Sayd Randle writes on the cultural politics of water, landscape, and infrastructure in the American West. She is a doctoral candidate in environmental anthropology at Yale University and a huge Octavia Butler fan.
Yiyuan (Jasmine) Qin is a Research Analyst at the World Resources Institute, where she works at the intersection of water, forests, and cities to help improve water management around the world. Prior to joining the World Resources Institute, Jasmine journeyed through four great rivers of the world – the Rhine, the Amazon, the Mekong, and the Ganges – and explored the interactions between different human communities and their rivers as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow.
Jasmine earned a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she was a Berkley Conservation Scholar and Tropical Resource Institute Fellow. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Science from Colby College, during which she studied field ecology in Belize and urban development in Detroit, São Paulo, Curitiba, Cape Town, and Hanoi.
James Darius Ball is a soon-to-be MEM graduate focusing on sustainable housing. He believes our built environment will undergo a major evolution within our lifetime, and he hopes to play a part. He worked for Habitat for Humanity for five years, supervising construction, bandaging hammered thumbs, and developing the affiliate’s sustainability practices. Highlight projects include two net zero energy homes, one of which was built in 5 days. He went on to work with a home inspection and certification company and then consulting to the EPA on their home certification programs. He looks forward to working with the Yale community on improving our built environment.
Tamsin Kerr is the director of the Cooroora Institute on the Sunshine Coast of Australia. She brings together art, culture, and environment through writing, consulting, and events so as "to tread lightly and joyfully upon the earth".
Don supports the Environmental Performance Index's communication strategies and platforms, researches the effectiveness of climate-focused international development initiatives, and is an author of the upcoming 2016 EPI report. Don holds a master’s degree from Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, where he studied energy laws and policies that incentivize the development and deployment of renewable energy technologies. Prior to Yale, Don held positions at National Geographic, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Environmental Education Foundation where studied and wrote about climate science and policy. Don also holds a Bachelors of Science in Physical Geography from Penn State University where he studied climatology and Geographic Information Systems.
Lauren Greyson works as an editor and translator in Cologne, Germany. She recently graduated with a PhD from the International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture, where she investigated the reenchanting functions of popular science. When she is not wandering around Germany's more unusual nature preserves and cemeteries, she blogs about scientific illustration at haeckelian.tumblr.com.