David Wedepohl is a radio journalist by training who studied on both sides of the Atlantic. He holds a masters degree in Journalism and Public Affairs which he achieved as a Fulbright scholar. His professional experience includes working for the German embassy in Washington, DC as a press officer. He first came in touch with the solar industry while working for an American consulting company and now heads the department of markets and communication at the German Solar Industry Association.

Photo Credit: Marcus Gloger

Jochen Flasbarth, President of the German Federal Environment Agency, will be speaking on Thursday, April 18th from 10:15-11:45..

Read about Jochen Flasbarth’s accomplishment’s here. 

Jochen Flasbarth has led Germany’s largest national environmental authority since September 2009.

Flasbarth’s last post was as head of the Nature Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources Directorate at the Federal Ministry for Environment (BMU). Prior to that he served as director of the NABU (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union) for eleven years, an association which he modernized. Since the mid-1980s Flasbarth has performed various volunteer duties at a number of environmental organizations, including that of acting as member of the steering committee of the Deutscher Naturschutzring and as founding member of the Verkehrsclub Deutschland (association for sustainable mobility and a major German transport and environmental organization). As member of the supervisory board at the Wuppertal Institute he cooperated closely on climate and resource protection research projects.

The main focus areas of his environmental policy activities have included nature conservation as well as ecological transport policy, climate protection, and ecological finance policy.

As an environmental expert Jochen Flasbarth was a member of the National Committee for Sustainable Development convened by then-Minister for Environment Angela Merkel, as well as the National Sustainability Council founded by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He played a key role in the success of the UN’s Biodiversity Strategy in Bonn and has since headed the presidency of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Flasbarth studied economics, political science and philosophy at the Universities of Münster and Bonn.

Kevin Knobloch brings 32 years of experience in public policy, government, advocacy, and media to his job as president of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). He is knowledgeable about a range of environmental and national security issues including global warming, natural resource and clean energy economics, renewable and efficient vehicle technologies, nuclear weapons, forest management, and corporate responsibility, as well as legislative strategy and procedure.

Kevin was named president of UCS in December 2003, after serving as executive director for four years. Earlier in his career, from 1989 to 1992, he served as the organization’s legislative director for arms control and national security. Kevin currently oversees all of the organization’s programs and operations, and has led UCS delegations to the United Nations international climate negotiations in Montreal in 2005, Bali in 2007, Poznan in 2008, and Copenhagen in 2009.

Kevin has served as chair of the Green Group, a coalition of the CEOs of 32 national environmental organizations, and served as co-chair of the Green Group Climate and Energy Committee for seven years. He recently completed eight years on the board of directors of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES), and continues to serve on the Environmental League of Massachusetts board of directors. He is also co-founder and former president of the Arlington (MA) Land Trust.

Kevin holds a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, with a focus on natural resource economics and environmental management, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he concentrated in English and journalism. He began his career as an award-winning newspaper journalist, writing for several Massachusetts publications.

During six years on Capitol Hill in the 1980s, Kevin was the legislative director for U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO) and legislative assistant and press secretary for U.S. Representative Ted Weiss (D-NY). He later served as director of conservation programs for the Appalachian Mountain Club in Boston.