Planning Committee

Carl is an architect, author and urban/suburban/ regional design strategist. He co-founded the Breakthrough Communities Project and is Visiting Professor at the UC Davis Center for Regional Change. He served as Acting Director of the Community and Resource Development Unit at the Ford Foundation and directed the Foundation’s Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative and the Regional Equity Demonstration in the U.S. He founded the Urban Habitat Program in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1996, he was appointed Fellow at the Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He authored The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race (2017).

Shelley serves as Program Coordinator for the California History-Social Science Project and sits on the statewide California Environmental Literacy Initiative to help integrate environmental literacy into the K-12 history-social science classroom. She completed her Ph.D. in United States History at UC Davis, where she teaches U.S. and environmental history courses. Her book, Big Sur: The Making of a Prized California Landscape, won the 2018 Weyerhaeuser Book Award for conservation history.

Paloma is President of Earth House Center and co-founder of the Breakthrough Communities Project and served as Director of Strategic Communications for the Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative at the Ford Foundation. Pavel’s academic background includes graduate study at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Harvard University. Her research at LSE addresses South African Economics in the pre- and post-Apartheid eras. She has taught at many Bay Area institutions, including the California Institute for Integral Studies. Pavel is a frequent lecturer and keynote presenter. She is visiting faculty at UC Davis where she also serves on the Regional Advisory Council for the Center for Regional Change.

Emily is Executive Director of the California Global Education Project and serves as co-chair to the California Environmental Literacy Initiative. As a teacher, principal, and district resource teacher for San Diego Unified, History-Social Science Coordinator for San Diego County Office of Education, preservice faculty at San Diego State University, and liaison for National Geographic Education, environmental education maintained a place in her work as an educator. Schell was a writer for the EEI (Education and the Environment Initiative) Social Studies curriculum. She completed her Ed.D. in Education Leadership at the University of San Diego.

Maria is Executive Director of the California Science Project. She received her Ph.D. in experimental particle physics in the Netherlands and also researched brain functioning and learning at the Keck Institute for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. Since 2012, Dr. Simani has served on the Science Expert Committee of the California Department of Education to review and provide recommendations for the adoption and implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards. Dr. Simani and the California Science Project have also contributed as lead writers of the new California Science Curriculum Framework. The California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls nominated Dr. Simani in 2013 as one of the Trailblazer STEM Women of the Year, and the California Science Teachers Association recognized Dr. Simani for her distinguished service to science education in California in 2016 and 2019.