Bob King has worked in the sustainable energy field for many years, with 1970s-era stints in Texas at the Governor’s Energy Advisory Council, the Railroad Commission, the Texas Energy Development Fund, and with a volunteer effort to help start the Texas Solar Energy Society. He later held paid positions out-of-state, including ones in Tennessee with the TVA’s Residential Solar Applications Branch, and in California with the Solar Energy Assurance Labeling Program, Local Government Commission, and the Public Utilities Commission Advisory Committee. He returned to Texas in 1983 to lead the Office of Natural Resources during Jim Hightower’s term as Agriculture Commissioner, and meanwhile helped start the Texas Renewable Energy Industry Association. After leaving TDA, from 1991 through 1993, Mr. King coordinated the LOAN STAR revolving loan fund in Texas, which supported energy audits and efficiency retrofits for governmental clients. During the 1993-96 period, he worked for Kenetech, helping build and connect the first commercial-scale wind farm in Texas, and in 1996-97, helped design the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for efficiency and renewable energy customers. In recent years, he has operated out of the Good Company Associates consulting firm, and has been focusing on a smart meter program to allow customers to share energy data.
Region: Coastal Prairie
Karen Hadden
Ms Hadden has served as the executive director of the SEED [Sustainable Energy and Economic Development] Coalition since 2000. Her work has focused on the intersection of energy and environmental concerns, and has included efforts to block coal plants, to reduce mercury emissions from power facilities, to warn the public about mercury-laden fish consumption, to organize opposition to the re-licensing of the Comanche Peak and South Texas nuclear power plants, to support construction of solar panel arrays, to improve energy efficiency and conservation in affordable housing, and to fight misguided proposals to transport and dispose radioactive waste. From 1980 to 1999, before beginning her work as an advocate at the SEED Coalition, she taught science to middle and high school students, leading courses in physics, biology, astronomy, anatomy, physiology and chemistry, sponsoring science clubs and fairs, and organizing field trips.
Shannon Davies
Dr. Davies holds a PhD in American Civilization from the University of Texas at Austin, and has had a career in editing and publishing books and journals, many of them about natural resource and conservation topics. She served as the Director of Texas A&M University Press, where she earlier worked as Editor-in-Chief and as the Merrick Editor for the Natural Environment. Prior to working at Texas A&M, she served as Founding Editor and Publisher of Texas Birds, a publication of the Texas Ornithological Society, as well as the Science Editor and Editorial Fellow for the University of Texas Press. In those capacities, she has worked with a number of funders and dozens of authors to bring scores of books and articles about the natural world to the public. The works have touched on a variety of conservation subjects, including water, wildlife, energy, public lands, forests, agriculture, and environmental history. She has also helped support writers through her service on the boards of two residencies for artists: the Madrono Ranch: A Center for Writing, Art, and the Environment, and the Thinking like a Mountain Foundation.
Bill Carr
Mr. Carr is a noted field botanist who has worked on plant inventories, surveys and protection efforts for Texas Parks and Wildlife (Natural Heritage Program), the Nature Conservancy of Texas, and his own firm, Acme Botanical Services. He has collected more than 37,000 plant specimens, with more than 15,000 catalogued at the herbarium at the University of Texas at Austin, to improve the understanding of plant distributions across the Southwest. As well, he was a co-author, with Jackie Poole, Jason Singhurst, and Dana Price on the reference volume, Rare Plants of Texas (Texas A&M University Press 2007), and has made contributions to a number of journals, including Lundelia, Sida, and the Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.
J.D. Green
J.D. Green is a retired foreman of a ranch on the coastal prairie of Texas who now manages a community garden, part of the Urban Harvest network, in a poor minority neighborhood of east Houston. The East Alabama garden provides fresh seasonal food, an education about diet, nature, and farming to young and old, as well as a sense of community and a place of beauty in the local area.
Walt Kittelberger
Mr. Kittelberger operates “Walt’s Charters”, a sport fishing guide business out of Port Mansfield, Texas. He is a co-founder and executive director of the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation. The Foundation has led efforts to research and protect that South Texas bay, which is a rare hypersaline lagoon well-known for its crystal clear flats, shoalgrasses, redhead duck flocks, and vital redfish and speckled trout populations. He and others involved in the Foundation have been especially concerned about threats to the bay that include dredging for the Intracoastal Waterway, the risk of oil and chemical spills from barge traffic on the Waterway, and development proposals for Padre Island and the mainland.
Marvin Legator
Dr. Legator was a toxicologist and professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and earlier served as chief of the genetic toxicology branch of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He was a critic of the weaknesses in the toxicological testing, risk assessment and epidemiological review of many commonly used and discharged chemicals. Dr. Legator was an author of Chemical Alert! and the Health Detectives Handbook, and worked in other ways to testify for, consult with and assist those affected by environmental releases of toxic chemicals.
Bessie Cornelius
Ms. Cornelius was a birder based in Beaumont, Texas who helped in preserving a number of important bird sanctuaries, including the Audubon sites at Smith Woods, Boy Scouts Woods, Bolivar Flats, and Sydney Island, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service property at McFaddin National Wildife Refuge, as well as other sites in Southeast Texas.
David Crossley
Mr. Crossley has worked in media for many years, managing KPFT Radio, reporting for Texas Monthly, editing Houston City magazine, and leading firms involved in digital presentations. He has also been engaged in environmental protection, acting as chair of the Citizens Environmental Coalition from 1996 through 2000, and founding the Houston Environmental Center in 1998, which has provided office and meeting space for a diverse array of local environmental non-profits. In recent years, Mr. Crossley has been particularly involved in pressing for smart growth, improved quality of life, and better planning for the Houston-Galveston area, through founding and directing the Gulf Coast Institute and Blueprint Houston.
Bill Dawson
Mr. Dawson is a journalist and professor. From 1984 to 2001, he served as the environmental writer for the Houston Chronicle, researching and reporting in major series on smog, air toxics, ozone, grandfathered industries, and global warming, in addition to covering numerous day-to-day events in the environmental field. In the years since, he has continued to write, managing Texas Climate News, covering environmental matters for the Society of Environmental Journalists, as well as contributing to the New York Times, writing for the Center for Public Integrity and the Metcalf Institute, and also serving as a Lecturer in the Center for the Study of Environment and Society at Rice University.