Speakers & Panelists

 

 

Arielle V. King

Arielle V. King is a 25-year-old environmental educator, facilitator, writer, and content creator passionate about making environmentalism and law inclusive and accessible to all people. Arielle’s work is focused on storytelling and amplifying the voices, work, and legacies of those traditionally overlooked in mainstream environmentalism. She has a background in environmental racism analysis, developing anti-racism policies for municipalities and school districts, political ecology, civil rights law, and centering community input in environmental governance. She is the Programming Director at Black Girl Environmentalist, an intergenerational community dedicated to empowering Black girls, women, and non-binary people across environmental disciplines. In 2022, Arielle researched, scripted, and hosted Season 1 host of The Joy Report, a podcast dedicated to sharing positive, intersectional climate solutions-- amplifying the stories and contributions of underrepresented groups in the mainstream environmental movement. 

 

 

Daphne Frias

Daphne Frias is a 24-year-old youth activist. She is unapologetically Latina. Daphne has Cerebral Palsy, and uses a wheelchair to ambulate. She is fiercely proud to be a loud champion for the disabled community. Active in the fight against gun violence and for voting rights, Daphne has been fighting the climate crisis as well. Her work deconstructs the silos between disability and the climate crisis with a public health approach. She was appointed as spokesperson for the global climate strikes that took place on September 20th, 2019. Most recently she was featured as a key panelist at the New York Times Climate hub in a conversation moderated by Emma Watson. She has no intention of backing down until the health of our earth is secure. Her work has been featured in the Sierra Club, Teen Vogue, PopSugar, NPR, Vice, Elle, among many others

 

 

Terry Carroll

Terry Carroll  is the Chief Sustainability Officer for Tompkins County. Previously he was Energy Educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County , where he managed NYSERDA's Clean Energy Communities program in the Southern Tier. Terry has worked throughout theSouthern Tier, first in Chemung, Schuyler and Steuben counties running Solarize campaigns for several years, before taking on the management of the Clean Energy Communities program. He has experience working with local governments and non-profits in every county in the Southern Tier and currently chairs Tompkins County’s Climate and Sustainable Energy advisory board. Before coming to Extension, Terry volunteered as an AmeriCorps VISTA with Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation creating partnerships for a new citizen-designed statepark, interned in Government Relations with the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., and spent time learning to be a carpenter in Ithaca, NY. 

 

 

Nick Goldsmith

Nick Goldsmith works with the Park Foundation, where he supports local sustainability efforts as a Program Officer for the Sustainable Ithaca program. Previously, Nick was the Sustainability Planner for the Town of Ithaca and City of Ithaca, NY for over 10 years. Nick helped both municipalities develop and implement the Ithaca Green New Deal, which aims for an equitable transition to carbon neutrality community-wide by 2030. Nick led the development of the Ithaca Energy Code Supplement, requirements for net-zero new construction that emphasize electrification and affordability. Nick holds an M.S. in Energy Management from New York Institute of Technology and a B.A. in Mathematics from Brown University. Before joining the sustainability field, Nick worked worldwide for more than a decade as a juggler and acrobat.

 

 

Rebecca Evans

Rebecca Evens is the Acting Director of Sustainability for the City of Ithaca and helped to develop the City’s Climate Action Plan and is actively working to integrate climate justice throughout that work. She previously served as the Campus Sustainability Coordinator at Ithaca College where she advance a range of diverse, high impact sustainability measures.

 

 

Rachel Ng

Psychology '25

"Antecedents to Gender Equity in the U.S. Workplace"

Reese Perelman

Finance '24

"Socially Responsible Investing"

Melanie Sepulveda-Rosado

Environmental Studies '23

"Fad Fashion: Overconsumption of the Fashion Industry Through Interdisciplinary Thought"