November 2013: Navigating through Change
Bios
Kish Rajan (Session I)
Kish Rajan serves as Director of the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development. He brings to the job a 20-year track record of success in both government and the private sector.
After graduating from UC Berkeley, Kish Rajan began his public sector career on Capitol Hill as an aide first to United States Senator Barbara Boxer and then later to Phil Angelides who went on to become California State Treasurer.
Kish left to build a 14 year career in the private sector as a business development executive in the mobile technology arena, managing vital business partnerships that created hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars of shareholder value.
While building this successful business career, Kish earned a JD, started a family, and settled back in his hometown of Walnut Creek, CA. In 2008, Kish re-entered public service when was elected to the Walnut Creek City Council. Drawing on his political and business experience Kish became a regional leader who advocated for transportation improvement, education and economic development.
In 2012, Governor Brown appointed Kish Rajan as the GO-Biz director to lead the executive team. His directive from Governor Brown is to enhance California’s job creation effort by streamlining business regulations, promoting statewide economic development and fostering greater international trade opportunities.
Sheryl Brandon (Session I)
Sheryl Brandon is a graduate of the University of the Pacific (1993). She has worked in the Auditi division of the Franchise Tax Board since 1994, and been in the Technical Resource Section as a Program Specialist since 1998. Sheryl has been involved in the implementation of several new laws affecting FTB, and is currently the implementation leader for the New Employment Credit.
James Dudley (Session I)
James Dudley is a Program Specialist in the Franchise Tax Board's Audit Division. He has been with the department since 1988. He has worked as a technical specialist and subject matter expert for EZ and other economic development incentives for over 10 years. He also has an extensive background in taxation of Multistate Corporations. In his current assignment in Audit's Technical Resources Section, he reviews completed audits and provides technical guidance to the Audit staff. Currently, he is involved in the implementation of AB 93 / SB 90 for the EZ Repeal, New Employment Credit and California Competes Credit. He graduated from CSU, Sacramento in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration (Accounting) and is a CPA.
Neil Seldman (Session II)
Neil Seldman provides technical assistance to cities, community groups and businesses in the field of sustainable resource management. He has pioneered developments in processing, building deconstruction and small scale manufacturing from recycled materials. Dr. Seldman has also chronicled the US recycling movement in the last 50 years in “History of the US Recycling Movement, Encyclopedia of Technology Energy and Environment” and “Wasting in the US 2000.” He has also documented worldwide recycling developments for the World Bank in “Recycling from municipal refuse: a state-of-the-art review and annotated bibliography.”
He is a founding member of the National Recycling Coalition at the First National Recycling Congress and the Grass Roots Recycling Network. According to Robin Givens, Concerned Citizens of South Los Angeles, Dr. Seldman is known as grassroots organizer who, “shows communities how to fight against and how to fight for the sustainable solution to solid waste and economic problems.” In recent years he has worked in Atlanta, Cleveland, Alachua County (Gainesville), FL, Reading, PA, Washington, DC, Bridgeport, CT, Austin, TX and Los Angeles. Dr. Seldman writes regularly for trade journals providing insight and criticism of poorly designed technologies and programs.
Dr. Seldman was a manufacturer in New York City and a university lecturer in political science before co-founding the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC.
Susan Palmer (Session II)
Susan Palmer worked for 28 years as a journalist whose subject areas included environmental and natural resources reporting in Oregon before she began working for the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County as economic development director earlier this year. St. Vinnies is the largest social services agency in Eugene Oregon and funds half of its programs through waste-based businesses, including its California mattress recycling facility DR3 in Oakland. Among its social enterprises St. Vinnies operates a glass foundry recycling old window glass into art objects, and freon recycling pulling the spent refrigerant from old appliances and selling it to car mechanics. The agency is currently reviewing the feasibility of installing a Japanese designed plastics-to-oil system in both its Eugene and Oakland facilities. Ms. Palmer holds a bachelor's degree from Utah State University and a master's degree from Western Washington University.
Robert Jaco (Session II)
Bio Coming Soon...
Steve Lautze (Session II)
Steve Lautze has been President since 2003 of the California Association of Recycling Market Development Zones (CARMDZ), and he is a co-founder of the Recycling BIN (Build Infrastructure Now) Coalition. Mr. Lautze currently serves on the Economic Prosperity technical advisory committee for the STAR Communities Sustainability Index, which provides guidelines and metrics for sustainability in North American cities. Steve is a also a past President of the San Francisco Community Recyclers Board of Directors, where he served as a board member from 1994 to 2012. He is also a longtime member and Past President (1993-96) of the Northern California Recycling Association.Steve Lautze has been President since 2003 of the California Association of Recycling Market Development Zones (CARMDZ), and he is a co-founder of the Recycling BIN (Build Infrastructure Now) Coalition. He works for the City of Oakland as the Green Business Specialist in the Economic Development Department, and has served as the administrator of the Oakland/Berkeley RMDZ since 1999. The Oakland/Berkeley RMDZ has about 35 recycling-based companies employing over 1200 individuals, including about 20 that offer value-added processing or manufacturing. Steve is a also a past President of the San Francisco Community Recyclers Board of Directors, where he served as a board member from 1994 to 2012. He is also a longtime member and Past President (1993-96) of the Northern California Recycling Association.
Maureen Hart (Session III)
Maureen Hart has been working in Recycling, Energy, and the Community Based Economy since 1980, first in Michigan and then in California. Ms. Hart has worked in corporations, for non-profits, government and as a consultant. She managed an Appropriate Technology Center in East Lansing for 5 years that still exists today, 30 years later (Urban Options). She has also managed large recycling centers in the San Francisco area marketing over 120,000 tons/yr of recyclables to domestic and export markets (Norcal Waste Systems). Ms. Hart worked with towns in Northern California as they planned their transition from a logging based economy (Center for Environmental Economic Development). In 2000, she became a Zone Administrator working with the Humboldt RMDZ and Del Norte Waste Authority to form the North Coast RMDZ. Presently Hart works with the NCRMDZ, Redwood Coast Energy Authority, and as a private consultant.
Ms. Hart loves Zonework’s Peershares because it highlights the collaborative learning from all over the state of California and from ZA’s located in different departments such as Economic Development, Planning, or Public Works. It also showcases all the work that is being done in the RMDZ and shows the potential of more. The RMDZ is one of the building blocks of the green economy and she looks forward to the day when its concepts move into the main stream of industrial development in California and the U.S. As a green industrialist, she looks forward to the hard work ahead to make this transformation happen.
Long live the RMDZ!!!!!
Ricardo Amon (Session IV)
Ricardo Amón, completed a Bachelors of Science in Community Economic Development and a Master of Science in International Agricultural Economic Development, both from the University of California, Davis. Ricardo was hired by the California Energy Commission in 1988, to lead the state’s Energy in Agriculture Program. This program was designed to advance science, technology and best practices aimed at reducing energy consumption in agricultural production and food processing, as well as to convert biomass to energy. In 2010, Ricardo was hired by the UC Davis California Biomass Collaborative to conduct a statewide food and beverage processing industry residue assessment. In 2011 he joins the California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research (CIFAR), to implement the US Department of Energy’s Industrial Best Practices Program and advance adoption rates among food and beverage industrial facilities. Ricardo is collaborating with senior engineers and food industry managers to develop and implement a Water Energy Nexus Assessment methodology to calculate water energy intensity and to identify water and energy conservation opportunities.
Sally Houghton (Session V)
Sally Houghton is a UK native and graduate of Queen Mary College, University of London. She has been the Materials Manager at PRCC (Plastic Recycling Corporation of California) since 2007. Her role as materials manager is to work towards insuring stable end-use markets for all PET collected in California, increasing the value of PET, and reducing the cost of its collection. This year Sally has handled over 30% of the PET recovered in California. She has recently returned from a visit to China to learn first hand the implications of the Green Fence on the world economy.
Parham Yedidsion (Session V)
Parham Yedidsion is a Principal in Envision Plastics, the leading HDPE post consumer recycling company in California. Envision Plastics and its related sister companies process over 150 million lbs. of recycled resins here in California and in North Carolina. The customer base for Envision Plastics encompasses leading blow molders, injection molders, extruders and consumer product companies. Envision is also proud to be the only North American recycler to have received a letter of non-objection from the Food and Drug Administration for direct contact of its PCR HDPE resins into packaging for a variety of food contact packaging, which include liquid drinks, dairy, nutraceutical packaging, toys and many other applications.
Mr. Yedidsion has been active in the field of plastics and recycling for over 20 years, and has helped shape the plastics recycling infrastructure and policy in California from the very beginning.
Veronica Martin (Session V)
Bio Coming Soon...