Jurors

Shalanda Baker

Vice Provost for Sustainability and Climate Action, University of Michigan

Shalanda H. Baker is the inaugural Vice Provost for Sustainability and Climate Action at the University of Michigan. She joined the university after serving as the Senate-confirmed Director of the Office of Energy Justice and Equity, Secretarial Advisor on Equity, and Chief Diversity Officer at the United States Department of Energy. Prior to that, she served in the Biden-Harris Administration as the nation’s first Deputy Director for Energy Justice. Before her appointment, she was a Professor of Law, Public Policy, and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University; an associate professor of law at the University of Hawai’i William S. Richardson School of Law; and on the faculty at the University of San Francisco School of Law. Shalanda holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from the United States Air Force Academy, a Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law, and an LLM from the University of Wisconsin School of Law. Her book, Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition, argues that energy policy is the next domain to advance civil rights.

Sara Cronenwett

Senior Vice President, Corporate Environmental Sustainability, Comcast

At Comcast, Sara Cronenwett leads the environmental strategy at the enterprise level and supports Comcast’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2035. She works closely with sustainability teams within Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Sky as well as other corporate leaders to develop and manage the vision, goals, strategy, and reporting for environmental sustainability across the company. Prior to joining Comcast, Sara spent six years at Gartner, where she served as the Group Vice President for product development and management of the Gartner Business Services products, and seven years at McKinsey & Company, where she served clients across the tech, media, and telecom practices. Sara is a graduate of Stanford University, where she earned both a Bachelor of Science and Ph.D. in Physics. 

Julie DiNatale

Executive Vice President, Adaptation and Resilience Solutions, OCP Nutricrops

Julie DiNatale joined OCP Nutricrops in 2025 with more than 25 years of experience in the agricultural and chemical industries. Most recently Julie was Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer for FMC Corporation. Previously she was the Commercial and Strategic Partnerships Leader at Truterra, a division of Land O’Lakes, supporting large food, fiber and fuel companies achieve their sustainability goals. Before her career in agriculture, Julie spent a decade in sustainability, health and safety for a large chemical manufacturer. Julie grew up in Western New York where she spent summers on her cousin’s dairy farm. She earned a B.S. in Environmental Science from Michigan State University’s College of Agriculture, and an M.S. in Environmental Toxicology from the University of Rochester.

Jared Farmer

Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History

Farmer’s temporal expertise is the long nineteenth century; his regional expertise is the North American West. His recent work has turned to global environmental history across the modern period. He is the author of five books, including Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees, which won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History from the American Philosophical Society. He is also the PI for the digital history project “Petrodelphia: America’s First Petrochemical Corridor.”

Genevieve Guenther

Founding Director, End Climate Science

Genevieve Guenther is the author of The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It. Dr. Guenther advises NGOs, corporations, and policymakers on climate disinformation and communication, and her research has appeared in both scholarly journals and media outlets such as Scientific American, The New Republic, WIRED, and The Guardian. She serves as an Expert Reviewer for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Julie Zimmerman

Vice Provost for Planetary Solutions, Yale University

Dr. Julie Zimmerman is an internationally recognized engineer whose work is focused on advancing innovations in sustainable technologies. Dr. Zimmerman serves as the inaugural Vice Provost for Planetary Solutions at Yale University. Julie holds joint appointments as a Liliane and Christian Haub Professor in the School of Engineering and the School of the Environment. Julie also serves as the Editor in Chief of Environmental Science & Technology, the most highly cited journal in environmental sciences and engineering. Dr. Zimmerman was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025. Together with Dr. Paul Anastas, Julie runs a sustainability consultancy, Sustainability A to Z, to work on pressing and proprietary issues for companies across sectors and throughout value chains. Prior to joining Yale, Dr. Zimmerman was an Engineer and program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency leading the national sustainable design competition, P3 (People, Prosperity, and Planet) Award, which has engaged design teams from hundreds of universities across the U.S. Dr. Zimmerman is the co-author of the textbook, Environmental Engineering: Fundamentals, Sustainability, Design that is used in the engineering programs at leading universities. Dr. Zimmerman earned her B.S. from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan jointly from the School of Engineering and the School of Environment and Sustainability.