Core Team

Directors

Maria Ivanova

Maria Ivanova is the Director of the Global Environmental Governance Project and Assistant Professor of Global Governance at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Maria Ivanova is an international relations and environmental policy scholar specializing in governance and sustainability. She focuses on international organizations, climate change, US foreign environmental policy, UN reform, and sustainability on campuses and in organizations. Her academic work analyzes the history and performance of the international environmental architecture and the evolution of US international environmental policy. Her policy work seeks to bring analytical rigor and innovative input to the international negotiations on reforming the UN system for environmental governance. She has published on governance, globalization, and the environment and produced three short documentaries on global environmental governance. In 2009, Dr. Ivanova convened the Global Environmental Governance Forum gathering eighty environmental leaders, including the five successive Executive Directors of UNEP. She was elected twice (in 2009 and 2010) to represent North American civil society at the UN Environment Programme’s Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum. In 2010, she was nominated and selected as coordinating lead author for the policy chapter of the landmark environmental assessment – Global Environmental Outlook-5.

From 2005 to 2010, Professor Ivanova was on the faculty at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Previously, she worked at the Environment Directorate of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in Stockholm. In 2009-2010, she was Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Ecologic Institute in Berlin, is the recipient of the 2007 Professor of the Year Award (from Members 13, a student organization at the College of William and Mary), the 2010 Mary Lyon Award from Mount Holyoke College and the 2010 Goddess Artemis Award from the Euro-American Women’s Council.

Daniel C. Esty

Daniel C. Esty is the Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University. He holds faculty appointments in both Yale’s Environment and Law Schools. He also serves as the Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for Business & Environment at Yale.

Professor Esty is the author or editor of nine books and numerous articles on environmental policy issues and the relationships between environment and corporate strategy, competitiveness, trade, globalization, governance, and development. His prizewinning recent book, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, argues that pollution control and natural resource management have become critical elements of marketplace success and explains how leading-edge companies have folded environmental thinking into their core business strategies.

Prior to taking up his current position at Yale, Professor Esty was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics (1993-94), served in a variety of senior positions on the US Environmental Protection Agency (1989-93), and practiced law in Washington, DC (1986-89). In 2002, Professor Esty received the American Bar Association Award for Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy for “pioneering a data-driven approach to environmental decision making” and developing the global Environmental Sustainability Index. He served four years as an elected Planning and Zoning Commissioner in his hometown of Cheshire, Connecticut. He has advised companies across the world on energy, environment, and sustainability issues and serves as the Chairman of Esty Environmental Partners, a corporate environmental strategy group based in New Haven, CT. He sits on the Board of Directors of Resources for the Future and the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.

Advisors

Alexander Gritsinin

Alexander Gritsinin serves as Management and Governance Advisor to the Global Environmental Governance Project. He is the Science Coordinator at the Collaborative Institute on Oceans, Climate and Security (CIOCS) at the University of Massachusetts Boston where he seeks to create and maintain strong and interactive relations among scientific collaborators and to ensure that the Institute’s policy work is based on comprehensive contemporary scientific research. Alexander has over 15 years of international experience in scientific research institutions, corporations, and international organizations including the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, Uzbekistan National Center for Research in Oncology, Yale University, Coca-Cola, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), UNESCO, and the Nature Conservancy. He holds Master’s Degrees in Biophysics and Ecology from Uzbekistan National University and in Environmental Management and Policy from Yale University. He is fluent in Russian and English.

Researchers

Caroline Anne Amollo

Caroline Anne Amollo is a Masters of Arts Degree candidate in the Conflict Resolution Program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She grew up in Kenya and received her B.Ed. (Arts) from Kenyatta University, Nairobi. She has worked extensively with pastoralist groups in Kenya especially the Maasai people in fostering adaptation projects aimed at alleviating abject poverty among communities. Her research interests focus on Climate Change as an instigator of Conflict, with the goal of earning a PhD in Water Management.

Murray Carroll

Murray Carroll is a master’s degree candidate in International Relations at Harvard University. He looks forward to continuing his research into strengthening environmental governance institutions and increasing the effectiveness of compliance and enforcement mechanisms in the environmental regimes. He is currently a Director of the International Court for the Environment Coalition and has worked with the International Maritime Organization, the Environmental Law Foundation, Sustainable Future Consulting at the LSE, the Government of Canada, and Scotia Capital, a Canadian Investment Bank. Murray has a law degree from the London School of Economics, has studied Alternative Dispute Resolution at Queen Mary University of London and Harvard Law School, and graduated “with Distinction” from the University of Manitoba with a bachelor’s degree in Political Studies.

Christine Cutting

Christine Cutting is a Master of Science candidate in the department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her research interests include sustainable development, global governance and leadership, as well as feminist IR theories. Christine is a Fellow at the Center for Peace, Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where she is the Program Director of the Correlates of Human Trafficking Project. She is a 2006 graduate of Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, where she studied at the Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict studies, achieving a Bachelor of Arts in International Peace and Conflict Studies and Hispanic Cultures.

Laurence Delina

Laurence  L Delina is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, an Earth System Governance Research Fellow, and a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research interests are in international environmental finance and the future relationship between climate change and governance. He has published on issues surrounding these issues in Asia and beyond. Laurence held roles at the United Nations, the University of Manchester, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan, Land Bank of the Philippines and the Philippine National Irrigation Administration. He received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and master’s degree in public administration from Mindanao State University in General Santos City, Philippines. He also holds a master’s degree in development studies (first class honours) from the University of Auckland.

Michael Denney

Michael Denney is a Masters student in the International Relations program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He graduated from Mcgill University in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History. Having spent a substantial amount of his life living abroad in Canada, Western Europe, and East Asia, Michael has developed an acute awareness of cultural diversity and its impact on politics, both national and international. He spent the last year working for Political Research Associates in Somerville, MA, where he collaborated on a number of projects including a political map of the American right-wing and an analysis of American laws rooted in anti-immigration sentiment. His main interests are understanding preconditions for revolutionary conflict and post-conflict resolution. He grew up in Lexington, MA and speaks English and French.

Tse Yang Lim

Tse Yang Lim is a degree candidate for a Masters of Environmental Management at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He has an obsession with large-scale interactions and linkages, particularly between environment and development and between science and policy. He has previously worked at the Marine Conservation Institute in Washington, DC, on marine protected areas and the high seas, from whence developed his interest in international environmental governance. Most recently he worked at the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations, assisting the 2nd (Economic & Financial) Committee and Ambassador’s Office. Tse Yang hails from Singapore, and graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a B.S. in Biology.

Natalia Escobar-Pemberthy

Natalia Escobar-Pemberthy is a Colombian International Business professional, with a degree certificate in Political Studies and a MSc degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She worked for several public administrations in Colombia, including the Governor’s Office of Antioquia as General Manager and Deputy Director for International Business and Cooperation. She has also worked as an advisor to Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the 38 General Assembly of the Organization of American States. Since 2009 she has worked for Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia where she joined a project to offer new elements to Colombia’s foreign policy from the perspective of biodiversity international governance. She has authored articles published in Colombian public policy journals and a project oriented to evaluate the participation of developing countries on the Convention of Biological Diversity. Currently, she is a PhD student in the Global Governance and Human Security program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She looks forward to continue working on the impact of environmental governance in developing countries.

Rima Mahmoud

Rima Mahmoud is a Masters of Arts degree candidate in the Conflict Resolution Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, International Relations, and French from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Rima’s research interests focus on International Conflict, Global Governance, and UN Reform. In 2010, she traveled to Kosovo with the Moakley Professorship of Peace and Reconciliation, to assist in the Inaugural Forum for Cities in Transition Conference. This summer she will be traveling to the Middle East to conduct her own research on Sustainable Coexistence in Intractable Conflicts. Upon graduating, she plans on attending Law school for a degree in International Law and Human Rights. Rima has been working with Maria Ivanova since September 2010. She grew up in the Middle East and is fluent in Arabic and English.

Cecilia Nardelli

Cecilia Nardelli is an Italian administrative lawyer and a recent LLM graduate from the Boston College Law School. She received her education at Luiss Guido Carli University and University of Florence in Italy, where she also worked for several public administrations, most notably the Chamber of Deputies and the Environmental Ministry. Working at the Environmental Ministry strengthen her passion for the environmental field and the realization that only International initiatives have hopes to solve the modern problems prompted her to apply for an LLM with a focus in international environmental law. She is author of several publications in Italian law journals as well as of a recent essay on the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol which will be published shortly. She is currently working with Dr. Ivanova to address the legal aspects of the institutional reform of the Environmental Global Governance

Karen Powell

Karen is currently a master’s degree candidate in the Conflict Resolution program at the University of Massacusetts Boston and is on hiatus from her practice as an attorney in Massachusetts. Her prior career was as a college administrator and as an adjunct faculty member at a college in South Carolina. Karen holds a BA in English from the College of Charleston, a MPA from the University of South Carolina and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Yuliya Rashchupkina

Yuliya is a doctoral candidate in the Global Governance and Human Security program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She has previously worked with Ukrainian non-profit organizations in the areas of human rights, accountable and transparent government, and involvement of the public in decision making processes. She has authored chapters in the publications on public access to comprehensive city plans in Ukraine, public participation in urban planning and preventing public schools closings in rural areas (in Ukrainian).She also worked for Office of Institutional Research (Univeristy of Nebraska at Omaha) and think tank Northeast Midwest Institute (Washington, DC). She earned her BA degree in Political Science and an MA degree in Public Service at East Ukrainian National University (Ukraine). She also holds Master of Public Administration degree from University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her research interests focus on accountability and legitimacy of global governance including environmental global governance, global public goods and civil society organizations.

Barbara Shepard

Barbara joined the Global Environmental Governance Project as an intern from the Worldwatch Institute in June 2011 and is now the Center Coordinator for the Center for Governance and Sustainability at UMass Boston. Barbara graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University in 2010 with her Bachelor’s degree in international relations. Her passion for environmental sustainability stems from her time abroad in Egypt. She is interested in how clean technology can provide sustainable economic development for developing countries. Her background includes researching for Dr. Julian Agyeman and working as a Tufts Recycles! intern. In addition she helped organize the Tufts Environmental Conference in April 2010 and attended the first annual DESERTEC Conference in October 2010.