Sustainability Council Members

Dayna Cunningham
Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean
Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life

Dean Cunningham has devoted her career to promoting civic participation, building community partnerships, and advocating for underrepresented communities. At Tisch College, she has articulated a bold vision for building robust, inclusive democracy for an increasingly multiracial society.

Before leading Tisch College, Dean Cunningham was the founder of Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At CoLab, she built large-scale, multi-sector development collaborations that combined sustainability, wellness, and democratic control of economies in marginalized communities. A civil rights lawyer by training, Dean Cunningham worked with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, litigating cases in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and other states in the South. She has also served as associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation and program director of the ELIAS Project at MIT.

Dean Cunningham earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, a JD from New York University School of Law, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Kathryn Davies
Lecturer
Department of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning

Kate's work focuses on navigating equitable transformations to sustainability using a range of collaborative and participatory methods. Recent projects include developing serious games to address air quality challenges in the Salt Lake Valley and using scenario planning techniques to improve cumulative effects management in Aotearoa New Zealand's coastal and marine areas. Kate has also worked with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to develop scenarios that inform global and regional biodiversity and ecosystem service assessments. Through the co-production of knowledge and practice, these projects aim to improve social and ecological outcomes and enhance the resilience of communities by supporting individuals and institutions to grapple with environmental change across interests and scales.

Prior to joining UEP, Kate has worked as a social scientist for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Aotearoa New Zealand, an urban planner in Salt Lake City, and a Research Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Utah. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the University of Auckland and a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College.

Eric Hines
Professor of Practice and Kentaro Tsutsumi Faculty Fellow, Civil & Environmental
School of Engineering

Eric Hines, Ph.D., P.E., F.SEI directs the offshore wind energy graduate program at Tufts University, where he is a Professor of the Practice in structural engineering. He is President of Hines & Partners, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in offshore wind energy, structural design, and engineering creativity. Dr. Hines has over 20 years of experience engineering innovative infrastructure. He works at the technology/policy interface to develop systems-level design concepts and has received numerous awards for his work in industry-driven research. He studied engineering and public policy as an undergraduate at Princeton University and as a Fulbright Fellow in Germany. He holds an M.S. in applied mechanics and a Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

Barbara Kates-Garnick
Professor of Practice
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Barbara Kates-Garnick most recently she served as the Undersecretary of Energy for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where she was responsible for guiding energy policy. She also served as the Co-chair of Massachusetts’ Global Warming Solutions Act Implementation Advisory Committee that oversees the implementation of the Commonwealth’s Global Warming Solutions Act. She has had an extensive career in energy, environment, and clean technology that has spanned the private and public sectors and included the creation of a clean technology incubator at New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering where she also taught courses on energy policy. She served as corporate officer at a major U.S. utility, a consultant on strategic energy initiatives, and as a public utility regulator. At Fletcher, in addition to teaching, she will serve as the interim director of the Energy, Climate and Innovation Program at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy where she will pursue her interests in energy innovation, clean energy technology, and energy policy. Kates-Garnick holds a PhD from The Fletcher School.

Kyongbum Lee
Dean and Karol Family Professor
School of Engineering

As Dean of the School of Engineering, Kyongbum Lee is committed to providing a diverse and inclusive learning and working environment, building community, innovating undergraduate education and transforming graduate education, connecting people and ideas for innovation, enhancing financial resources to support our mission, and empowering scholarship, discovery, and invention.

Dean Lee's research interests include metabolic engineering, tissue engineering, and systems biology. His research group is interested in the study of cellular metabolism and its role in directing biological function. It seeks to translate these basic insights and technologies into applications leading to engineering practice and meaningful health outcomes. The group is particularly interested in discovering therapeutic and diagnostic targets for metabolic diseases such as obesity.

William Moomaw
Co-Director of the Global Development and Environment Institute and Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy
The Fletcher School

William Moomaw is Emeritus Professor of international environmental policy and founding director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher. He currently serves as co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts, which he co-founded. He had a 26-year career in chemistry and environmental studies at Williams College, where he directed the Center for Environmental Studies. He served as AAAS Science Fellow in the U.S. Senate, where he worked on legislation that successfully addressed ozone depletion, and on legislation responding to the 1973 energy crisis.

He began working on climate change in 1988 as the first director of the climate program at World Resources Institute in Washington. He has been a lead author of five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports. The IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize for its climate work in 2007. He is currently working on natural solutions to climate change with a focus on increasing carbon dioxide removal and sequestration by forests, wetlands and soils to compliment emission reductions from land use changes and replacing fossil fuels with zero carbon renewable energy.

Barbara Stein
Vice President for Operations
Operations Division

Barbara Stein is Vice President for Operations overseeing Dining, Tufts Public and Environmental Safety (TUPD and EHS), Campus Planning, Real Estate, Facilities Services, Energy Programs and Capital Program Management. Barbara joined Tufts in 2013 as Director, Strategic Capital Programs and in just two years was promoted to Director, Capital Programs responsible for all capital projects, renewal planning, co-leading capital planning for the University on all campuses.

Before arriving at Tufts, Barbara served as Senior Project Manager at Harvard University, developing systems and standards for project delivery within the 2.4 billion House Renewal program. At GLC Development Resources she worked with local non-profits and institutions on real-estate related planning and capital projects. During years with the Massachusetts State College Building Authority, Barbara managed strategic planning and oversaw the Annual Capital Repair and Improvement Program for residence halls at the nine State Colleges in Massachusetts.

Cigdem Talgar
Vice Provost for Education

Dr. Cigdem Talgar’s experience includes over twenty years of progressive leadership as a creative and strategic innovator. Prior to joining Tufts University in 2022, Dr. Talgar served as Associate Vice Chancellor in the Educational Innovation division at Northeastern University. During this time, she drew on her background in the cognitive and learning sciences and her depth of experience in experiential learning to lead the collaborative design, development, implementation, and assessment of transformative institution-wide programs and initiatives that have yielded impactful and inclusive learning environments for students. Dr. Talgar led the development of multiple centers and initiatives to advance excellence in teaching and learning at Northeastern University, and led multiple initiatives to ensure that Northeastern students were building the skills to holistically integrate their learning across experiences.

A cognitive psychologist by training, Dr. Talgar’s areas of expertise include attentional processes mediating cognition, memory and learning, and experiential learning and educational innovation to support robust and equitable learning environments. Dr. Talgar has received multiple awards from the National Science Foundation to advance this work and published on topics around high impact learning practices such as reflection, self-authorship, self-directed learning, and inquiry-based learning. She has actively collaborated with numerous institutions to advance their strategic direction through educational innovations which integrate experiential learning, inquiry-based education, assessment, and holistic learning pathways into curricula. Dr. Talgar received her MA and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from New York University while receiving her B.Sc. in Psychology from the University of Toronto.

Dano Weisbord
Chief Sustainability Officer and Executive Director of Campus Planning
Office of Sustainability

Dano Weisbord joined Tufts in October 2022 to work with senior leadership to further Tufts’ commitment to be as a higher education leader in sustainability and climate matters across the university, bridging campus operations with education, co-curricular and research activities. Dano came to Tufts from Smith College where he held the position of Associate Vice President for Campus Planning and Sustainability and COVID-19 Administrator.  Over his fourteen years at Smith, Dano served as Director of the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability and was the College’s Founding Director of Sustainability establishing sustainability and campus planning functions.  A Jumbo, Dano has a Master of Arts in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design.

Parke Wilde
Professor
Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy

Parke Wilde is a Professor at the Friedman School and a leading authority on U.S. food policy and the economics of U.S. federal nutrition assistance programs. He led a national evaluation on the breastfeeding impact of WIC package changes and was director of design for the Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. He has been a member of the Institute of Medicine's Food Forum, the AGree agricultural policy initiative, the National Academies panel on "Improving Consumer Data for Food and Nutrition Policy Research," and the technical advisory committee for the Menus of Change initiative. He also directed the USDA-funded RIDGE grants program and currently directs a USDA-funded grants program on household food security measurement.

He is the author of the textbook, Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction, Second Edition (Earthscan/Routledge, 2018), which received the Distinguished Quality of Communication award from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). His is co-organizer of the #flyingless initiative, an environmental project encouraging university and research communities to set goals and measure progress for greenhouse gas emissions, while preserving the good they do in the world.

Tina Woolston
Sustainability Director
Office of Sustainability

Tina Woolston has been the Director of the Office of Sustainability at Tufts since 2010 after first joining the Office in 2007 as the project coordinator focusing on outreach and education. She works with senior administrators and departments across Tufts to develop and support Tufts sustainability goals and efforts, ranging from transportation to carbon neutrality planning, sustainable living communities, and more. While at Tufts she has created new initiatives like education programs for students and employees, the annual Green Fund, and courses focused on action for sustainability, among many others.

Prior to coming to Tufts, Tina directed the sustainability program at Earthwatch Institute and co-founded her town’s climate action committee. She was one of the first 1,000 people to be trained by Al Gore as part of The Climate Reality Project.

Executive project support provided by:

Pamela Gratiano
Executive Projects Administrator, Office of the Executive Vice President