ioby was founded in 2008 by Cassie Flynn, Brandon Whitney and Erin Barnes, and since then has grown a great deal. Please contact our team with any questions or ideas. Staff email address are first name at ioby dot org.
Staff
Erin Barnes, co-founder and Executive Director
Erin is an environmental writer with a background in water management. She worked as a writer on climate change and other pressing environmental issues for high-level U.S. elected officials and others before coming to ioby full time. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Manhattan Land Trust that manages urban community gardens to preserve, improve, and promote community managed open spaces for the benefit of all.
From 2007-2008, she was the environmental editor at Men’s Journal magazine and wrote for other publications such as New York and Plenty. From 2003-2005, she worked as a community organizer and public information officer at the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition in Portland, Oregon.
While completing her Master of Environmental Management in water science, economics, and policy at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, she was a U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies scholar in Portuguese. She did field research on socio-economic values of water in Goyena, Nicaragua, and the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon. Her report “Market Values of the Commercial Fishery on the Madeira River: Calculating the Costs of the Santo Antônio and Jirau Dams to Fishermen in Rondônia, Brasil and Pando-Beni, Bolivia” was published in the Tropical Resources Institute Journal in 2007.
Erin holds a B.A. in English and American Studies from the University of Virginia. She has lived in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, since 2008.
Brandon Whitney, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer
An environmental anthropologist by training, Brandon’s background includes conservation science, community-based development, civic engagement and education. His experience spans academia, NGOs, and community organizations in rural and urban contexts in the US and abroad, including Latin America and West Africa.
Brandon is also a visiting fellow with the Next Generation Engagement Project at UMass, Boston, focused on the scholarship of engagement and promoting public-oriented scholarship.
Before coming to ioby full time, he was a program associate with the Center for Humans and Nature, an interdisciplinary think tank that explores and promotes civic responsibilities for the environment. Previously, with the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Brandon worked to develop collaborative research programs on climate change, global water issues, and extreme poverty. His prior experience includes consulting on inquiry-based environmental curricula for the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation and fostering urban environmental stewardship while at the Urban Resources Initiative. In addition to his environmental work over the last several years, Brandon also served as a research associate with the Center for Excellence in Curricular Engagement at NC State University, collaborating on scholarship projects aimed at adapting the service-learning pedagogy to a variety of contexts; he has published articles and book chapters on civic engagement and education.
An avid runner, amateur chef, and aspiring fire-escape gardener, Brandon has lived in NYC since 2006. He holds undergraduate degrees in Biology and Political Science from NC State University and a Master of Environmental Science from Yale University.
David Weinberger, Community Manager
Before joining ioby as Community Manager, David spent three years as Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment at the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, a national, student-led public policy think tank. While a student at Hunter College (CUNY), David held internships at the Metropolitan Transit Authority (New York), the U.S. Department of State, the Democratic National Committee, and Friends of THIRTEEN. He is primarily interested in exploring ways to promote community involvement in urban planning, and believes firmly in the power of ioby to create real, community-driven change in neighborhoods everywhere.
Helen Ho, Neighborhood Outreach & Project Support Manager
Helen is a New York City native, an environmental advocate, and a thought leader in fields ranging from alternative transportation and waste management to environmental education and community empowerment. Before joining ioby in 2011, Helen worked with various local non-profit organizations such as Recycle-A-Bicycle, where she led their event-based fundraising efforts and Transportation Alternatives, where she founded and organized the Tour de Queens.
Helen has also run political campaigns, worked on chronic disease issues to prevent childhood obesity, and led outreach efforts at the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. During her tenure at Parks, Helen spearheaded several new green initiatives, and established annual events such as Going Green in Queens. Her efforts earned her acclaim and recognitions such as the 2005 Rookie of the Year from NYC Parks & Recreation, and one of the top fifteen innovators in Queens in 2008.
Helen holds a B.S. from SUNY Geneseo and earned a Masters in Urban Planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York.
In addition to her formal education, Helen is a Master Composter, Citizen Tree Pruner and has her certification in Permaculture Design. When Helen isn’t running environmental campaigns or starting new projects, she can be found biking the streets of Queens, collecting vegetables from the CSA, capsizing kayaks, or in Astoria Park.
Board of Directors
Erin Barnes, co-founder (bio above)
Brandon Whitney, co-founder (bio above)
Cassie Flynn, co-founder
Climate Change Team, United Nations Development Programme
As a member of the Climate Change Team of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Cassie supports actions to address climate change at the local, national, regional, and global levels. She has provided strategic advisory services to UN bodies, governments, and civil society groups on climate policy issues, especially in the context of the international climate change negotiations. She also served on the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Change team in preparation for the UN Climate Summit in 2009.
Previous to UNDP, Cassie’s work spans both the public and private sectors. She worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Clean Diesel Campaign, where she helped reduce emissions from diesel engines in schools buses, ports, and construction equipment. With the U.S. State Department, Cassie spent time in Fiji where she analyzed the viability of developing a biofuels industry as a part of the country’s response to the impacts of climate change and changing trade rules. In the private sector, Cassie has helped multi-billion dollar companies develop strategies to address climate change, advising them on energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction targets and identifying opportunities for short and long-term business gains. She also advised companies on how U.S. climate legislation would affect a company’s operations.
Cassie earned her Master’s in Environmental Management from the Yale University and undergraduate degrees in government and environmental studies from Bowdoin College. Cassie lives in Brooklyn and thinks there’s no better place in NYC than Prospect Park.
Irene Boland Nielson, Chair
Climate Change Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Irene Nielson is the Climate Change Coordinator for the New York City office of the Environmental Protection Agency. She joined EPA as a Presidential Management Fellow and has worked on a range of projects, including the Agency’s Strategic Plan, a memorandum of agreement with Department of Defense for a sustainable Guam, and more recently, on climate change. In 2007, Irene published a children’s book, Wind the World Over, about the history of wind power in China, Persia, Europe and the U.S. Currently, she co-chairs the EPA Region 2 Climate Change Workgroup and works to promote sustainability in communities. Irene is an Assistant Adjunct Lecturer at Columbia University, and weekend cyclist where she lives in Brooklyn.
Dr. Cameron Tonkinwise
, Secretary
Associate Dean for Sustainability, Parsons The New School for Design
Cameron Tonkinwise is the Associate Dean for Sustainability at Parsons The New School for Design. Previously the Co-Chair of the Tishman Environment and Design Center, which oversees the New School’s Environmental Studies degree programs, Cameron came to the New School from Sydney, Australia, where he was Director of Design Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Executive Director of Change Design, formerly known as the EcoDesign Foundation, a thinktank focused on design-enabled social change toward more sustainable futures. Cameron’s current research concerns lowering societal materials intensity by decoupling use and ownership–in short, sharing.
Charlotte Kaiser, Treasurer
Manager, Conservation Note Fund
Charlotte Kaiser joined The Nature Conservancy in May 2009 with more than a decade of experience in land conservation, financial analysis, urban development, and strategic planning. Most recently she worked at Citibank in community development investing, providing debt and equity financing for green buildings, affordable housing, and energy efficiency initiatives. She has also worked for the New York City Parks Department building civic engagement and stewardship of the City’s parks and natural areas, and in Indonesian Borneo on a community-based forest management enterprise.
At The Nature Conservancy, Charlotte works to develop innovative financing tools to support conservation activities. She is primarily focused on developing the Conservation Note Fund, a debt instrument that would allow investors to support land conservation by purchasing the Conservancy’s corporate debt.
Charlotte holds a BA from Harvard University in Environmental Science & Public Policy, a Masters in Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, an urban planner, and their son.
Antonia Bowring
Chief Operating Officer, Open Space Institute
Antonia has been the Chief Operating Officer of the Open Space Institute (OSI) since 2006 where she oversees numerous aspects of OSI’s day-to-day operations and manages its grassroots environmental program. She manages the Citizen Action Program (OSI’s fiscal sponsorship program for grassroots environmental groups) and has grown the program over 45% in the past 18 months. Before coming to OSI, she was a portfolio manager at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and a strategy consultant to non-profit entities such as Acumen Fund and Trace Foundation. She earned her M.Phil in Development Studies at Sussex University and her MBA in finance and marketing at McGill University in 1998.
Bill Browning
Founder, Terrapin Bright Green
Early in his career, Bill helped build luminary thinker Buckminster Fuller’s last experimental structure, based on advanced geometry systems. In 1991, he founded Green Development Services at Rocky Mountain Institute, an entrepreneurial, non-profit “think and do tank” whose work advances energy-efficient and environmentally-responsive design. His 300+ consulting projects at RMI included new towns, resorts, building renovations, and high-profile demonstration projects including Wal-Mart’s Eco-mart, the Greening of the White House, and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Village. He also worked on energy efficiency improvements for a number of U.S. Department of Defense facilities, including the Pentagon, the Navy Yard, the Air Force Academy, and the Pacific Air Force Headquarters. In 1999 Green Development Services was awarded the President’s Council for Sustainable Development/Renew America Prize. Bill remains a Senior Fellow at RMI.
Beginning in 2004, Bill was the Director of Design and Environment for Haymount, a New Urbanist community in Virginia. In 2005 he left Haymount to join Jeffrey Bannon in co-founding Browning+Bannon LLC, an independent real estate and consulting firm focused on environmentally responsive development.
Bill was a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Board of Directors, and still serves on the USGBC’s Governance Board. Over the years Bill has served in a Board or advisory role to numerous other organizations, including: the Nature Conservancy, Greening America, the American Institute of Architects, the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education, RealEnergy, the Roaring Fork Conservancy, and the American Society for Testing and Materials. Currently, he is a member of the Real Estate Council for The Trust for Public Land, the Interface “Green Dream Team,” the Department of Defense’s Defense Science Board, and is an editorial advisor for Environmental Building News, Environmental Design & Construction Magazine, and Green @ Work.
Bill received a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from the University of Colorado, specializing in energy-conscious architecture and resource management. He holds a Masters of Science in Real Estate Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the MIT Center for Real Estate’s 1991 Public-Sector Fellowship, and, in 1995, the Charles H. Spaulding Award. In 1998 Bill was named one of five people “Making a Difference” by Buildings magazine. In 2001 he was selected as an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, and in 2004 he was honored with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership Award. Bill is based in Washington, D.C.
Brandi Colander
Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council
Brandi Colander is an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an international environmental non-profit with over 300 scientists, attorneys and 1.3 million members and online activists headquartered in New York City. Working with NRDC’s Air & Energy group, Brandi’s expertise in energy policy focuses on industry restructuring and utility regulation, energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. In addition, she is the project manager of greenpowernyc.com, a website developed to enable New York City residents to purchase renewable energy in just three simple mouse clicks.
Prior to joining NRDC, Brandi was an associate with McCarter & English, LLP in their litigation and energy practice groups where she reviewed environmental transactions to identify potential environmental risks and researched, analyzed and drafted memoranda in preparation for depositions, arbitrations and litigation. Colander also worked with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation as an Assistant Program Officer where she was a community economic development liaison in New Jersey serving the area’s small business, affordable housing, and non-profit lending needs. While at LISC, Colander testified at a public hearing before the Joint Committee on the Public Schools and Schools Facilities Subcommittee in New Jersey encouraging the Department of Education to develop regulations to include community providers in the district long-range facilities planning process, developed and facilitated an environmental building training workshop and assisted in the facilitation of the Coalition for Our Children’s Schools’ conference on community schools.
Brandi’s experiences have afforded her the opportunity to present at a host of conferences and universities addressing community economic development, the environment and energy policy. She has published articles with the Electricity Journal, Yale University’s Sage Magazine and written and researched extensively with the Jamestown Project.
Colander is a graduate of the New York City Environmental Law Leadership Institute and an Environmental Leadership Program Fellow. She serves as a mentor to a high school student through Legal Outreach and a member of the New York City Bar Association’s International Environmental Law Committee. Brandi earned her Master’s degree at Yale University, Juris Doctor at Vermont Law School and Bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia.
Emily Enderle
Environmental Health Advocate, Earthjustice
Emily Enderle is the environmental health advocate in the Washington D.C. office of Earthjustice, the nation’s largest non-profit environmental law firm. Emily specializes in environmental health and air quality, working to uphold and strengthen environmental statutes by advancing positions that protect humans from unhealthy exposure to dangerous environmental contaminants. Prior to working at Earthjustice, Emily was the Associate Director of Admissions and Admissions Diversity Coordinator at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies where she helped increase diversity and inclusivity at Yale. She is the author of the edited volume Diversity and the Future of the U.S. Environmental Movement that showcases the work of more than 15 environmental leaders.
Emily has worked with London’s municipal fuel poverty eradication program “Warm Zone,” the Bank Information Center in New Delhi and as a corporate environmental consultant in the San Francisco office of Kearns & West. She is a fellow of Ezra Stiles College at Yale College, a fellow of the China Environmental Justice Exchange Fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of State, and serves on the board of the Center for Diversity and the Environment. Emily is also an Environmental Leadership Program Senior Fellow and has lectured about environmental policy at Yale, Cornell, Mount Holyoke and other forums.
Emily holds a Masters of Environmental Management from Yale University and graduated with high honors in environmental studies from Oberlin College.
Dr. Lourdes Hernández-Cordero
Associate Director, Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention
Dr. Lourdes Hernández-Cordero came to the U.S. in 1996 after receiving her Bachelor in Sciences in Industrial Biotechnology–a degree combining Chemical Engineering and Microbiology–from the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she moved to the United States to attend graduate school. She obtained a Masters in Public Health from the University of Connecticut, School of Medicine in 1998. In 2004, she graduated from the DrPH program in Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, where she is now an Assistant Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences directing the Urbanism and the Built Environment MPH track. Her dissertation focused on the role of organizations in community mobilization for trauma recovery post the 9/11 disaster. As part of the Community Research Group at Columbia, she has been able to combine her interest in community mobilization and the application of research. The relationships built with local organizations as Program Coordinator for the Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative has served as the foundation for her work.
Currently, Dr. Hernández-Cordero is Associate Director of the Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention (CCYVP) and leads the Center’s community mobilization efforts. Within CCYVP, she leads the City Life Is Moving Bodies (CLIMB) project, a multilevel intervention to promote physical activity, stewardship and social capital. She utilizes community mobilization strategies to engage local stakeholders in initiatives that promote collaboration, resource sharing and a broad work agenda. She proposes that there are opportunities for conceptually linking organizations, institutions and residents in the vicinity of the parks to create/strengthen programming and services that address neighborhood needs. Dr. Hernandez-Cordero is actively involved in public health practice: she has co-chaired the citywide High Bridge Coalition, is part of the Advisory Board of the NYC Strategic Alliance for Health and currently co-chairs the UNIDOS Inwood Coalition. Her research includes a Robert Wood Johnson Active Living Research grant to examine perceptions of the built environment and use of public spaces and a Columbia University Diversity Fellowship examining the application of harm reduction strategies to the management of public spaces.
Lourdes lives in northern Manhattan with her husband Rodger Rodriguez and their children Diego Alejandro, Alma Consuelo and Elisa Victoria.
Eric Ng
VP Marketing, IMG Worldwide
Eric Ng is the VP and Head of Marketing for IMG Worldwide. He is responsible for guiding brand management and marketing strategies across IMG and its global portfolio. At IMG, Eric has developed proprietary methodologies for building the brands of culturally significant events and celebrities. Assignments have included work for NCAA/College Sports, Tiger Woods, The Indian Premier League, Danica Patrick, X-Games and many others.
He joined IMG from TBWA\Chiat\Day, where he worked on and managed a number of advertising accounts, including Sprint, then one of the largest individual accounts in the world. Prior to TBWA, he developed brands and products for several technology and media companies, including Student.Com, a company he co-founded in 1995 that was backed by AT&T and others.
Eric is a graduate of Yale University, and writes about branding and marketing at brandng.com.
Ben Stein
Chief Technology Officer, Mobile Commons
Ben is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Mobile Commons, where he is responsible for product development, system architecture, and technical operations. He is one of the leading pioneers shaping how nonprofit organizations successfully use mobile communication for advocacy, fundraising, list building, and organizing.
Ben has 15 years of experience building Internet applications of all shapes and sizes. He spent much of his career building distributed software for B2B customers. With a background in both the financial and medical industries, he has extensive experience with high availability systems with a focus on security and data sensitivity. As a software engineer at Bloomberg LP, Ben developed their trading system, search engine, and web services. After Bloomberg, he worked at ShadowTV, transcoding, indexing and streaming 100s of terabytes of video data for government and corporate customers.
Ben earned a BS in electrical and biological engineering and a Master’s in medical image processing, both at Cornell University. After completing his studies, he took a position as a Visiting Scientist, developing medical software used in clinical trials for lung cancer screening and image analysis tools used in General Electric’s CT scanners.
Ben lives on a small urban farm in Brooklyn with his wife Arin and he can usually be found coding, biking, or rock climbing.
Arif Ullah
Director of Neighborhood Resources, Citizens Committee for New York City
Arif Ullah is Director of Neighborhood Resources at Citizens Committee for New York City. In this role, he manages the organization’s micro-grants program, which awards grants to volunteer-driven grassroots groups in low-income neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. Additionally, he facilitates skills-building workshops and delivers project planning assistance to such groups. Prior to joining Citizens Committee, Arif worked for five years as an immigrants rights community organizer with American Friends Service Committee, an international peace and justice organization. He is committed to various issues of social and environmental justice.
Bethany Wall
Development Director, Citizens Union in the City of New York
A dancer at heart, Bethany strives to generate energy and movement throughout her work. As Development Director for Citizens Union, a longstanding political reform organization in NYC and NYS, she draws connections between sometimes arcane government policies and practice and the realities of everyday life for New Yorkers and their neighborhoods. Bethany brings over 25 years of nonprofit management experience as both grantmaker and grantseeker to her current work, having spent a chunk of her career at the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, where she first worked internally, on operations and systems, then externally, on program and grantmaking. This varied experience honed her ability to work effectively with diverse constituencies across issues and organizational cultures.
Following her work at Mertz Gilmore, Bethany raised the profile of Riverside Park Fund and successfully secured over $200,000 in new, diversified foundation funding for the park’s northern region. As an independent consultant, Bethany conducted planning and development projects, often with environmental and cultural groups. In collaboration with David Bury & Associates, she developed the Living Legacy Project for the Cunningham Dance Foundation, a strategy for a post-founder era that was widely viewed as groundbreaking. She lives in Jersey City within easy walking distance of the Hudson River and terrific views of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the back and side of the Statue of Liberty.
Karen Washington
Urban Farmer & Physical Therapist
Karen Washington has lived in New York City all her life, and has been a resident of the Bronx for over 25 years. Since 1985 Karen has been a community activist, striving to make the Bronx a better place to live. As a community gardener, Karen has worked with neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens. As an advocate, she has stood up and spoken out for garden protection and preservation. As a member of the La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, she launched a City Farms Market, bringing garden fresh vegetables to her neighbors.
Karen is a Just Food Board member and Just Food Trainer, leading workshops on food growing and food justice to community gardeners all over the city. Karen is also the President of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, a group that was founded to preserve community gardens and on the board of the New York Botanical Gardens. Professionally Karen has been a Physical Therapist for over 30 years, and she continues to balance her professional life with community service. “To grow your own food gives you a sort of power and it gives people dignity. You know exactly what you’re eating because you grew it. It’s good, it’s nourishing and you did this for yourself, your family and your community.”
Advisors
Gus Speth, Professor, Vermont School of Law; founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute; former Dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
Steve Seward, Assistant Dean for Development, New York University, Steinhardt School