Keynote Speakers

This year's event will include keynote speakers Dr. Jonathan Foley and Susan Hubbard.

Jonathan Foley is the director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of the Minnesota, where he is a professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. He also leads the IonE’s Global Landscapes Initiative.

Foley’s work focuses on complex global environmental systems and their interactions with human societies. He and his students have contributed to our understanding of large-scale ecosystem processes, global patterns of land use, the behavior of the planet’s climate and water cycles, and the sustainability of our biosphere.

Foley joined the U of M in 2008, after spending 15 years on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, where he founded the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. He has won numerous awards and honors, including the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award; the J.S. McDonnell Foundation’s 21st Century Science Award; an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship; and the Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America. In 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. 

Although originally from Maine, Foley now considers the Upper Midwest his home. He enjoys a wide range of Minnesota’s leisure activities, including kayaking, bicycling, gardening and exploring the cities—often with his two young daughters leading the way. 

Susan Hubbard is the co-president and one of the co-founders of Eureka Recycling, a Twin Cities based 501(c) 3 nonprofit corporation whose mission is to demonstrate that waste is preventable. Along with co-president Tim Brownell, Susan leads the organization in a variety of zero waste programs and services that aim to reduce waste through the redesign of goods and services, to recognize the resources in what we currently define as waste, and to inspire our community to rethink our potential to improve the quality of life through the preservation of our environment.

Since 1998, Susan has led the award-winning recycling programs of Eureka Recycling, and prior to its creation, those of the recycling department of the Saint Paul Neighborhood Energy Consortium. Prior to moving to Minnesota, Susan worked for more than ten years in the recycling field in diverse roles in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. She served as the President of the National Recycling Coalition (NRC), Washington, D.C., and on that organization’s executive committee in various roles from 1994 - 1998. Susan currently acts as advisor and the Minnesota Product Stewardship Organizer to the Product Policy Institute, a nationally organization that helps communities and their local governments organize product stewardship initiatives to connect product design with end-of-life management.