Andrew Jones, Co-Director
Elizabeth Sawin, PhD, Co-Director
Andrew P. Jones (Drew)
apjones
climateinteractive.org
Drew is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Climate Interactive. An expert on international climate and energy issues, he is a system dynamics modeler, keynote speaker, and designer of simulation-based learning environments.
Trained in environmental engineering and system dynamics modeling through a B.A. at Dartmouth College and a M.S. in technology and policy at MIT, he worked in the 1990s at Rocky Mountain Institute and in the 2000s with Dana Meadows at Sustainability Institute.
He and his team at Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan developed C-ROADS, the user-friendly climate simulation in use by climate analysts around the world. His interviews have appeared in multiple media, including the New York Times, U.S. News, and NPR’s Morning Edition.
Jones has written two op-eds in the Sunday New York Times — one on building grounded hope and another in the form of an interactive simulation.
His 2018 keynote address at the Climate and Energy Funders Annual Meeting was voted the highlight of the event.
Jones co-accepted the 2008 “ASysT Prize” for “a significant accomplishment achieved through the application of systems thinking to a problem of U.S. national significance,” the System Dynamics Society’s 2013 award for the best real-world application of modeling, and Dartmouth College’s Ray W. Smith award for the most significant contribution to the status of the College. Climate Interactive was named the 2017 Top US Energy and Environment Think Tank by Prospect Magazine.
He lives with his family in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina and teaches system dynamics at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Writings, videos and other media can be found here.
Elizabeth Sawin, PhD
esawinclimateinteractive.org
Beth is Co-Director of Climate Interactive. A biologist with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Beth trained in system dynamics and sustainability with Donella Meadows and worked at Sustainability Institute, the research institute founded by Meadows, for 13 years.
Beth’s work increasingly focuses on Multisolving, helping people find solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while producing multiple benefits in health, justice, equity, resilience and well-being. She writes and speaks on this topic to local, national, and international audiences.
In 2014 she was invited to participate in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, a continuing dialogue on issues of climate change and sustainability among a select group of humanities scholars, writers, artists and climate scientists.
Beth’s work also focuses on capacity building – helping leaders achieve bigger impacts. She has trained and mentored global sustainability leaders in the Donella Meadows Fellows Program, and provided systems thinking training to both Ashoka and Dalai Lama Fellows in recent years.
Beth lives in rural Vermont and is a member of Cobb Hill Co-Housing along with her husband, Phil Rice, and their two daughters.
Beth’s writings and presentations can be found here.
Cassandra Ceballos
cceballosclimateinteractive.org
Cassandra Ceballos serves as Program Assistant for Climate Interactive’s Multisolving program. Multisolving emphasizes thoughtful climate solutions that give rise to multiple benefits in health, resilience, and well-being, while also ensuring more equitable distribution of those benefits. In her role, Cassandra provides research, communications, and administrative support.
Cassandra attended the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia on a full merit scholarship. A proud first-generation college student, she graduated in 2017 with a dual-major in Economics and Sociology. Prior to joining Climate Interactive, Cassandra spent a year working with local and national conservation corps.
Born and raised on the island of St.Croix, in the US Virgin Islands, Cassandra is extremely passionate about justice and equity, especially as it relates to “having a seat” at the environmental table. She lives with her kitten, Nutmeg, in Richmond, Virginia, and enjoys local music, reading, cooking, and visiting her family and three dogs on St. Croix during the winter when everyone else is very cold.
Todd Fincannon
toddtoddfincannon.com
Todd develops the software applications that bring Climate Interactive’s models to the world. He wrote the Climate Pathways app for iPhone and iPad that enables anyone to quickly grasp the urgency of reducing carbon emissions. He also embedded the C-Learn model in the C-ROADS World Climate app for Windows, Mac, and web. It has been used to run the World Climate Simulation for groups around the world. Todd and Climate Interactive contributed the SDEverywhere toolkit as open-source software for the System Dynamics community.
Todd co-founded three startup companies focused on electronic mail, network management, and financial services. He brings over thirty-five years of software development practice to his current focus on climate and energy policy. Todd holds a B.S. degree in Mathematics from the University of Houston. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Travis Franck, PhD
tfranckclimateinteractive.org
Travis Franck helps decision makers tackle complex issues including community resiliency, climate mitigation and adaptation, and energy system transformation. Currently he is leading Climate Interactive’s efforts to apply interactive decision support tools to understand how climate change and natural disasters impact people’s livelihoods.
Travis is a Program Director for Climate Interactive. He builds international partnerships that include stakeholders from the UN, international NGOs, academics, business, and non-profits. His research interests include the dynamics of climate policy and the implications of delaying action, important environmental and economic feedbacks in climate adaptation, building more climate-robust communities, and uncertainty analysis of carbon permit pricing. He has published on the impact of hurricanes and sea-level rise on coastal communities development (climate adaptation), the economics of climate stabilization, and the long-term prospects of international climate cooperation. Previously, Travis has worked at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. He has presented in many different forums, including World Bank, UNDP, business roundtables and numerous conferences.
Travis has a Ph.D. in engineering systems from MIT, a S.M. in technology policy and Civil Engineering from MIT, and a B.S. in computer science and environmental science from Iowa State University.
Dr. Franck holds positions at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and MIT Sloan School of Management (Research Affiliate).
Ellie Johnston
ejohnstonclimateinteractive.org
Ellie leads Climate Interactive’s global climate and energy efforts. She has built up Climate Interactive’s engagement programs to extend to thousands worldwide from top journalists to leading decision-makers to school children. Through all this, Ellie is working to deepen and expand global understanding on how to act on climate change and related systemic challenges by bridging the gaps between science and policy. Ellie has been a speaker at UN meetings, the White House, the African Union, and many universities; and her work has been cited in publications like the New York Times, Associated Press, and Washington Post.
Ellie is also on the Board of Directors of SustainUS and formerly led the organization, which has enabled thousands of young people to participate in United Nations meetings and develop expertise in effective advocacy and leadership on climate change and sustainable development. Prior to Climate Interactive, Ellie brought together hundreds of authors for the ten-volume Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability, where she was an editing and project coordinator. She is a founder of several grassroots climate change efforts, and advises campaign strategy and network development for organizations. Ellie has spent time as a researcher of climate impacts on high altitude biological systems and also the effectiveness of efforts to institutionalize sustainability in higher education. Ellie has a degree in biology from the University of North Carolina Asheville.
Charles Jones (Skuk), PhD
cajonesclimateinteractive.org
Skuk Jones is a senior modeler at Climate Interactive. He uses system dynamics research to help people adapt to climate change and other complex issues. He works with international partners to improve community resilience and well-being. By understanding how environmental, economic, and social systems affect – and are affected by – people’s livelihoods, leaders can create positive change for a more sustainable world.
Dr. Jones holds a PhD in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he has also taught courses in management, ethics, and business & policy. His postdoctoral work was in energy technology policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Before graduate school, he earned a BA in Physics from Boston University and served as a nuclear engineer on submarines in the US Navy.
Skuk lives with his spouse and two children in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.
Stephanie McCauley
scmccauleyclimateinteractive.org
Stephanie serves as a Project Coordinator and Operations Manager for Climate Interactive. Her current focus is on Multisolving, illuminating the health, jobs, and equity co-benefits that may be realized when enacting thoughtful climate policies. She also manages the development of Climate Interactive’s open-source web tools and helped to build C-Learn, our web-based climate model.
Stephanie is currently serving a two-year term on the Green Ribbon Advisory Committee for the City of Greenville, South Carolina, where she makes recommendations for the city’s sustainability plan.
Before joining the team, Stephanie was a statistician and project coordinator with the State of South Carolina Office of Research and Statistics, a planner for the SC Energy Office, and a GIS analyst for Arcadis Geraghty & Miller.
Stephanie has a M.S. in health economics from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, with a Master’s thesis on “The Impact of Adolescent Overweight on Future Economic Determinants.” She also holds a B.S. degree in applied mathematics from the University of South Carolina Honors College.
Philip Rice, PhD
priceclimateinteractive.org
Phil specializes in the creation of interfaces between the technical worlds of climate science and system dynamics and the user-worlds of government, business, NGOs, and the general public. The purpose of an interface is to translate from the technical world to the non-technical while preserving the conceptual content and the access to it. These interfaces range from the form of graphical user interfaces for computer programs to conceptual interfaces in the form of workshops and briefings that translate the technical complexity of climate science and system science for the less technical or non-technical audiences. The C-ROADS interface of the C-ROADS simulation is Phil’s most current example graphical user interface creation.
Conceptual interface development is in the form of developing visual materials and leading trainings for Climate Interactive with a particular focus on those tools and approaches that will allow leaders to communicate the complex and sometimes counter-intuitive dynamics of climate change and the breadth of possibility for solutions. He offers briefings on emerging climate science, the range of solutions available to climate change, and the many opportunities for building a better world while addressing climate change. He has led trainings on climate change for leaders of community groups, grassroots groups, educators, and faith communities and has co-facilitated the World Climate Exercise for citizen groups and high school participants.
Phil also conducts trainings and workshops on applying the tools of systems thinking to the challenges of sustainability. He co-developed a train-the-trainer workshop on systems thinking for sustainable development practitioners, and has lead workshops on the subject for clients that range from colleges and universities, to NGOs, to businesses. Phil works with clients on applying systems thinking to strategic analysis for change. In the past he has worked on topics ranging from forest issues, to marine hypoxia, to healthcare outcomes.
Phil has a Ph.D. in physiological chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, and lives in an eco-village farm community in Hartland, Vermont with Beth Sawin and their two children.
Elizabeth Sawin, PhD
esawinclimateinteractive.org
Beth is Co-Director of Climate Interactive. A biologist with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Beth trained in system dynamics and sustainability with Donella Meadows and worked at Sustainability Institute, the research institute founded by Meadows, for 13 years.
Beth’s work increasingly focuses on Multisolving, helping people find solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while producing multiple benefits in health, justice, equity, resilience and well-being. She writes and speaks on this topic to local, national, and international audiences.
In 2014 she was invited to participate in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, a continuing dialogue on issues of climate change and sustainability among a select group of humanities scholars, writers, artists and climate scientists.
Beth’s work also focuses on capacity building – helping leaders achieve bigger impacts. She has trained and mentored global sustainability leaders in the Donella Meadows Fellows Program, and provided systems thinking training to both Ashoka and Dalai Lama Fellows in recent years.
Beth lives in rural Vermont and is a member of Cobb Hill Co-Housing along with her husband, Phil Rice, and their two daughters.
Beth’s writings and presentations can be found here.
Lori Siegel, PhD
lsiegelclimateinteractive.org
Lori Siegel is a Senior Modeler for Climate Interactive. She uses system dynamics analyses (SDA) to gain insight into the complex systems involved in global climate change and to facilitate international dialogue regarding policies to mitigate climate change.
Lori has her Ph.D. in environmental engineering, and is a professional engineer with expertise in SDA as well as in the fields of fate and transport in contaminants, hydrology, hazardous waste management, toxicology, and ecological risk assessment.
As a sole proprietor of Siegel Environmental Dynamics, LLC, she consulted to non-profit research organizations, academic institutions, international engineering firms, and physicians. In addition to addressing climate change, her assignments addressed water quality trading; natural resources; mercury in aquatic ecosystems and subsequent effects on the common loon; and risks of disease complication and benefits of various therapies.
She lives with her husband, three sons and labradoodle in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire.
John Sterman, PhD
jstermanmit.edu
John D. Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of MIT’s System Dynamics Group. He is the author of many scholarly and popular articles on the challenges and opportunities facing organizations today, including the book Modeling for Organizational Learning, and the award-winning textbook Business Dynamics.
Prof. Sterman’s research centers on improving decision making in complex systems, focusing on environmental sustainability, climate change, alternative fuel vehicles and process improvement in organizations. He pioneered the development of “management flight simulators” of corporate and economic systems, many of which, including the C-ROADS interactive climate policy simulation he helped developed, are used around the world by governments, businesses, universities and the public.
Among his honors, Sterman is the recipient of an honorary doctorate, has twice been awarded the Jay W. Forrester Prize for the best published work in system dynamics, received the best application award from the System Dynamics Society, was named one of MIT Sloan’s “Outstanding Faculty” by the BusinessWeek Guide to the Best Business Schools, and has received seven awards for teaching excellence from the students at MIT.
Yasmeen Zahar
yzaharclimateinteractive.org
Yasmeen serves as Program Associate for Climate Interactive’s Climate and Energy team where she supports research and community engagement across a range of efforts including En-ROADS, the Climate Scoreboard, and the World Climate Simulation.
She completed a dual Master’s program in Global Environmental Politics & Natural Resources and Sustainable Development at American University in Washington, DC and the University for Peace in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica. In this program she focused primarily on international climate change issues, particularly climate justice, gender and climate, and the UNFCCC process. She is currently based in the DC area, where she previously worked for several climate policy advocacy nonprofits. Yasmeen has engaged with both domestic and international climate policy efforts, and most enjoys exploring these issues through a justice lens.