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Advance registration is closed. Day-of Registration will be available 8-9 a.m. each day of the conference.

Timber Talks Speakers

 

Amelia Baxter

  • Co-Founder & CEO Amelia Baxter founded WholeTrees in 2007 to redevelop solid timber as a sophisticated, biophilic, and urban structural product. Since that time, WholeTrees has grown exponentially in both profit and notoriety as it launched sustainable forestry partnerships to become the National leader and unrivaled expert in engineering unmilled timber for commercial construction. From carbon-smart sourcing to engineering and fabrication, the team leverages proprietary tech, tools, and a nation-wide network to streamline the process of specifying and delivering columns, trusses, beams & custom assemblies to the built environment. By raising grants and equity investment, attracting national executive talent, managing strategic research and expansion, and pinpointing nascent commercial markets for trees as structure, she has ensured WholeTrees is at the forefront of the utilization of trees in the modern built environment.

 

Mark H.C. Bessire

  • Mark H.C. Bessire was named Judy and Leonard Lauder Director of the Portland Museum of Art in 2009. In the years since, Bessire has led the PMA through a period of unprecedented growth, evolution, and innovation across collections, exhibitions, audience engagement, community collaboration, and critically, diversity, equity, inclusivity, access, and sustainability.
    Prior to serving as Director of the PMA, Bessire was the Director of the Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, where he initiated a Collections Project Series, worked with departments to create cross-disciplinary exhibitions through a Synergy Fund, exhibited Chinese art to support Bates’ strong Asian Studies program, and strengthened the Friends of the Museum program. From 1998 to 2003, he served as Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine, where he organized many exhibitions, including The Photography of Ike Ude and Eracism: William Pope.L, which traveled nationally and was accompanied by an MIT Press Publication.
    Bessire holds an M.B.A. from Columbia University, an M.A. in Art History from Hunter College, and a B.A. from New York University. He was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Museum of Art and a Fulbright Fellow in Tanzania. He has published widely, including three books with MIT Press, has organized numerous traveling exhibitions, and has participated on national art juries.

 

Yellow Light Breen

  • Yellow’s passion is promoting economic and educational opportunity for all Mainers regardless of geography or background. He became CEO of the Maine Development Foundation in August 2015, where he develops strategic direction, integration, and partnerships across MDF’s mission and programs. The Maine Development Foundation (MDF) is a legislatively-created, non-partisan public-private partnership that drives sustainable, long-term economic growth for Maine. MDF does this through trusted research, leadership, and creative cross-sector partnerships. Yellow has a diverse background in business, public policy, and law. He spent twelve years as an executive with Bangor Savings Bank, overseeing strategic planning, marketing, online banking, community development, and charitable activities. Prior, he was a senior official at the Maine Department of Education and an advisor to Independent Governor Angus King. Yellow was born and raised in rural, central Maine, a product of Maine public schools, and earned undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University.

 

Dennis Carlberg

  • Dennis Carlberg is the Chief Sustainability Officer & Associate Vice President for Climate Action at Boston University where he focuses on building the programs necessary for mitigating BU’s impacts on climate change, preparing its campuses for climate change, and supporting the integration of sustainability into the curriculum. Prior to joining BU in 2009, Dennis was a principal at Arrowstreet, a Boston-based architectural firm where he focused on sustainable design. He began his career at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Lab) conducting daylighting research to reduce building energy consumption and improve the indoor environment. Dennis co-chairs the Boston Green Ribbon Commission Higher Ed Working Group. He is the University's Liaison to the University Climate Change Coalition, a group of 23 leading R1 research universities committed to accelerating climate action on their campuses, in their communities, and collaboratively at a global scale. He received his Master of Architecture from MIT and his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from UC Berkeley.

 
 
 

Sophie Davis

  • Sophie is a Maine-based violinist, climate change artist, and the Artistic Director of Halcyon, an artist collective that strives to inspire environmental stewardship through music and the arts. Originally from Maine, Sophie received degrees in violin performance and environmental studies from Oberlin College and Conservatory where she studied with David Bowlin. Playing and sharing music are integral to Sophie’s creative and professional practice. She has participated in the Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Kneisel Hall Young Artists Program, and at festivals throughout the United States, India, Jordan, Australia, and Samoa. In 2017-18, Sophie was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant to the South Pacific island nation of Samoa where she studied how music and the arts raise awareness of climate change. As a violinist and core member of Halcyon, Sophie collaborates frequently with other musicians, artists, activists, and scientists to create multimedia performances that combine live music with film, stop-motion animation, story, and art. Her creative practice combines the honesty of science and statistical fact with the emotional qualities of film and music. Recent projects have led her to pursue coursework in stop-motion animation; research the internal documents of the Exxon Corporation; build a contact microphone to record the sounds of ice-out; and record humpback whale song aboard a tall ship in the Lesser Antilles.

Matt DeLaney

  • Matt DeLaney is a public librarian interested in the important role that libraries play in social and economic development in fast-changing, rural communities. Currently, Matt is the Director of the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, ME, where he is leading a mass timber expansion of the library’s historic 1911 building. The Jesup Mass Timber Expansion, designed by Simons Architects in Portland, is the first building in Maine to be constructed with locally-sourced cross laminated timber. Awarded Maine’s Outstanding Librarian of the Year in 2018, Matt is focused on the innovative ways that libraries can create accessible, sustainable, and inspiring public spaces.

 

Kathleen Kolb

  • Kathleen Kolb is known for her luminous landscape paintings of New England’s rural terrain and architecture rendered in oil and watercolor. Kolb earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her realist paintings capture the dramatic effects of light, and Kolb is interested in the notion of belonging evoked by our attachment to certain places. “Shedding Light on the Working Forest” (2014–17), a three-year collaboration with poet Verandah Porche, combines Kolb’s paintings and Porche’s poems to contemplate the artists’ relationship with nature. The exhibition toured six states. Kolb’s close, constant observation of the Vermont landscape and the impact of climate change on the environment have also inspired a political subtext to her works. In 2009, she was one of ten artists selected to participate in the Vermont Arts Council’s “Art of Action” project, addressing the state’s future. Kolb’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Ballinglen Museum of Art in Ireland, Shelburne Museum and the Fleming Museum of Art in Vermont, the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio and the New Britain Museum of American Art in CT.

 

Verandah Porche

  • Verandah Porche works as a poet, performer, songwriter, and scribe.

    Based in rural Vermont on the notable commune Total Loss Farm, since 1968, she has published Sudden Eden (Verdant Books), The Body’s Symmetry (Harper and Row) and Glancing Off (See Through Books).

    Verandah developed a practice called ‘told poetry’ or ‘shared narrative’ to create personal literature with people who need a writing partner. She has run

    collaborative residencies in hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers,

    a 200 year-old Vermont tavern, and an urban working class neighborhood. “Shedding Light on the Working Forest,” exploring the lives of people who earn their livelihood in the woods, is a collaboration with visual artist Kathleen Kolb.

    Verandah serves on the Selectboard of Guilford, Vermont, exploring the poetics of civic life.

 

Pamela Franks

  • Pamela Franks

    Pamela Franks is the Class of 1956 Director of the Williams College Museum of Art, a role she assumed in 2018 following more than a decade working at the Yale University Art Gallery. Franks is energized by the potential college and university art museums hold for learning, community, and imagining future museum experiences and practices. She is currently working with SO-IL on WCMA’s first purpose-built building scheduled to open in 2027.

    Devon Nowlin

    Devon Nowlin (she/her) is a dedicated art professional with a background in museum design, renovation and construction, complex collections and exhibitions management, and team coordination across stakeholders, consultants and contractors. Currently the Museum Project Director for Williams College, she works as the liaison between the building project team and college staff to ensure museum standards throughout the design, operations and enabling needs for a new 76,000 sq ft teaching museum with a mass timber structure, designed by SO-IL

 

Devon Nowlin

  • Devon Nowlin (she/her) is a dedicated art professional with a background in museum design, renovation and construction, complex collections and exhibitions management, and team coordination across stakeholders, consultants and contractors. Currently the Museum Project Director for Williams College, she works as the liaison between the building project team and college staff to ensure museum standards throughout the design, operations and enabling needs for a new 76,000 sq ft teaching museum with a mass timber structure, designed by SO-IL

 

Tom S. Chung

  • Tom designs buildings to be welcoming, transparent, and sustainable, reflecting our values of diversity, democracy, and care for our environment. His projects include the John W. Olver Design Building at University of Massachusetts Amherst, recipient of AIA Honor Award, AIA Education Award and AIA Cote Top Ten Award, and Adohi Hall at University of Arkansas, recipient of the AIA Housing Award. They are both pioneering examples of mass timber architecture in the US, making accessible to the public, aesthetic and experiential beauty of this new/old material.

    Tom is a national leader in the practice and education of Mass Timber Design. He has worked closely with researchers, engineers and fabricators to gain mastery over this new technology. Over the past eight years, he has been invited to speak on this emerging subject at conferences, seminars and workshops world-wide including Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, South Korea, and throughout the United States. His graduate studio “Mass Timber and New England” was awarded the inaugural Timber Education Prize by ACSA and he has led the Timber Development Workshop for architecture faculty across accredited schools of architecture in the US.

    Tom shares his design passion and built work experience in mass timber with his peers through AIA continuing education and with the next generation of architects through teaching. Tom is currently Professor of Practice at Auburn University and serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board at his alma mater, University of Virginia.

 

Luke Fatora

  • Luke Fatora is a violinist, educator, filmmaker and stop motion animator. His work combines music with other media to make abstract concepts emotional and tangible. As a violinist, he has performed in contexts that include fiddling for square dances, improvising with dancers and DJs and performing contemporary and traditional classical music in the World Financial Center and Carnegie Hall. Many of Luke's films are designed to be synchronized in real time with a live musical performance - his works have been shown at the Maine International Film Festival and performed by Halcyon throughout the New England region.

 

Keynote Speakers

 

Heather Johnson

  • Heather Johnson is the Commissioner for the Department of Economic and Community Development. As the DECD Commissioner, she is charged with overseeing more than two dozen experts across several bureaus whose mission is to help communities and businesses prosper through a variety of programs that provide everything from targeted tax relief to community block grants to tourism marketing. Johnson has more than 25 years of experience in both the private and public realms. Previously, as Director of the ConnectME Authority, she was focused on expanding access to and increasing adoption of broadband connectivity in Maine. In the role, she was responsible for completing and executing a statewide action plan to expand broadband infrastructure; managing a grant program; mapping key assets; working with communities and businesses to help identify needs and opportunities; and supporting communities in their broadband planning needs and encouraging providers to engage in needed projects.

 

Alan Organschi

  • Alan Organschi is a principal and partner at GOA, an architectural practice in New Haven, Connecticut recognized internationally for its integration of design, construction, and environmental research in work that spans in scale from global environmental analysis to demonstration projects in micro-housing. In April 2021, Mr. Organschi was appointed Director of the Innovation Labs at the Bauhaus Earth, a global interdisciplinary initiative in regenerative building research and experimentation based in Berlin, Germany. He continues as Senior Critic at the Yale School of Architecture where he has taught architectural design and building science for two decades where he now directs the Yale Building Lab, He has written and lectured extensively on the carbon storage benefits of biogenic material substitution and circular economic strategies in urban building. He is co-author of Carbon: A Field Manual For Building Designers and the scientific paper “Buildings as a Global Carbon Sink” published in Nature Sustainability in January 2020. Among many awards for the buildings he has designed in his practice, Mr. Organschi was honored in 2012 for his work with an Architecture Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

 

Peter MacKeith

  • Peter MacKeith is dean and professor of architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. Appointed in July 2014, and reappointed in 2019, he is the fifth dean of the school and a nationally recognized design educator and administrator.
    During his leadership of the Fay Jones School, the school has grown significantly in student enrollment, retention and graduation outcomes, faculty appointments and accomplishments, curricular programs, diversity initiatives, community engagements and outreach centers, external funded research, new facilities, and financial resources. He is currently guiding the design and construction of the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, a regional center for research and development of new wood products and new approaches in sustainable construction materials.

 

Bernard Osher Lecture Panel

 

Dana Doran

  • Dana Doran joined the staff of the Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast (PLC) as Executive Director in 2014. Dana is a Maine native with extensive experience in both the forest products industry and public service. His career includes roles as a political appointee in the U.S. Department of Labor under President Clinton, Assistant Commissioner of Public Affairs for the Maine Department of Labor, Director of Business Development at Central Maine Power Company, and teaching social studies and coaching at Gardiner Area High School. Before working with the PLC, Dana was Director of Energy and Paper Programs at Kennebec Valley Community College. He holds a B.A. in History/Government and Law from Lafayette College and an M.P.A. from the University of Connecticut. Dana resides in Belgrade, Maine with his wife, two children and their pup Alpine.

 

Jennifer Shakun

  • Jennifer’s areas of expertise include climate change impacts on forests, climate-smart forest management, and the use of wood for lower carbon building and manufacturing. She leads New England Forestry Foundation’s work to develop a regional bioeconomy that benefits our communities and forests—driven by more demand for climate-smart local wood products. This includes deep engagement with partners in the building sector, especially around the development of sustainably-sourced mass timber. Jennifer has master’s degrees in Forestry and Environmental Management from Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and she is an SAF Certified Forester.

 

Thomas Robinson

  • Thomas Robinson is the Founder of LEVER Architecture, an emerging design practice with offices in Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, California. His firm is widely recognized for material innovation and for pioneering work with Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT). 

    Robinson collaborates with communities and institutions to design buildings that elevate human experience and foreground equity. His work encompasses multiple scales and types, ranging from a major expansion of Adidas’ North American headquarters to student housing for the Pacific Northwest College of Art. In parallel with projects, Robinson develops and tests next-generation building assemblies and sustainable tools—a research effort supported by more than $2M in grant funding. For this commitment to groundbreaking design, LEVER was recognized by Fast Company as one of the world’s most innovative companies; and in 2017, was named to Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard and the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices.

    Selected current projects include Maine’s Portland Museum of Art, Portland State University’s School of Art + Design, two libraries for Multnomah County Library, a multi-building campus project for NBCUniversal; and 843 N Spring Street, a development slated to become one of LA’s largest CLT buildings.

 

Ben Stevens

 

Jason Brochu