fund focused on supporting grassroots community-led strategies for conservation and locally-defined priorities in Mexico and Central America; and he has tried his hand at consulting, tourism, and communications work. Dave holds a Master's in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, a BA in English from Dartmouth College, and a certificate in Outdoor Leadership from Greenfield Community College in Massachusetts. He is a Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation Environmental Fellow and a Pat Cooke Fellow. He lives in Jamaica Plain with his family, where he enjoys the greenspace to walk, run, bike, and feel awe!

Orion Kriegman

Orion Kriegman is the founding Executive Director of the Boston Food Forest Coalition, a network of neighbors transforming vacant land into public edible parks protected by a land trust. To create a permanent green corridor in Boston, BFCC plans to build 30 food forests by 2030. Prior to BFFC, Orion coordinated the Jamaica Plain Great Transition Initiative at the Tellus Institute and worked as a Project Officer for Reflecting on Peace Practice (RPP), a learning network which gathers lessons about peace-building efforts in internal armed conflicts. Orion received his Masters in Public Policy and Urban Planning from Harvard Kennedy School of Government and has a certificate in Permaculture Design.

Todd Mistor

Todd Mistor is the Director of Urban Forestry for the City of Boston. Todd comes to Boston from Michigan where he worked for the City of Detroit and other smaller municipalities. His love for trees began as a child planting trees on his family’s farm in Mid-Michigan and this interest in the environment and the role of trees led him to Michigan State University, where he received a B.S. in Forestry. Working in the industry, he was credentialed as a certified arborist with a municipal specialization. He also pursued other interests studying philosophy and theology which ultimately honed his commitment to community and social justice throughout the urban landscape. With almost two decades of experience in urban forestry, Todd has come to the City of Boston, Parks and Recreation Department to serve as the first Director of Urban Forestry. This position was created as a result of diverse input that helped formulate the City’s Urban Forest Plan. As trees become ever more important to cities in light of many current challenges, Todd looks to bolster the urban tree canopy while making equity and community engagement top priorities of the Urban Forestry Division.

Carlo Rotella

Carlo Rotella is a professor of English, American Studies, and journalism at Boston College.  He is the author of books about cities, literature, film, boxing, blues, and other subjects, the most recent of which is The World Is Always Coming to An End:  Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood.  His next book, forthcoming in September, is about teaching freshman English.  A recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and the Whiting Writers Award, he contributes regularly to the New York Times Magazine, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Best American Essays.

Renée Scott

Renée Scott is the coordinator for the Massachusetts Pollinator Network where she organizes people across the state working on pollinator health and habitat creation. She also advocates at the state level for pesticide regulation. She is co-founder of Green & Open Somerville (G&OS). Through her work with G&OS she has advocated to stop the installation of artificial turf on playing fields; led depavings, invasive weed pulls, and the planting of native pollinator gardens; and worked on strengthening and creating stronger environmental standards, including the first-of-its-kind Native Planting Ordinance and a green roof amendment. She earned her Master of Public Policy degree from Tufts in 2022.

Min Hyoung Song

Min Hyoung Song is a professor of English and the chair of the English Department at Boston College, where he specializes in the study of race, environment, and literature. He is the author of three books; his latest is entitled Climate Lyricism, which won the Ecocritical Book Prize from the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. In addition to being editor of several edited volumes and the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, his writings have appeared in venues like the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Margins, Public Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Washington Post.

Ankhi Thakurta

Ankhi G. Thakurta is an Assistant Professor at the Boston College Lynch School of Education and Human Development (in the Teaching, Curriculum, and Society Department). A bilingual Indian American immigrant and former middle school English Language Arts teacher, her community-centered research broadly explores the civic literacies, learning, and dreaming of immigrant, migrant, and refugee youth. Her current project examines how Greater Boston-area Asian American youth conceptualize their civic identities and priorities for social change in a virtual Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) program. As a visual artist, Ankhi also examines how art-infused methods of knowledge production can be leveraged to conduct anti-racist, equity-oriented education research alongside historically marginalized communities. Ankhi’s work has appeared in a range of journals including, among others, Reading Research Quarterly, English Teaching: Practice & Critique, English Education, Urban Education, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and Voices From the Middle. Her scholarship has been supported by funding from the National Council of Teachers of English, a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, and other sources. She can be found on Bluesky (@@ankhithakurta.bsky.social) and Instagram (@art_as_method).