Speakers

Bill Bradbury
In early 2011 Bill Bradbury was appointed by Governor Kulongoski to the NW Power and Conservation Council, a four-state compact to oversee regional energy and Columbia River salmon. Prior to this position, Bill served as Oregon’s Secretary of State and appointed chair of the Oregon Sustainability Board. Bill also served as Executive Director for For The Sake Of The Salmon, a 3-state coalition dedicated to finding common ground for salmon restoration.

Bill was one of the first 50 participants in Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Change training sessions and has given more than 200 Climate Change in Oregon presentations. Born in Chicago, Bill has lived in Oregon since 1971, first settling in Bandon where he owned and operated a small business. He then served 14 years in Oregon’s Legislature as a State Representative from 1981 to 1985 and as a State Senator from 1985 to 1995.

He was Senate Majority Leader from 1986 to 1993 and Senate President from 1993 to 1995. Bill lives in Salem with his wife, Katy.

Laura Stevens
Laura Stevens, Organizing Representative for the Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign in Oregon and Southwest Washington, works with concerned citizens to stop coal export projects and towards a coal-free northwest.  

Laura, a native Oregonian, obtained her B.A. from DePauw University, and has spent the past four years organizing for a number of environmental, human rights, and labor groups.  

After Laura launched and led the Sierra Club Campuses Beyond Coal campaign at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UNC made a commitment to move their on-campus coal-fired power plant off of mountain-top removal mined coal immediately, and set a date to move the plant off of coal entirely. 

For more information on how you can help stop coal exports in Oregon, contact Laura at laura.stevens@sierraclub.org or visit www.coalfreeoregon.org. 

Speakers

Dr. Michael Grady
Dr. Michael Grady is the Medical Director for the McClaine Street Clinic and for the Community Outreach Center, serving the underinsured and uninsured respectively in the Silverton area.
 
Dr. Grady received a B.S. in Biology from the Santa Clara University in 1972 and his M.D. degree from OHSU in 1976. He has been a family physician for 35 years and is a past president of the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians. He currently serves on the Community Leadership Council of We Can Do Better, a forum for discussion of  health and health policy.
 
Dr. Grady and his wife Jenny have four grown children and live in Silverton.

Scott Richards
Scott Richards, Behavioral Health Division Director at the Marion County Health Department.  Scott oversees adult and crisis mental health services for Marion County.
The Health Department serves over 1,000 adults a year in its outpatient mental health programs; another 3,000 individuals receive services each year at the Psychiatric Crisis Center. 
 
Scott is a native Oregonian who obtained his Masters Degree from Lewis and Clark College in 1983.  He has worked with mentally ill adults in both public and nonprofit agencies for the past twenty eight years.  Scott has been involved in a number of initiatives, including affordable housing development and treatment courts, aimed at addressing the many needs of those suffering from serious mental illness.

Levi Herrera-Lopez
Levi Herrera-Lopez is Executive Director of the Mano a Mano Family Center.  He has served in this official capacity since 2008.  Mr. Herrera-Lopez has been involved with this organization since 1997 -- 1997-2005, volunteer youth organizer; 2000-2003, WIA Case Manager; 2003-2005, CAPACES Network Coordinator; 2005-2008, Interim Director.

Other professional experiences include Program Assistant at the Cultural Forum, from 1997-2000, at Chemeketa Community College; and Voter Registration Project Coordinator, summer of 2004, for Voz Hispana. 

Mr. Herrera-Lopez, attended Portland State University, where he majored in Communication Studies, with a dual focus on Media Studies and Intercultural Communication, along with Certificates in Popular Culture Studies and Latin American Studies. He is a native of Zamora de Hidalgo, Michoacan, in Central Mexico, and has lived in Salem, Oregon since 1992.  He attended local schools, including Waldo Middle School and McNary High School, in neighboring Keizer, Oregon.  He was raised in a multicultural, multiracial family in Mexico, and identifies himself as a Mexican, of secular Jewish heritage.  He is a native Spanish (Mexico) speaker, fluent in English, with basic conversational skills in French, and rudimentary knowledge of Japanese and Hebrew. 

Speakers

Helena Norberg-Hodge Via SKYPE
Helena Norberg-Hodge is an analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide, a pioneer of the localisation movement, and the articulator of the core ideas of Counter-development. She is the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC).[1] Based in the US and UK, with subsidiaries in Sweden, Germany, Australia, and Ladakh, ISEC's mission is to examine the root causes of our social and environmental crises, while promoting more sustainable and equitable patterns of living in both North and South. Its activities include The Ladakh Project[1], a Local Food program and Global to Local Outreach.
Norberg-Hodge was educated in Sweden, Germany, Austria, England and the United States. She specialised in linguistics, including studies at the doctoral level at the University of London and at MIT, with Noam Chomsky. Fluent in seven languages, she has lived in and studied numerous cultures at varying degrees of industrialisation, giving her a unique international perspective.

Kerry Topel
Kerry Topel is the co-founder of Marion-Polk Move To Amend, an organization dedicated to abolishing corporate personhood, is an educator and a recent resident of Salem, Or.  She is passionate about sustainable community development.  She has a master's degree in the Environment and Community program at Humboldt State University where she examined sustainable rural community development through studying community reactions to Nestle Waters North America's failed attempt to site a bottled water facility in McCloud, California.  Kerry is enthusiastic about the power of local economies to enrich and empower community residents to increase their quality of life.  She currently is working to apply her experiences as an educator, activist, and gardener to promote a focus on the local here in Salem. 

Speakers

Michael E. Campana
Michael E. ‘Aquadoc’ Campana is 2011 President of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA), Professor of Hydrogeology and Water Resources at Oregon State University, and former Director of its Institute for Water and Watersheds. He held the Albert and Mary Jane Black Chair of Hydrogeology and directed the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico, where he is Emeritus Professor. At the Desert Research Institute he was a research hydrologist and taught in the Hydrologic Sciences Program at the University of Nevada-Reno. He has supervised the work of 75 graduate students. His interests include hydrophilanthropy, water resources policy and management, WaSH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) in developing regions, transboundary water resources, and water and environmental education. Central America, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus are his main international interest areas. Campana was a Fulbright Scholar (Belize, 1996) and Visiting Scientist at the Research Institute for Groundwater (Egypt, 1995) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna, 2002). He has served on seven National Research Council committees, including the Klamath Basin and California Bay-Delta committees. He founded and runs the nonprofit Ann Campana Judge Foundation www.acjfoundation.org, which funds and undertakes WaSH projects in Central America. His degrees include a BS (geology) from the College of William and Mary and MS (hydrology) and PhD (hydrology; mathematics minor) from the University of Arizona. As WaterWired he blogswww.waterwired.org and Tweets http://twitter.com/waterwired on water and related issues.

Olivia Schmidt
Olivia is the Community Organizer for BARK, defenders of Mt. Hood National Forest. Her current work focuses on stopping the Palomar Pipeline, a proposal by NW Natural to clearcut 47 miles through Mt. Hood for a natural gas pipeline that would facilitate natural gas fracking and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) development. From 2007-2010 Olivia served as Community Organizer for the Northern Oregon faction of the Anti-LNG movement, working with impacted communities and climate activists to stop Liquefied Natural Gas development on the Columbia River and Oregon coast. In recent months LNG proposals in Oregon have transitioned their plans from importing foreign LNG through the Oregon coast to exporting domestic U.S. natural gas to foreign markets and with that change the anti-LNG coalition has shifted its focus to addressing the threats of fracking in the U.S. and the impacts to energy consumers of exporting this resource overseas. Olivia comes to this work from a background in environmental and social justice and has been an Oregon resident for eleven years.

Speakers

Dave Gardner Filmmaker

Dave Gardner has worked as a professional director for over 30 years. During his career he’s directed documentaries and other award-winning projects for a long list of Fortune 500 corporate clients and PBS.
 
His concern about our society’s growth addiction began when he noticed rapidly growing population centers in the American West are in denial about the limits of water available to feed their continuing growth frenzy.
Dave’s became the voice of reason in Colorado Springs, a city in the U.S. projected to double in size from half a million in 2000 to 1 million by 2040. As in most cities, growth boosters dominate local politics and policy, so Dave has turned to the film medium to illuminate the follies and educate the public about the true meaning of sustainability. Colorado Springs is serving as just one example in a film of national and global significance.
Dave ran for Colorado Springs city council in 2009 on the platform that true community prosperity could only be achieved by increasing efficiency and localization, not by continuing to chase the mythical “pot of gold at the end of the everlasting growth rainbow.” He lost the race to a well-funded pro-growth incumbent, but garnered 43% of the vote.

Mike Swaim
Mike Swaim is a small business owner, with a Private Law Practice in Salem. He has been a practicing attorney since 1971, receiving his BA in Political Science, his MA in International Relations and his JD (Juris Doctor), all from UCLA. Prior to his college education, he served in the US Air Force from 1962-1965, as a Bulgarian Interpreter in Germany.

Mike is a long time leader and volunteer in our community. Among his many volunteer roles, he has been President and member of Salem City Club; President of Salem Parks and Rec. Advisory Board; Chair and Vice-chair of Salem Downtown Development Board; co-founder and member of the Salem Memorial Peace Lecture; and President and member of the Community Coalition for Diversity.

Mike was elected to the position of Mayor of Salem in 1997 and served until 2002. He has also held the position of Commissioner on the Oregon State Capitol Planning Commission, Salem Representative on the Mid-Valley Counsel of Governments, and Salem Representative on Youth. He has received numerous honors, including “Outstanding Citizen Award”, Justice Wallace “Carson Award” for Extraordinary Service to the Community and “Greater Oregon Local Official of the Year” award.

He has been a long time advocate for “smart planning and intelligent growth” as opposed to mindless urban sprawl. Mike’s “Pro-community” vision includes meaningful design standards, efficient in-fill, and community “benefit analysis”.

Mike lives here in Salem with his wife Kellie. They have two sons, Matthew and Darrin and daughter-in-law Katy.

Speakers

Mic Alexander
For over 35 years Mic Alexander has been a servant of justice, with over 100 jury trials and 300 cases at the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. Alexander is known as one of the most talented lawyers in the Oregon State Bar. A zealous advocate for justice, he has demonstrated tremendous dedication to the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, the plaintiffs’ bar as a whole and the clients he serves. He has been a partner with the Salem firm Swanson, Lathen, Alexander and McCann since 1980.

Mic Alexander was born in Beaumont, Texas and served in the US Air Force as a Missile Launch Officer in the early 70’s. A 1968 graduate of Stanford University, Alexander went on to get his JD in 1975 from Willamette University School of Law after finishing up his Air Force service. He became an associate at Brown, Burt and Swanson immediately after law school. This is where his journey of advocacy began.

Mic has served on countless task forces, committees, boards and judicial commissions. As the Oregon Trial Lawyer Association President in 2002, Alexander is the only President in the history of the organization to attempt to personally visit every single member’s office. That’s the level of his commitment to service and community building that is an inspiration to all his friends and colleagues.

Alexander received the Distinguished Trial Lawyer Award in August of this year. He lives here in Salem with his wife and has two grown daughters.