Keynote Speaker
Cameron Davis, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Facilitators
Jerry Adelmann, Openlands
Josh Ellis, Metropolitan Planning Council 

Panelists
Ann Alexander, Natural Resources Defense Council
Joel Brammeier, Alliance for the Great Lakes
Claus Dunkelberg, Milwaukee Water Council
Martin Felsen, Archeworks, UrbanLab
Margaret Frisbie, Friends of the Chicago River
Todd Main, Illinois Department of Natural Resources
Suzanne Malec-McKenna, City of Chicago, Department of Environment
Lynn McClure, National Parks Conservation Association
David Naftzger, Council of Great Lakes Governors
Sabina Shaikh, University of Chicago, RCF Economic & Financial Consulting
Jonah Smith, Alliance for the Great Lakes
John Swanson, Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission
Russell Van Herik, Great Lakes Protection Fund
Douglas Voigt, SOM, Urban Design and Planning

Keynote Speaker
Cameron Davis, J.D.,
Senior Advisor to the U.S. EPA Administrator

Photo by Alliance for the Great Lakes

Cameron Davis is Senior Advisor to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. In that capacity he provides counsel to Administrator Lisa Jackson on the Obama Administration’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. His job includes coordinating Great Lakes policy and funding initiatives with more than one dozen federal agencies and with state, municipal, tribal, business and civic stakeholders. The focus of this work involves restoring habitat, reducing pollution, preventing the introduction of invasive species, reducing runoff and enhancing coastal health for people, fish and wildlife. For more than two decades, Mr. Davis has worked to develop and implement water quality and quantity policy. Starting as a volunteer, he served as a litigating attorney and law teacher at the University of Michigan Law School before serving as president and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. Under his leadership, the organization won the American Bar Association’s Distinguished Award in Environmental Law & Policy, the first time for a public interest organization in the honor’s history. He earned his law degree, including certification in environmental and energy law, from the Chicago-Kent College of Law and a B.A. from Boston University in International Relations. He is the author of Confluence (BookSurge 2009), the first of a new genre, the “genoir.” While working in Washington, D.C., Chicago and throughout the eight Great Lakes states, Cam lives across the street from Lake Michigan with his wife, Dr. Katelyn Varhely, and son, where they try to swim in the lake several times a week, but only when it’s warm enough.