Utah Presenters

Christopher Bentley is a graduate of Weber State University in psychology and business. He is the creator and three-year president of the WSU Environmental Club, which received the WSU Crystal Crest "Organization of the Year" award in 2008. He is dedicated to community service, having served on the Ogden Nature Center Board, the Sustainable Ogden Committee, and the WSU Environmental Issues Committee, among others. He is currently employed through the US Forest Service and resides in Ogden.

Jacob Cain is the energy manager for Weber State University and holds new responsibility as campus sustainability coordinator. He is a graduate of Weber State University in physics and is currently pursuing graduate study in WSU’s Master of Business Administration program with coursework in environmental sustainability for business.

Austin Coover is a graduate student of Economics at Utah State University and a Research Associate for the Center for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology where he conducts economic impact analysis of wind power on local communities in Utah.

Dr. Robert Davies is a physicist, educator, and former meteorologist. He works for the Utah Climate Center and Utah State University, where he teaches courses in physics and climate change.

Nat B. Frazer received a bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Georgia and a master’s degree in History and Public Affairs from the University of Illinois at Springfield. Later, he changed directions and returned to UGA for a Ph.D. in Ecology and held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Marine Policy and Ocean Management at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Dr. Frazer’s academic career has included faculty and administrative appointments at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Mercer University’s College of Liberal Arts, and the US Department of Energy’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, in addition to several research-oriented Land Grant Universities (University of Florida, University of Georgia, and Utah State University). He currently serves as Dean of the College of Natural Resources at Utah State University. Dr. Frazer’s interests continue to develop at the interface of the sciences, the humanities and public policy, with a focus on human beings’ perceptions of themselves as good stewards of the Earth.

Therese Grijalva, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Goddard School of Business and Economics at Weber State University. She teaches and conducts research primarily in environmental and natural resource economics and managerial economics. She serves on the WSU Environmental Issues Committee and the board of directors of Weber Pathways.

David Malone, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Weber State University. He teaches and conducts research primarily in cost management and social disclosure. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Ogden Nature Center in Ogden, UT and has chaired the Trueblood Seminars Committee of the American Accounting Association, sponsored by the Deloitte & Touche Foundation.

Dianne Nielson is the Energy Advisor to Governor Herbert for the State of Utah. She has served as Energy Advisor since in June of 2007. Her more than 25 years of service for the citizens of Utah includes her prior appointment as the Executive Director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and a member of DEQ's five policy Boards.

During her career in natural resources, Dr. Nielson directed the Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining; served on the Utah Board of Oil, Gas, and Mining; and worked as Senior Economic Geologist for the Utah Geological Survey. Prior to her work in state government, she conducted energy and mineral exploration with private industry. She has chaired or worked on numerous state and federal commissions and advisory committees dealing with environmental quality and resource development.

Dr. Nielson is a native of Elgin, Illinois. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in geology from Dartmouth College, and her B.A. from Beloit College. She is a Licensed Professional Geologist, a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

Shane J. Schvaneveldt, PhD, is a Professor of Management at Weber State University, where he teaches and conducts research on environmental sustainability for business and on supply chain management. As a Fulbright Scholar, he researched environmental initiatives in Japanese business. He has served on the WSU Environmental Issues Committee and on the board of directors of the Utah Pollution Prevention Association.

Joseph Tainter is currently Professor of Sustainability in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University, Logan. He worked on issues of sustainability before the term became common, including his highly-acclaimed book The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1988). He is co-editor of The Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action (Columbia University Press, 2000), a work exploring past human responses to climate change. With T. F. H. Allen and Thomas Hoekstra he wrote Supply-Side Sustainability (Columbia University Press, 2003), the first comprehensive approach to sustainability to integrate ecological and social science. He appears in the film The 11th Hour, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, Leila Conners Petersen, Brian Gerber, and Chuck Castleberry, and in the ABC News special Earth 2100.

Mary Ann Wright is staff to Utah Governor Gary Herbert’s Energy Advisor, Dr. Dianne Nielson. As Energy Resource Coordinator, she brings 30 years of administrative, public policy and energy experience to the position. She worked as staff to the Phase I and Phase II Utah Renewable Energy Zone Task Force, a project designed to assess the feasibility of commercial renewable energy development in Utah. Her main areas of expertise are building energy efficiency, renewable energy development and energy transmission.