Bronx Environmental Summit 2021

Juliana Maantay

(Moderator)

Juliana Maantay has been a professor of Urban Environmental Geography at City University of New York (Lehman College, The Graduate Center) since 1998. She founded and directs the geographic information science (GISc) graduate program as well as the Urban GISc Lab, where she conducts research on environmental justice, health disparities, and exposure assessment, specifically in urban areas, as well as the uses of GISc for participatory planning, policy work, and historical and cultural research. Dr. Maantay has published and presented her research nationally and internationally and has participated in expert panels and worked in partnerships on specific environmental health projects with governmental agencies and other institutions such as EPA, NIEHS, CDC, USDA, NOAA, the United Nations, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Maantay has also undertaken pro bono work with local community organizations and advocacy groups. In 2011-2012, she received a Distinguished Chair Award from the US-UK Fulbright Commission to research the interactions between health and the built environment in Glasgow, Scotland. For 25 years prior to her academic career, Dr. Maantay was an urban planner, environmental policy analyst, and architect with governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and urban design and planning firms. She holds degrees from Cornell University, New York University, Hunter College/CUNY, and Rutgers University.

Robert Kurkjian

Dr. Robert Kurkjian is the principal of Phase 5 Environmental and a technical consultant to Tetra Tech. Robert has more than 28 years of experience conducting complex environmental investigations; evaluating surface water, ground water, and drinking water quality; remediating soil and groundwater; performing air quality studies; providing litigation support for the cleanup of brownfield sites, and managing hazardous wastes in the U.S. and internationally. Robert also serves as a technical advisor to several environmental organizations and is a member of the Board of Directors of Chemists without Borders. He is an active member of the Environmental Advisory Commission of the City of Pasadena where he provides expert advice related to energy, water, and the city’s Climate Action Plan and Zero Waste Plan. Robert earned a Ph.D. in environmental geochemistry from the University of California, a master of science degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and a bachelor of arts in chemistry from the University of Arizona.

Nira Rahman

Nira Rahman is an environmental planner at VHB, a civil engineering firm, where she produces environmental review reports for private developers and government agencies. Her work involves GIS analysis, writing reports, and building strong relationships with clients to ensure that development in New York City meets the standards set forth by the City Environment Quality Review in addition to state and federal guidelines. Nira earned her B.S. in environmental sciences from Lehman College, where is pursuing a master’s degree in Geographic Information Sciences. Her past professional experiences include a year-long internship at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Resiliency where she developed materials to communicate flood risk and flood insurance policies for the city’s coastal communities. She provided research assistance to a professor at Brooklyn College who was studying seahorse immunology to microbes in human-impacted environments and pristine environments.

Nira also held several positions during her undergraduate career at Lehman as a GISc lab tutor, college assistant, and PEER Educator at the Office of Community Engagement. As a native New Yorker, her primary interest is to bridge science and policy as a means of mitigating environmental impacts from climate change in urban areas.

Grace M. Robiou

Grace Robiou is the branch chief for Oceans and Coastal Management, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water, Washington DC. Over the years, she has directed multiple programs related to the protection of rivers, streams, lakes, wetlands, beaches, coastal areas, and drinking water. She has over 20 years of experience protecting our nation’s waters from contamination so that people like you and I can fish, swim, recreate, drink, and generally enjoy and rely on water that is not polluted. Robiou received a B.S. in environmental science from Tufts University, completing her coursework at Harvard University in the Visiting Undergraduate Program. She earned a master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins University.

Khalil Shahyd

Khalil Shahyd is a senior policy advocate in the Healthy People/Thriving Communities Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), where he leads the organization’s federal advocacy strategy, integrating clean energy and energy efficiency with affordable housing. He has more than 20 years of experience, first as a community organizer in New Orleans, and later in the environmental movement. He has worked in urban and rural settings domestically and abroad in Mexico, India, and Brazil. He has a B.A. in history from Tulane University, an M.A. in sustainable international development from Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. in energy and environmental policy from the University of Delaware with a specialization in urban political ecology. Away from work, his passions are astronomy and soccer, or futebol, as it's called in his second home of Brazil.

Rachel Steinberg

Rachel Steinberg has led end-to-end product development in sustainability, housing, fintech, and e-commerce, with a particular passion for promoting access to opportunities. Currently, she is a director of product management at Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet company, which works to make cities more sustainable and affordable. She leads Mesa, an energy optimization engine and building Internet of Things product to help commercial building owners, tenants, and managers tackle energy efficiency. Before working on the product team at Sidewalk, she spent many years building products globally. She split her time between India and Kenya as the Chief Product Officer at Shortlist, a job opportunities platform.

During her tenure, she led the product, design, data, and assessments teams. Prior, she was the associate vice president at Housing.com. She led 65 people to develop features to help people find homes, like recommendation engines, search, matching, and personalization. She’s also led product development in fintech and e-commerce companies, worked on financial applications at IBM, and co-found a multimedia storytelling company. Her tech focus stemmed from her work on a grassroots portfolio at the International Finance Corporation, where she witnessed the scalable impact achievable by tech-enabled businesses. Rachel loves urban planning, which she studied in undergrad alongside public policy at Princeton University. She also loves tech and took as many engineering courses as possible while at Harvard Business School. She can also recommend great corner chai from her four years of living and working in India.