Hector Gonzalez is a Partner at Dechert LLP, where he also serves as a Member of the Policy Committee and Deputy Chair for Diversity and Inclusion. Previously, Mr. Gonzalez was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of N.Y., where he was twice awarded the Director’s Award for Superior Performance by the Department of Justice. Mr. Gonzalez has served as Board Chair at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and as a member of other non-profit boards including LatinoJustice PRLDEF and Manhattan College. Mr. Gonzalez has been ranked in The Best Lawyers in America and The Legal 500 throughout his career and was named a Litigation Star for his defense practice by Benchmark Litigation in 2015. A former Fulbright Fellow, Mr. Gonzalez holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. from The City University of New York, and a B.S. from Manhattan College.

Peter Knight is a Founding Partner of Generation Investment Management, which focuses on sustainable investing strategies in public and private markets. Prior to joining Generation, Mr. Knight was a Managing Director of MetWest Financial, a Los Angeles-based financial services company from 2001 to 2003. Mr. Knight started his career with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. From 1977 to 1989, he served as Chief of Staff to former VP Al Gore when Mr. Gore was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and later the U.S. Senate. He served as the General Counsel of Medicis Pharmaceutical from 1989 to 1991, and then established his law practice representing numerous Fortune 500 companies as named partner in a Washington D.C. law firm. Mr. Knight has held senior positions on four presidential campaigns, including serving as the campaign manager for the successful 1996 re-election of President Clinton. He is a Director of the National Park Foundation. Mr. Knight holds a J.D. from Georgetown University and a B.A. from Cornell University.

Miranda Massie is the Founder and Director of the Climate Museum. Previously, she was General Counsel and Legal Director of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), where she also served as Interim Executive Director. Before her time at NYLPI, she was a civil rights impact litigator, in which role she won professional honors including Fletcher Foundation and W.E.B. Dubois Institute Fellowships. Her board service has included the Executive and Finance Committees of the Center for Popular Democracy and the Governance Committee of a large Head Start organization serving the children of migrant farmworkers. She was a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School and a Mentor-in-Residence at Yale Law School. Ms. Massie holds a J.D. from New York University, an M.A. from Yale University, and B.A. from Cornell University. 

James Stewart Polshek is the former Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation and the founder of Polshek Partnership Architects. Over the past fifty years, Mr. Polshek was design principal for the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Newseum in Washington, D.C., and the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Mr. Polshek has been appointed by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a member of the N.Y.C. Public Design Commission and also co-founded the non-profit group Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility. He has received many honors throughout his career, including the Municipal Art Society’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal, the Brooklyn Museum’s Augustus Graham Medal for excellence in architecture, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Polshek holds an M.Arch. from Yale University and a B.S. from Case Western Reserve University, and he has been awarded honorary degrees from Pratt Institute, Parsons the New School for Design, and New Jersey Institute of Technology. 

Cynthia Rosenzweig is a Senior Research Scientist at The Earth Institute at Columbia University and at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where she heads the Climate Impacts Group. She is a Professor of Environmental Studies at Barnard College and the founder of AgMIP, an international collaborative effort to understand climate impacts on the agricultural sector. Dr. Rosenzweig was appointed by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg as Co-Chair of the N.Y.C. Panel on Climate Change. She is Co-Director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) and was Co-Editor of the First UCCRN Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities (ARC3), the first global assessment to address climate risks, adaptation, mitigation, and policy mechanisms relevant to cities. She was a Coordinating Lead Author of Working Group II for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and was recognized when the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Al Gore and the IPCC. She is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Dr. Rosenzweig holds a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and an M.A. and B.S. from Rutgers University. 

Joel Towers is the Executive Dean of Parsons the New School for Design, where he previously served as Dean of the School of Design Strategies, Director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center, and Associate Provost for Environmental Studies. Under his leadership, the School of Design Strategies developed new programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels in fields including Urban Design, Environmental Studies, Transdisciplinary Design, and Design and Urban Ecologies. Before his tenure at The New School, Mr. Towers was a faculty member of the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University, where he conducted research in sustainable urban design and developed cross-disciplinary teaching strategies. He is a founding member of SR+T Architects, a sustainable design firm. Mr. Towers holds an M.Arch. from Columbia University and a B.S. from the University of Michigan.