Biographies

Rick Horsch recently retired as a Partner at White & Case LLP, a global law firm, where his practice focused on U.S. environmental law and international environmental law. He was Chair of the Firm’s Global Environmental Practice for more than 25 years.

Mr. Horsch has extensive experience in the area of climate change law, including international climate change treaties. Significant representations have included:

• Advisor to consortium of developing countries in connection with the negotiation of the Paris Climate Accord signed in 2015 and the subsequent implementation of the Paris Accord provisions;
• Advisor to Party to Montreal Protocol in connection with 2016 negotiation of phase-down of HFCs under the Kigali Amendment to the Protocol;
• Legal advisor to sovereign nation on the establishment and start-up of a Designated National Authority to review and approve proposed projects developed under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol; and
• Advisor to multinational company in identifying and implementing projects to reduce the company’s carbon footprint.

Mr. Horsch has successfully litigated complex environmental matters. Significant representations have included:

• Lead counsel in lawsuit against New York City Department of Education, requiring removal of PCB lighting fixtures from classrooms in more than 700 public schools, New York Communities for Change v. NYC Department of Education (11-CV-3494, EDNY);
• Lead counsel to class of more than 1,000 homeowners surrounding a solid waste landfill, recovering damages against one of the nation’s largest waste haulers for its unlawful operation of the landfill; and
• Lead counsel in lawsuit asserting CERCLA claims against the City of New York and against its environmental consultant arising from the presence of contaminated soils on client’s property in the Bronx, New York.

Mr. Horsch has also advised on environmental issues in mergers and acquisitions, and in project financings, domestically and internationally. He has represented parties in scores of transactions in the United States and around the world. He has handled environmental matters in such countries as South Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines, India, Chile and Mexico and many countries in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

Since 2011 he has been an Adjunct with the Columbia University School of Professional Studies and Columbia’s Earth Institute, where he teaches courses on U.S. Environmental Law and International Environmental Law. From 2007 to 2014 he was an Adjunct at Seton Hall Law School, where he taught environmental law courses. He is on the Board of Advisors to the NYU School of Law Institute for Policy Integrity, and is Director Emeritus with the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.

Joe DiMona is a music industry attorney who was in house counsel to Broadcast Music, Inc., (BMI) the performing rights licensing organization, until leaving BMI as Vice President, Legal Affairs, after 27 years in December 2019 to pursue his interest in environmental issues, including climate change. Prior to joining BMI in 1992 Joe worked for six years as an associate at the law firm Reid & Priest in Washington, DC, where he did regulatory work for electric and gas utilities before the FERC as well as represented BMI in copyright royalty proceedings. Throughout his legal career Joe has worked on public policy issues, including legislative and regulatory matters in the copyright and music licensing areas, as well as state legislative work. Joe is experienced in digital media, and was involved in creating BMI’s first digital music licensing for Internet websites in 1995, a groundbreaking development at that time.

Joe has been a frequent speaker at legal and music industry conferences and seminars on behalf of BMI on a wide variety of music business and copyright developments. Joe received his J.D. degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1986, and graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 1981 with a major in political science. Joe also spent a year while an undergrad at Duke living in Paris, France, studying at Sciences Po on the NYU in France program. Joe is a member of the Recording Academy, the Copyright Society of the USA, the Association of Independent Music Publishers, the American Bar Association’s Entertainment and Sports Forum and the New York City Bar Association. He is a board member of ALAI-US, the US branch of the Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale, an international organization that protects the rights of authors and creators. Joe lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY with his wife Lisa, a literary agent with Writers House. They have two children Alessandra and Matt who work in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, California.

Marcy L. Kahn recently retired after serving 32 years as a judge in the New York State Unified Court System, most recently as an Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, First Department. Prior to her judicial service, she was a litigation partner at Anderson Kill & Olick, P.C. and a litigation associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, both in New York City. Earlier, she served as a Special Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the New York State Special Prosecutor investigating corruption in the New York City Criminal Justice System.

In addition to hundreds of judicial opinions, she has authored five law review articles. She has developed and presented continuing education programs for the bench and bar for more than 35 years in New York and around the country on topics including environmental toxic exposures, capital punishment, domestic violence, judicial selection and human rights, including justice issues for Native Americans and LGBTQ persons. In 2019, she was one of twelve U.S. judges invited to speak by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the First Pan-American Judges’ Summit on Social Rights, the Environment and Social Justice held at the Vatican. She has participated in programming for the United Nations ECOSOC Commission on the Status of Women, including co-leading a group of international women judges at the United Nations, She has lectured for the National Judicial College, the National Tribal Law and Policy Institute, the National Center for State Courts and the United States Department of Justice, as well as for the New York Judicial Institute and various bar associations and law schools.

Justice Kahn’s leadership roles within the New York Court System and in the community have included serving as founding board chair of the New York LGBT Community Center, convener of the New York Federal-State-Tribal Courts and Indian Nations Justice Forum, co-chair of the New York Capital Cases Judicial Resource Committee, and inaugural co-chair of the Richard C. Failla LGBTQ Commission for the New York Courts. She retired from the Appellate Division in 2019 in order to do policy advocacy in the areas of climate change, human rights and the rule of law.

Jordan Gerow is an energy law specialist with a range of experience in promoting microgrids, distributed energy resources, and utility reform. He graduated magna cum laude from the Elizabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University with concentrations in environmental and international law, and worked for several years with the Pace Energy and Climate Center as a Staff Attorney. His work has included analysis of the legal framework for microgrid development. To that end, he has served as an advisor to ten projects in the NY Prize competition, and offered expert testimony in utility rate cases on the benefits of and hurdles to microgrid development. He has appeared before multiple state PUCs on questions of microgrids and distributed energy, and worked extensively in New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision proceeding, focusing on the Value of Distributed Energy Resources, and Clean Energy Standard proceeding. Among the LPDD team, he takes the lead responsibility for researching outside legal resources for this site, and managing and organizing the database.

Karla Perri is an attorney and senior executive with over 25 years of experience in federal and state environmental, energy, and sustainability issues. As a Member of the Spectrum Group LLC, a government affairs firm located in Alexandria, Virginia, she primarily provides strategic advice and support to corporate clients who market their products and services to the federal government. For the past several years she has focused on policy, legislative and regulatory issues in the defense energy sector. Ms. Perri is a former Presidential appointee to the Senior Executive Service at the Department of Defense, where she served as an Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of Defense in the Office of Environmental Security. Previous federal service also includes working at the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Global Change, on issues related to the Montreal Protocol and the phase out of chlorinated solvents, and numerous other regulatory issues in both the Office of Air and Radiation, and the Office of Toxics Substances. 

In addition to federal service, Ms. Perri practiced environmental litigation, was a senior lobbyist with a major trade association and worked on Capitol Hill as staff on the Joint Economic Committee, and at the Congressional Research Service. Ms. Perri is also an Assistant Adjunct Professor at UMGC and teaches graduate classes in cybersecurity governance, management and policy. 

She is engaged with both the legislative peer review and outreach teams on the LPDD project. To contact her, please reach out to Joe Dimona at joe.dimona@lpdd.org.  

Joel B. Stronberg is an attorney and senior executive with over 35 years of experience in federal and state energy, environmental, and sustainability issues. He is the founder and principal of The JBS Group, a Washington, DC consulting firm advising and representing public and private sector clients since 1981. Services provided by the Group include policy analysis and advocacy, strategic planning, draft legislation, written and oral communications, and management and business services to small trade and non-profit organizations in the clean energy and climate fields.

Joel is a recognized thought leader in the fields of climate and clean energy. He has served as a Special Counsel at the US Department of Energy at the Under and Assistant Secretarial levels. He has lived in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, working with business and educational organizations on sustainable agricultural practices, the use of on-site renewable energy sources, e.g., digesters, and policy development.

The author of hundreds of articles on clean energy and climate matters, Joel is a featured voice on Resilience.org, a Top Climate Change Writer on Medium.com, and an inaugural member of the Energy Central’s 100,000 View Club. His writings are also linked to Stanford University’s Millennial Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) project.

Joel is a regular contributor to other energy and environment publications including the Environmental Law Institute’s journal The Environmental Forum. His book, Earth v. Trump: A Failure to Protect, was released on November 2018.

Joel is engaged with both the legislative peer review and outreach teams on the LPDD project, and can be reached at thejbsgroup78@gmail.com.

Kimberly K. Faith is a former assistant counsel for the Office of the Legislative Counsel of the United States House of Representatives and serves as an adjunct professor at various universities. She is also a co-organizer of the annual International Conference on Legislation and Law Reform (www.ilegis.org) and an editor of the International Journal of Legislative Drafting and Law Reform. She holds a Juris Doctorate degree from Tulane University Law School and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and International Development from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Robert B. McKinstry, Jr., Esq., M.F.S., provides environmental and climate law consulting services.  He is a fellow in the American College of Environmental Law and the American Bar Foundation.  In 2018, he retired from Ballard Spahr LLP, where he co-founded and headed the firm’s Environmental and Natural Resources Practice Group and then its Climate Change and Sustainability Practice Initiative.  He continues his practice involving the full range of environmental issues but concentrates on climate and public interest work. He completed a six-year appointment as the Maurice K. Goddard Chair in Forestry and Environmental Resource Conservation at the Pennsylvania State University School of Forest Resources on July 1, 2007. He was co-counsel for group of leading climate scientists before the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA, where the Court ruled that there is authority to address emissions of greenhouse gases under the federal Clean Air Act. He represented clean energy utilities supporting EPA rulemaking before the Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in EPA v. EME Homer City Generation and Michigan v. EPA.  He is the Chair of the East Marlborough Township Board of Supervisors.  He is the Vice President of Lawyers for Climate Action: A Call to the Bar and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.  He has served on the Boards of many non-profit organizations and state, regional and local advisory committees. He is a member of the Environmental, Energy and Resources Section (SEER) of the American Bar Association, where he is a former Co-chair a current Vice Chair of the SEER Committee on Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Ecosystems. He has taken a lead role numerous state, regional and local greenhouse gas reduction planning processes.  He is also a member of the Environmental and Energy Law Section of the Pennsylvania Bar Association. Robert McKinstry is a Master in the Delaware Valley Environmental Inns of Court. He is the recipient of PBA’s Energy and Environmental Section 2010 Award for Distinguished Service and was named as MVP in environmental law by Law360 in 2014.  He has been recognized by Chambers USA as a Leading Lawyer for Business in the fields of both climate and environmental law, has been named by The Best Lawyers in America in environmental law and environmental litigation, has been named to Who’s Who Legal: Environment, and has been named as one of Pennsylvania’s Super Lawyers in environmental law.  He holds a B.A. with Honors from Swarthmore College, a J.D. from Yale Law School and an M.F.S. from Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Casey Crowley is a recent graduate of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has a degree in Entrepreneurship Management and a certificate in Social Responsibility and Ethics. During his undergraduate career, he has extensively studied the role of business in decarbonizing the economy. His previous work experience includes The Access Fund, a non-profit devoted to protecting public lands, and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. He plans to attend law school in the fall of 2021. On the LPDD team, he helps coordinate the drafting and peer review of model legal documents.

Mary Capdeville received her LLM in Global Environment and Climate Change Law from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and her Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado. Before attending the University of Edinburgh, she served as an assistant attorney general focusing on natural resource damage actions for 6 years at the state of Colorado followed by 23 years at the state of Montana.

Dr. Melaina is a Senior Analyst at Boston Government Services (BGS) supporting hydrogen systems analysis work within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office. His areas of expertise include analysis of hydrogen infrastructure and hydrogen energy supply chains, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, zero emission vehicle technologies and markets, and sustainable transportation scenarios. Before joining BGS, he worked for two years at Great Wall Motors and the sister company FTXT Energy Technologies in Boading, China, ten years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and two years at the Institute of Transportation Services at the University of California, Davis in Davis, California. Other work experience includes analysis support for two committees of the National Academy of Sciences and internships at the National Transportation Research Center at Oakridge National Laboratory and the City of Ann Arbor’s Energy Office. Dr. Melaina is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies. He has authored or co-authored 28 technical reports, 13 journal articles, 6 workshop proceedings, 3 book chapters, and over 35 conference papers and presentations. He has a BA degree in Physics from the University of Utah, and an MS in Civil Engineering and PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan.