The Judges

Jay Amestoy

As vice president of public and government affairs for Mazda North American Operations, Jay Amestoy oversees all public relations, government affairs, internal and external communications and national shows and events. Formerly vice president of corporate affairs and communications for Mazda Motor of America, Amestoy joined Mazda in March 1991 as vice president of public relations. Prior to joining Mazda, Amestoy, a 25-year veteran of the automotive industry, served as senior vice president and managing director of the automotive account in the Los Angeles office of Hill and Knowlton, an international public relations and public affairs counseling firm. Previously, he served as senior vice president and director of the automotive group at GCI Group public relations in Los Angeles, where he oversaw the public relations launch of Infiniti, Nissan’s all-new luxury division in the United States and Nissan’s corporate affairs. Before joining GCI, Amestoy was public relations manager for Volkswagen United States in Troy, Mich. In this position, Amestoy was responsible for all Volkswagen product-related publicity in the U.S. In addition, he was involved with public relations efforts in the Porsche/Audi Division of Volkswagen of America. Amestoy began his lengthy automotive career as an intern for Road & Track magazine in Newport Beach, Calif. Amestoy, married and living in San Clemente, California, holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California.

Hooper Brooks

Hooper L. Brooks is the Director of International Programmes at The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment in London. Over the past 30 years, Mr. Brooks has worked with a spectrum of environmental, land planning and open space preservation organizations, projects and initiatives. Until recently, he has been the Program Director for the Environment at the Surdna Foundation in New York City, directing the Foundation’s Environment program that supports organizations working on transportation, energy, biological diversity and urban/suburban land use issues throughout the United States. This year Mr. Brooks has an appointment as Lecturer teaching a seminar on Land Use Planning for masters degree students at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Mr. Brooks received a B.A. degree from Harvard College and a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Jon Dorn

Jonathan Dorn, Editor-in-Chief, Backpacker, is a rare find in the world of outdoor journalism: an editor-in-chief who combines top-notch editing skills with active involvement at the highest levels of his sport. In 2004, he led Backpacker through a complete redesign, the launch of six regional editions, and the creation of a GPS-enabled website where users trade and download digital hikes. Jon was personally recognized in May 2006 by Folio magazine as one of the Folio 40, an annual honor highlighting the most influential and innovative executives in the media business. In his spare time, Jon pursues his passion for adventure with backpacking, rock-climbing, and mountaineering trips that have taken him from Alaska to the Arctic Circle. Last summer, he captained the first media team to finish Primal Quest, an expedition-length adventure race. He also serves as president of the board of Big City Mountaineers, a nonprofit organization that provides wilderness mentoring to disadvantaged urban teens. He’s a graduate of Amherst College and holds a PhD in American studies from Harvard University.

Dayton Duncan

Dayton Duncan is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker and the the author of nine books. His most recent work is Scenes of Visionary Enchantment: Reflections on Lewis & Clark, a collection of essays. Articles of his have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, American Heritage magazine, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, among others. Duncan has been involved for many years with the work of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. He was a consultant on Burns’ award-winning series for public television, “The Civil War,” “Baseball” and “Jazz.” He is the writer and producer of “Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery,” a four-hour documentary broadcast in November 1997. The film won a Western Heritage award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a CINE Golden Eagle, as well as many other honors. He is the co-writer and producer of “Mark Twain,” a four-hour film biography of the great American humorist which was broadcast on PBS in 2002. He and Burns are now at work on a major documentary series for PBS on the history of the National Parks. Duncan serves on the board of the Student Conservation Association, the National Conservation System Foundation and the New Humanities Council. He lives in New Hampshire where he makes his home in the small town of Walpole with his wife, Dianne, and their two children.

David Lillard

David Lillard is executive producer of the American Conservation Film Festival, a premiere venue for screening the work of young filmmakers. ACFF is one of the few major festivals that distributes juried films by young filmmakers as part of its nationally-available “Traveling Festival.” David is also editor of the Blue Ridge Press, a syndicated columns service that provides commentary by America’s top environmental writers to newspapers and newsweeklies. As a travel and outdoor writer, he writes guidebooks and interpretive field guides. These works include: Journey Through Hallowed Ground, A Guide To Where America Happened, Exploring the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, and Appalachian Trail Names: Origins of the Placenames Along the AT. For the National Park Service and other agencies, David develops interpretive media, such as websites, podcasts, wayside exhibits and travel guides. He was the founding executive director of the Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship, a 900-acre reserve in Loudoun County, Va., that preserves and interprets the relation between nature, culture and working landscapes; and is a former president of American Hiking Society, a national nonprofit organization.

Bill McKibben

Middlebury College professor Bill McKibben is an American conservation author who frequently writes about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering. Bill is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and a frequent contributor to a wide variety of publications, including The New York Review of Books, Outside, and The New York Times. His books include Maybe One, The End of Nature, The Age of Missing Information, and Hope, Human and Wild. The End of Nature, published in 1989, sounded one of the earliest apresciencelarms about global warming; the decade of science since has proved his prescience. His latest book is Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. In late summer 2006 he helped lead a five-day walk across Vermont to demand action on global warming that some newspaper accounts called the largest demonstration to date in America about climate change. Beginning in January 2007, he founded stepitup07.org, which organized rallies in hundreds of American cities and towns in April to demand that Congress enact curbs on carbon emissions that would cut global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050. Bill lives with his wife and daughter in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.

Elizabeth Cushman Titus Putnam

SCA Founder, Elizabeth Cushman Titus Putnam. Fifty-two years ago, as a student at Vassar College, Elizabeth Putnam proposed as her senior thesis a student conservation corps to protect and preserve our nation’s natural resources. Liz contended this volunteer work would benefit both the land and the individual, and history has proven her right. In 1957, her new program dispatched its first crews – a total of 53 students in Olympic National Park and Grand Teton National Park. Today, the Student Conservation Association annually places more than 3,000 volunteers, who provide 1.6 million hours of conservation service in our national parks, forests, refuges and urban spaces. Liz lives in Vermont with her husband, Bruce Putnam, and her adult daughter Phebe Ketchum Titus resides in Colorado.California.

Nina Roberts, Ph.D

Assistant professor and project director for the Recreation and Leisure Studies Department’s Pacific Leadership Institute (PLI) at San Francisco State, Nina Roberts has a passion for revitalizing young people’s interest in the natural environment. “Right now that means getting across the idea that there is just as much adventure outdoors as there is in computer games,” she said. The outdoors, she maintains, is the best place to discover one’s personal strengths. In addition to her work at SF State with the PLI, Roberts teaches classes in leadership in recreation, parks and tourism, collaborative leadership, urban recreation and research methods. Throughout her 25-year career she has conducted research and consulted in the areas of outdoor programming, youth development, gender issues, and ethnicity and culture. (Excerpted from an article in the April 20th, 2007, SF State Newsletter, written by Denize Springer.)

Meg Ronsheim, Ph.D

Director of Environmental Studies at Vassar College Margaret Ronsheim joined the Vassar College faculty in 1992, and has taught courses in ecology, evolution, conservation biology, plant diversity, and genetics. She is now the director of Environmental Studies, and has served as an adviser for independent majors and STS majors interested in environmental science. Dr. Ronsheim’s research interests focus on how the interactions between plants, pathogenic fungi, and mutualistic fungi may affect the evolution of plant reproduction and dispersal mechanisms. She is the author or co-author of a number of publications, including in the American Journal of Botany and The American Naturalist.

Scott Russell Sanders

Indiana University Distinguished Professor and conservation author Scott Russell Sanders was born in Tennessee, reared in Ohio, and studied in Rhode Island and Cambridge, England. Among his more than twenty books are novels, collections of stories, and works of personal nonfiction, including Staying Put, Hunting for Hope, and A Private History of Awe. His writing has won the AWP Creative Nonfiction Award, the John Burroughs Essay Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. Scott was SCA’s first Conservation Commencement speaker in 2005. He and his wife, Ruth, a biochemist, have reared two children in their hometown of Bloomington in the hardwood hill country of Indiana’s White River Valley.