Meet the Panelists: 2026 Vermont Journal of Environmental Law Symposium

Todd Howland has over 25 years of professional experience in the field of human rights. He is currently the interim director of the Environmental Justice Clinic and a visiting professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. He is also a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School. Recently, he served as chief of the Development, Economic, and Social Rights Branch of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva. He also served as OHCHR Representative in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola, among other UN posts.

He has authored over 30 scholarly articles and published over 80 commentaries on human rights in newspapers and magazines. He has worked for a number of advocacy groups, including what is now known as the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center.

He holds a JD and MA in political economy from the University of Denver, attended the Hague Academy of International Law, was a fellow at the Harvard Human Rights Program, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Nanda Center at the University of Denver. He also co-founded humanrightsradio.org/.

Mark James LLM’16 is the interim director of the Institute for Energy and the Environment and an associate professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School. Mark teaches Energy Policy in a Carbon Constrained World and Oil and Gas Development & the Environment. Prior to joining the VLGS faculty, Mark was a Global Energy LLM Fellow at VLGS between 2014 and 2016. 

Mark leads research into how to integrate inclusive, democratic processes into the clean energy transition. His current research projects focus on the use of economic tools to facilitate the early retirement of coal-fired generation and how to ensure effective participation for environmental non-profits into regional transmission organization (RTO) stakeholder governance processes. Mark was the lead research on a collaborative project with national non-profit Protect Our Power exploring how to enhance cybersecurity for electric distribution utilities. The collaboration has produced two reports and multiple presentations to state regulatory commissioners. His earlier research focused on data privacy for energy information in low-income energy assistance programs and real estate transactions. He has completed numerous grant-funded projects including leading a research team on a multi-year SunShot Plug and Play project to commercialize adhered solar PV panel technology. 

Arturo Brandt LLM’03 is a globally recognized environmental lawyer based in Santiago, Chile, with expertise in sustainability, low carbon economies, climate change, climate finance, emissions trading, renewable energy, environmental compliance, legislation and litigation, and market brokerage for the carbon and biomass industries. Arturo has advised public and private sector at local and international level, including his academic activity in Chile and abroad. With more than 30 years of experience in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Swiss, Spain, Japan, China, Singapore, including in-depth experience consulting and leading interdisciplinary task forces in the environmental field across Latin America, Arturo has demonstrated his expertise knowledge with carbon markets and climate change through a global perspective.

Andres Chang is a Master of Environment and Sustainability student at the University of Toronto. Prior to beginning his graduate studies, he held research positions at global and U.S.-based nonprofit environmental organizations. At the Science Based Targets initiative (2018-2022), a pioneering standard-setter and validator of corporate climate targets, he authored resources that established the scientific foundation for science-based emissions targets. Such targets now cover nearly half of global market capitalization. During his years at Greenpeace USA (2022-2025), he conducted research that informed campaigns advocating for halting the expansion of US gas export infrastructure and protecting the right to protest. As a volunteer (2020-2025), he co-led arts editing for Science for the People magazine and helped facilitate the activities of the Alternative Building Industry Collective. Andres’s current research examines whether and how voluntary sustainability initiatives in the mining sector influence contention over mines.

Martin Thiboutot is a seasoned lawyer specializing in environmental law, municipal law, and general commercial law. He has been working in the mining industry since the very beginning of his career, advising mining companies and stakeholders on regulatory compliance and environmental risk management. In this context, he notably served as a member of the Mining Association of Canada’s Environmental Committee from 2024 to 2025.

For over 10 years, Martin has provided advice on compliance and regulation, particularly in relation to natural resource management, environmental permitting regimes, environmental declarations, extended producer responsibility, and the management of contaminated land and protected areas, including wetlands. He also has significant experience in renewable energy and transmission projects and has been involved in drafting and negotiating agreements for a wide range of construction and infrastructure projects, as well as advising on environmental litigation.

Professor Janet E. Milne is recognized internationally as an expert in environmental tax policies. The courses she has taught at Vermont Law and Graduate School include Environmental Taxation, Climate Change: The Power of Taxes, Land Use Law, Land and Takings, Property, and Income Tax.

After receiving her BA degree, magna cum laude, from Williams College in 1973, Professor Milne served as field director, then associate director, for the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, a land conservation organization. She received her JD degree in 1981, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, where she served as lead case and notes editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. After clerking for the Honorable Frank M. Coffin, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Portland, Maine, she served as an attorney for The Washington Post. She subsequently was a tax attorney with the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling. She then became the legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, handling tax, trade, and health care issues falling within the senator’s jurisdiction as chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Returning to New England, Professor Milne served as special counsel to Dartmouth Medical School from 1994 to 1999 and as consultant to the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation from 1995 to 2001.

Yanmei Lin is a professor of law at Vermont Law and Graduate School and deputy director of the U.S.-Asia Partnerships for Environmental Law. Her research and programmatic work focus on the rule of law development in China’s environmental governance. She has led the development and the implementation of the Partnership for Environmental Justice Project which supported the establishment a new Environment and Biodiversity Law Clinic in Yunnan Province to provide legal aid services to NGOs and vulnerable communities. She also supported the design and implementation of environmental law judicial training programs for Chinese judges and lawyers. She is the author of over 40 academic articles both in Chinese and English in the area of comparative environmental law such as environmental public interest litigation, citizen suits, wetland and wildlife protection and the access and benefit sharing of genetical resources and traditional knowledge.

Zack Porter is the executive director of Standing Trees and a passionate advocate for America’s public lands. Born and raised in New England, Zack developed a deep bond with wild nature at an early age. Zack’s career in public land management and wildlands advocacy began more than two decades ago with the U.S. Forest Service in Washington’s North Cascades.

Since then, Zack has worked for a range of nonprofit organizations to protect wild rivers, lakes, mountains, and prairies from the Northern Rockies to New England, including with Montana Wilderness Association, All Against the Haul, Northeast Wilderness Trust, and the Conservation Law Foundation. Among Zack’s proudest accomplishments was working with indigenous communities in the US and Canada to successfully block ExxonMobil from expanding Tar Sands strip mining operations in northern Alberta.

Sheng Sun is the director of the Law Lab for International Sustainable Development at Vermont Law and Graduate School, where he leads a global network of experts and students in interdisciplinary research addressing real-world sustainable development challenges. His work focuses on policy and regulatory development related to international trade, investment, and supply chains, and their interaction with climate change, land use, and society. He also explores the application of modern technologies—such as GIS, remote sensing, data science, and artificial intelligence—in the trade and investment law and policy space.

Joseph Lepak is a current JD/MERL student and member of the Vermont Law Review and Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, serving as co-symposium editor. Joseph has a passion in arctic policy regarding resource extraction and global energy systems. Before law school Joseph studied environmental and conservation science at George Mason University.

Dr. Mary R. Albert is a professor at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. She is also executive director of the NSF Ice Drilling Program. Dr. Albert has a long career of research in cold regions, including science and engineering research in Greenland and in Antarctica. Currently in Greenland, she is working with small communities to solve climate adaptation and mitigation issues for residents experiencing impacts from current climate change. In northern Greenland, she leads a research program to work with people in the fishing village of Qaanaaq to plan and enable a pathway toward their affordable, sustainable future. In this village, as well as most in northern Greenland, all energy is reliant on fossil fuels. This research involves planning transition to use of renewable energies, improvements in housing energy conservation and heating, and innovations in fishing techniques and processing that will increase family income for the local fishers. On invitation from the National Academies of Science, Mary served as Chair (2004-2006) of the U.S. National Committee for the International Polar Year. Mary earned her BS in mathematics from Penn State, BE and MS in engineering sciences from Dartmouth, and PhD in engineering sciences from the University of California San Diego.

Dr. Kathleen Araújo is the director of the Energy Policy Institute and professor of Sustainable Energy Systems, Innovation, and Policy at Boise State University. She is a lead for a $24 million National Science Foundation award to evaluate energy-water system resilience. She is also the lead for a national, U.S. Department of Energy-funded consortium that is providing recommendations on collaboration-based siting for critical infrastructure. Dr. Araújo’s research contributes to the advancing field of energy transitions. Her book, Low Carbon Energy Transitions: Turning Points in National Policy and Innovation (Oxford University Press), examines the social and technical histories of country-level change with Icelandic geothermal energy, French nuclear power, Danish wind power and Brazilian biofuels following the 1973 oil crisis. Her edited volume, the Routledge Handbook of Energy Transitions (Routledge) distills key elements in the state of current knowledge on energy transitions.

In 2023, Dr. Araújo was named a Presidential Innovator at Boise State University. She has presented or led discussions in forums for the Arctic Assembly, University of Cambridge, and Fukushima Medical University. She consults across sectors.

Ross Jones JD/MSEL’00 is an adjunct professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, teaching Natural Resources Law and various courses on climate change. In addition, Ross is a senior lecturer in the Environmental Studies Department at Dartmouth College, teaching Environmental Law and conducting research on the integration of ecology and environmental law, particularly as it relates to biodiversity protection and natural resource management—including energy resources in various ecosystems. Finally, Ross is a consultant on a range of environmental projects—ranging from providing scientific and legal expertise for litigation to working with private and public groups on sustainability issues.

Ross grew up in the mountains and deserts of the western United States, developing ties with nature. Ross moved to Chicago for college (majored in biology at the University of Chicago) and graduate school (received a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from Northwestern University). Ross’s dissertation combined fieldwork (in the caves and springs of West Virginia) with laboratory and theoretical work to study the ecological causes of natural selection, along with the interaction of selection with genetic drift, gene flow, and development.

Bindu Panikkar is an Associate Professor at the Environmental Program, Rubenstein School for Environment and Natural Resources at University of Vermont. She works at the intersection of Environmental Health, Environmental Justice, and Science, Technology & Society Studies. Her work examines environmental controversies surrounding emerging contaminants, land use development, and technology politics and its social, legal, ethical, and environmental justice implications.

She has been working on environmental health and environmental justice issues since 2005 starting with her doctoral research exploring occupational health issues among immigrant workers in construction, cleaning, and day laborer industries in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her current work examines a range of environmental justice issues in Vermont including environmental health disparities in the state, migrant occupational health issues, food, energy, and transportation justice, and land use policies that reinforce whiteness of Vermont.

Andrew Hockenberry JD/MFALP’25 is a postdoctoral research associate with the College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His student note, “Sod and Swamp Busted: Citizen Enforcement of Mandatory Conservation Compliance in the Farm Bill” was published in the Fall 2025 issue of the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law and he has co-authored several articles for farmdoc daily. Prior to joining the University of Illinois, Andrew worked as a student clinician in the Food and Agriculture Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School focusing on catch share reform within fisheries. Andrew received a Bachelor of Science in Geoscience from the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, a Master of Food and Agriculture Law and Policy, with distinction, and a juris doctor, cum laude, from Vermont Law and Graduate School. 

Dr. John Brawley is a research assistant professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont and an aquaculture specialist with Lake Champlain Sea Grant. His work focuses on sustainable aquaculture systems, ecosystems analysis, and marine sciences. Prior to joining UVM, he operated a commercial oyster farm in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and a land-based shrimp aquaculture facility in Vermont. Dr. Brawley’s research and outreach address the environmental tradeoffs among aquaculture production systems and the role of aquaculture in regional food systems and coastal economies. He works closely with industry, policymakers, and researchers on aquaculture development and environmental stewardship.

Amanda Hitt is the director of strategic initiatives at the Animal Law and Policy Institute, where she advances the institute through the development and execution of high-impact legal, policy, and research initiatives. In this role, she builds coalitions with key stakeholders, serves as a thought leader in the field, creates innovative legal and policy resources, and oversees student research projects. A champion and visionary for protecting and empowering food system whistleblowers for over a decade, Hitt has represented USDA food safety inspectors working in high-speed slaughterhouses, contract poultry farmers facing exploitative contracts and retaliation, and animal researchers exposing taxpayer-funded waste and cruelty. In addition to litigating cases, she worked to elevate clients’ stories and translate their disclosures into meaningful food system and legal reforms through strategic policy campaigns. Her clients spanned diverse economic sectors and backgrounds, from factory workers to CEOs, reinforcing her belief that durable change requires bringing together voices that are too often kept apart.

Kamaile Turčan is an associate professor at the University of Hawai‘i, William S. Richardson School of Law, where she teaches administrative law and domestic ocean law. Prior to joining the Richardson faculty in 2023, Professor Turčan was a partner at a multinational law firm in Washington DC. She has also served in government at both the state and federal levels. At the state level, Professor Turčan was a law fellow in the Hawai`i Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR). She then served for five years as an Attorney-Advisor in the Office of General Counsel, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where she provided legal advice to agency clients on the application of federal statutes to the management of fishery resources and protected species within the Western and Central Pacific Region. Professor Turčan previously clerked for Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court of the United States; Judge Richard Clifton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and Judge David Ezra of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawai‘i.