Adell L. Amos holds the Clayton R. Hess Professorship at the University of Oregon School of Law and serves as the Executive Director of the UO’s Environment Initiative. She teaches regularly in the nationally ranked Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, including courses in Water Law, Federal Administrative Law, Environmental Conflict Resolution, and Oregon Water Law and Policy. Her teaching and scholarship have been recognized by the UO Fund for Faculty Excellence and the Hollis Teaching Awards.  Her most recent research focuses on the integration of law and policy into hydrologic and socioeconomic modeling for the Willamette River Basin through a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary effort funded by the NOAA and the National Science Foundation.

Professor Amos earned her B.A in 1995 from Drury College and her J.D. in 1998 from the University of Oregon (Coif). She is a member of the Missouri bar, admitted in 1999.  After law school, Amos clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for The Honorable Procter Hug, Jr. (then Chief Judge).  Amos first joined the faculty in 2005 after practicing environmental and natural resources law with the U.S. Department of Interior. In 2008, Amos returned to Washington DC to serve in the Obama Administration as the Deputy Solicitor for Land and Water Resources at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Amos returned to the UO School of Law in 2011 as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. 

Amos’ research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy, Nature Sustainability, as well as many law reviews and journals.  She currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Hewlett Foundation’s Open Rivers Fund.  In recognition of her work on water law and policy, she served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Environmental Law at Vermont Law School and has been a frequent keynote speaker and panelist for a wide range of organizations including the National Judicial College, Washington University, American Water Resources Association, the Oregon Legislative Caucus, the Federal District Court Conference, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and the Wingspread Foundation.  Her work has received funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Commerce – NOAA Fisheries, Natural Resources Defense Council, the NorthLight Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of the Interior – Bureau of Land Management, Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, among others.

Janine Benner serves as the Director of the Oregon Department of Energy. Janine joined ODOE in 2017 as Assistant Director for Planning and Innovation and was confirmed by the Oregon Senate as ODOE’s director in February 2018. Janine came to ODOE from the U.S. Department of Energy, where she served as Associate Assistant Secretary in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs. Janine also spent 12 years working for Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), as Energy and Environmental Policy Advisor, Legislative Director, and Deputy Chief of Staff. She grew up in Portland, OR and has a degree in history from Princeton University.

Travis Brouwer serves as Assistant Director for Revenue, Finance and Compliance. In this role, he oversees all of ODOT’s financial and revenue functions, including the DMV, Commerce and Compliance Division, and Finance and Budget Division. He has responsibility for ensuring sustainable revenue and maintaining the agency’s fiscal health.

Brouwer joined ODOT in 2005. He previously served for more than five years as Assistant Director for Public Affairs, overseeing all of the agency’s externally-facing functions. He also served for eight years as the agency’s Federal Affairs Advisor, working with Oregon’s congressional delegation and other federal officials on legislation, funding and policy.

Prior to joining ODOT he worked for Congresswoman Darlene Hooley for six and a half years, including serving as her District Co-Director and running her Salem district office. Travis graduated from Willamette University in 1999 with a degree in politics. He lives in Salem with his wife and three children.

Kat Compton is the Regional Climate Coordinator for EPA Region 10, serving Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, and 271 Tribal Nations. Kat supports communities across Region 10 as they work toward their climate adaptation and mitigation goals. In recent months, she has been especially focused on helping communities in Region 10 prepare to take full advantage of the historic investments of the Inflation Reduction Act. Kat joined EPA as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2016 to serve as Region 10’s Pollution Prevention Program Coordinator. She grew up in Seattle, WA and holds a PhD in geophysics from the University of Arizona.

Professor Greg Dotson is a faculty member of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center, where he leads the Energy Law and Policy Project. He teaches Environmental Law, Climate Change Law and Policy, and the Environmental Policy Practicum. He is a nationally-recognized expert on environmental law and has provided commentary to numerous national media outlets.

Dotson has held senior environmental staff positions in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. From February 2021 until October 2022, Dotson served as the Democratic Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. In this position, he worked on the American Recovery Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. 

In the U.S. House of Representatives, Dotson served as the Energy and Environment Staff Director on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. As U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman’s lead energy and environmental policy staffer from 1996 until 2014, he was the lead staffer on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (the Waxman-Markey Bill), a comprehensive climate change and energy bill that passed the House of Representative in June 2009. He also worked on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996 and the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 among other laws. Dotson was also engaged in congressional oversight and investigations, including numerous high-profile inquiries into political interference with climate science, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, hydraulic fracturing, and the energy market abuses of Enron.

Prior to joining academia at the University of Oregon School of Law in 2017, Dotson served as the Vice President for Energy Policy at the Washington, D.C.-based multidisciplinary think tank the Center for American Progress. In that role, Dotson oversaw the international and domestic energy and environmental policy work of the center. Dotson authored policy papers and opinion editorials, hosted panel discussions of experts and government officials, and testified on energy and environmental policy before the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Dotson graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law in 1995 with a concentration in environmental and natural resources law. He earned his undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech.

Margaret, or Margi, Hoffmann's professional career began working in natural resources management on federal lands. She has worked on public policy in the realms of public safety, health care, climate change, energy resilience and security, and land use. She has experience working for the public and private sector, as well as in non-profit management.

In 2012 and 2015, Oregon Governors John Kitzhaber and Kate Brown, respectively, appointed Hoffmann to serve as Energy Policy Advisor. In this position, Hoffmann developed the first-ever 10-Year Energy Action Plan for the State of Oregon and served as the Governor's office liaison to the Oregon Public Utility Commission and Oregon Department of Energy. In addition, she served as liaison to the Pacific Coast Collaborative, a partnership between the States of California, Oregon and Washington, and the Province of British Columbia. In 2022, her work served to assist in the development of a shared Statement of Collaboration to address climate change adaptation and mitigation for the world's fifth largest economy.

After leaving the Governor's office, Hoffmann served as a senior management team member for the Farmers Conservation Alliance, a non-profit focused on modernizing irrigation infrastructure in the Western United States to benefit agricultural security and the environment. In January 2022, Hoffmann received a Presidential appointment to continue public service as a state director for USDA Rural Development, serving the State of Oregon.

Mike Kaercher is a Senior Attorney Advisor and Director of the Climate Tax Project  at the Tax Law Center at NYU Law. He has over a decade of experience on a broad range of complex federal tax issues. Kaercher currently focuses on leading the Tax Law Center’s work on the implementation of the climate tax provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as contributes to the Center’s work across a range of other issue areas.

Prior to joining the Tax Law Center, Kaercher spent two years on detail to the House Ways and Means majority tax staff. While there, he designed and advanced tax policy in various substantive areas, including green energy tax policy, excise taxes, and COVID relief. 

For seven years, he was an employee of the Office of Associate Chief Counsel (International) at the IRS, where he advised the IRS on interpretation, administration, and enforcement of various international tax regimes, including the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), the Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI) regime, and the Subpart F regime. In that role, he also drafted certain regulations and other guidance related to these regimes. 

Prior to joining the government, Kaercher was an associate at Ivins, Phillips & Barker, and at WilmerHale, where he advised large corporations and universities, primarily on employee benefits matters. 

Kaercher holds a JD from Harvard Law School, and a BA from Colgate University. Kaercher is admitted to practice law in Washington, DC and Maryland.

Colin manages the Office of Climate Programs at Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The scope of the Office includes Oregon's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, Clean Fuels Program, and the Climate Protection Program. Prior to this role, Colin worked 2 years in Oregon Governor Brown's office to develop policy to establish broad statewide limits on greenhouse gas emissions.  More recently, his work has entailed developing similar policy limiting Oregonian’s use of fossil fuels and beginning work with the Public Utility Commission to implement emission targets on electricity suppliers.  Colin has a Bachelor’s in Biology and Geography from the University of Oregon and a Master’s in Urban Planning from Portland State University.

Dr. Alaí Reyes-Santos is the co-director of the PNW Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice,  Professor of Practice of Law at University of Oregon, and works with U of Oregon's Environment Initiative. She facilitated the Equity Panel for City of Eugene's Climate Action Plan, is a co-founder of the Oregon Water Futures Project, and the co-author of Healers, a public digital storytelling project documenting Indigenous and Black traditional ecological and medicinal knowledge.

Salazar serves as Pacific Northwest Regional Administrator for Region X (Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska).  Prior to this role, she served in the cabinet of Oregon Governor Kate Brown as Executive Director of Oregon Housing Community Services (OHCS), the state’s Housing Finance Agency. During her five-year tenure at the helm, OHCS tripled its production of affordable rental housing, created nearly 1,000 units of Permanent Supportive Housing statewide, deployed $500 million in emergency rental assistance, passed legislation to expand racial equity in homelessness programs, and expanded mortgage lending to homebuyers of color. Salazar led the agency to respond to the state’s historic 2020 wildfires with innovative modular developments and services for Oregon’s agricultural workers. A national leader in affordable housing finance, Salazar previously served in leadership roles in HUD Headquarters, where she stewarded the Rental Assistance Demonstration and financed the recapitalization of hundreds of properties while safeguarding affordability for thousands of vulnerable seniors and families. Salazar began her career in philanthropy, funding community organizations working for social and economic justice across the Western States. A long-time housing advocate, she led a successful grassroots campaign for just cause eviction protections in Oakland, California in 2002.  Salazar is a graduate of Wesleyan University and UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and has served on the Boards of Directors of the Low Income Investment Fund, National Housing Trust, and National Council of State Housing Agencies. She grew up on a cherry orchard in Hood River, Oregon and is proud to call the Pacific Northwest home.

Michael is a tax associate in the Portland, Oregon office of the law firm Stoel Rives LLP, where he has worked since graduating law school in 2017.  His practice involves helping a variety of clients with federal, state and local tax issues.  A significant portion of his work involves tax equity financing transactions for renewable energy projects.

Alyse Taylor-Anyikire, Ph.D., serves as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Policy at the U.S. Department of Energy. She focuses on state, local, tribal, and territorial engagement as well as advising on clean energy, climate and environment, resilience, and energy cybersecurity.

During Alyse’s first tenure with the Department of Energy, she was a AAAS Fellow in the Office of Policy   focused on policy and technology challenges related to electricity markets, energy efficiency, distributed energy resources and cybersecurity. In her second year as a fellow, she worked in the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response focused on cybersecurity research and development for energy delivery.

Prior to returning DOE, Alyse worked with the National Governor’s Association advising Governors’ offices on electricity policy, energy cybersecurity, as well as energy resilience and security. Alyse has also worked for the Boston Consulting Group as a strategy consultant in the energy and technology practices. She focused on helping electricity utilities, technology firms, and oil and gas companies refine their business strategies and modernize their research and development portfolios.

Alyse has a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a focus in power systems and renewable energy. Her graduate work focused on bridging the gap between innovative research in power systems and appropriate policy and regulatory changes. She also has a master’s degree in electrical engineering with a minor in public policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Florida A&M University.