Joseph J. Romm
American Author, Blogger, Physicist and Climate Expert

Joseph J. Romm is Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he writes and maintains their climate blog, ClimateProgress.org. Romm is also the executive director and founder of the non-profit Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, which helps businesses and U.S. States adopt high-leverage strategies for saving energy and cutting pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. 

Romm is widely renowned for his views on climate change, energy use and technology advancement. He is an advocate of rapidly and widely deploying current energy saving technologies rather than waiting for technology breakthroughs. Romm is the author of Hell and High Water: Global Warming—The Solution and The Politics (William Morrow, January 2007), a book that explores the politicization of climate change, and advocates an agenda for technology and policy. 

Romm formerly served as acting assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Time magazine named Romm's blog one of the "Top 15 Green Websites". In September 2009, Time magazine named him one of its "Heroes of the Environment (2009)," calling him "the web's most influential climate-change blogger."

In December 2008, Romm was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the author of a new book, Straight Up, a collection of short articles from his popular Climate Progress.org blog.

Annie Leonard
New York Times Bestselling Author, Activist

Annie Leonard is the host of the online film, The Story of Stuff, which has recently been published as a book of the same name. The film has become an internet phenomenon, generating over 8 million views in 200 countries and territories since its launch in December 2007. The book, published by Free Press of Simon and Schuster in March 2010, is on the New York Times bestseller list.

The Story of Stuff is a smart, deftly-delivered, fact-filled expose on the hidden health, environmental and social costs of how we make, use, and dispose of things, a.k.a. stuff. It shows our current systems of production and consumption are based on assumptions that are not only "unsustainable" but also startlingly foolhardy.

Steve Owens
Assistant Administrator, Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Steve Owens is the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) and is responsible for managing the Nation's regulatory and scientific programs on pesticides and industrial chemicals, as well as overseeing many collaborative pollution prevention programs. Steve was nominated by President Obama in April 2009 and was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in July 2009.

Prior to becoming the Assistant Administrator for OPPTS, Steve served as Director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ). Appointed by Governor Janet Napolitano in January 2003, Steve was the longest-serving Director in ADEQ history, providing executive leadership and setting overall agency policy and priorities for the department. As ADEQ Director, Steve made protecting children from toxic exposures a top priority, and among many other initiatives, helped launch Arizona’s Children’s Environmental Health Project and established an Office of Children’s Environmental Health at the department.