The Climate Conservancy is proud to be advised by an extraordinary group of scientists, engineers and environmental scholars. Their expert input ensures that our assessment methodology and metrics are scientifically rigorous, practically applied, and ultimately meaningful in light of our mission to mitigate anthropogenic climate change and advance the transition to a low carbon economy.

In alphabetical order:

Krista Donaldson, PhD

Dr. Donaldson is a Researcher in Engineering Design at Stanford University. Prior to returning to Stanford, she was an AAAS Diplomacy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State, where she handled reconstruction of Iraq's electricity sector working to make it more sustainable once the United States leaves. She received her PhD from Stanford in Mechanical Engineering and Product Design; her research focused on product development and strengthening manufacturing capacity to promote economic growth in less industrialized economies. Dr. Donaldson has taught at Kenyatta University (Kenya) and the University of Cape Town (South Africa), worked at IDEO in Palo Alto (California) and KickStart in Nairobi (Kenya), and consulted to several NGOs and donor organizations.


Julie Kennedy, PhD

Dr. Kennedy is the Associate Director and a Senior Lecturer of the Earth Systems Program in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University.  She specializes in interdisciplinary environmental education with emphasis on interdisciplinary problem analysis, and effective communication to expert and non-expert audiences, and curriculum development.


Jeffrey R. Koseff, PhD

Dr. Koseff is the Director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, and has been instrumental in developing the vision for the interdisciplinary work on environmental issues at Stanford. The William Alden and Martha Campbell Professor of Civil and Environmental engineering and The Michael Forman University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, Professor Koseff served on the Provost Committee for the Environment and the advisory committees for the undergraduate Earth Systems Program; the Goldman Interschool Honors Program in Environmental Science, Technology and Policy; the Global Climate and Energy Project; and the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Environment and Resources.

After joining the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1984, Koseff was promoted to full professor in 1996. He served as Director of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory from 1991 to 1996, after a 6-year stint as Associate Director. In 1995 Koseff was appointed as Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and served in this capacity until September 1999, when he assumed the role of Senior Associate Dean of the School of Engineering until December, 2002. Prior to coming to Stanford as a graduate student in 1977, Koseff worked as a consulting engineer in South Africa, where he was born and educated initially.

Koseff's research area falls in the emerging interdisciplinary domain of environmental fluid mechanics and focuses on the interaction between physical and biological systems in natural aquatic environments. His research activities are in the general area of environmental fluid mechanics and focus on: turbulence and internal wave dynamics in stratified flows, transport and mixing in estuarine systems, phytoplankton dynamics in estuarine systems, coral reef and kelp-forest hydrodynamics, chemical sensing in the marine environment, and coastal upwelling processes. Long-term research projects include understanding the transport of mass and energy in estuarine systems such as San Francisco Bay, and understanding how the coral reef systems of the Red Sea and Hawaii and the kelp forest systems of California function.

He is the recipient of the Knapp Award in Fluids Engineering from the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), and an outstanding service award from the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE). Professor Koseff has been the recipient of a number of   teaching awards at Stanford, including the Stanford School of Engineering Tau   Beta Pi Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching (1989), an ASSU Outstanding   Teaching Award (1992), the Rhodes Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching   (1993),   the Eugene L. Grant Award (1995), and ASSU Teacher of the Year -Honorable Mention (2007). In 1994 he was named a University Fellow, and in 1995 he was named a 3-year Bing Teaching Fellow at Stanford. Professor Koseff was a Gledden Visiting Senior Fellow at the Centre for Water Research at the University of Western Australia in 1991.

Koseff serves on the Board of Governors of The Israel Institute of Technology, and is also a member of the Visiting Committees of the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Carnegie-Mellon University, The Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research, and The WHOI-MIT Joint Program. He is a former member of the Independent Science Board of the Bay/Delta Authority.

Pamela A. Matson, PhD

Dr. Matson is the Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Environmental Science and Policy (CESP), and the Burton and Deedee McMurtry University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.

Dean Matson is an interdisciplinary Earth scientist who studies chemical interactions among soils, water, plants, and atmosphere. As a leader among scientists working to reconcile the needs of people and the environment in the 21st century, she works with multi-disciplinary teams of researchers and decision makers to develop land management approaches that make sense economically and environmentally.  Working mostly in the tropics, she and her colleagues have identified the negative consequences of deforestation and intensive agriculture for the global and local atmosphere and water systems, and are working to develop new approaches that reduce those impacts while maintaining human livelihoods.  Dean Matson is the author of over 150 scientific publications and four books. A MacArthur Fellow and a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Science, she is the founding co-chair of the National Academies Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, a past president of the Ecological Society of America, and serves on Boards for the World Wildlife Fund US and the National Parks Conservation Association. She joined the Stanford faculty in 1997, following positions as professor at UC Berkeley and research scientist at NASA. She earned her B.S. at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, M.S. at Indiana University, and Ph.D. at Oregon State University.

Erica Plambeck, PhD

Dr. Plambeck is Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology in the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Professor Plambeck received the Presidential Early Career Award for research in supply chain management, and was recognized as a Faculty Pioneer in social and environmental stewardship by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Aspen Institute. She received a BS in Mathematics and Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, developed decision-models for EU climate change policy as a Marshall Scholar at Cambridge University, and received her PhD in Engineering Economic Systems and Operations Research from Stanford University.

At Stanford, she teaches courses in environmental entrepreneurship, environmental science for managers and policy makers, and business and environmental issues

James L. Sweeney, PhD

Dr. Sweeney, of Stanford University, is Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency; Professor of Management Science and Engineering; Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research; Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace; and Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for International Studies.  His professional activities focus on economic policy and analysis, particularly in energy, natural resources, and the environment.

At Stanford Professor Sweeney has served as chairman of the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems, chairman of the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research, Director of the Energy Modeling Forum, Chairman of the Institute for Energy Studies, and Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research (now the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research).  In the early 1970's he was Director of the Office of Energy Systems Modeling and Forecasting of the U.S. Federal Energy Administration. He was a founding member of the International Association for Energy Economics, co-editor of the Journal Resource and Energy Economics, and vice-president for publications of the International Association for Energy Economics.  He is a Senior Fellow of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics and a Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology.  He is on the National Advisory Council of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a member of Governor Schwarzenegger’s Council of Economic Advisors.

Professor Sweeney holds a B.S. degree from MIT in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Engineering-Economic Systems.