TIST Advisory Committee
When the TIST Program began two decades ago, little did we know the many questions and challenges we would face nor the variety of people with exciting ideas we would meet along the way with whom to solve them.
There are special people to whom we have reached out for counsel and who have helped at every turn and guided all of us involved in how best to serve the farmers and make the program sustainable.
We are deeply grateful.
Gordon Binder
Gordon is a senior fellow with World Wildlife Fund and Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. He has spent a long career in the field of conservation and environmental protection, working closely with former EPA Administrator William Reilly. Gordon's enthusiasm for TIST stems from the multiple benefits that participants derive from planting trees, from higher incomes to empowering women to nurturing soil and water management, and improved agricultural output among other contributions.
Rob Brenner
From 1988 until his retirement from Federal service in 2011, Rob was Director of the Air Policy Office, at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He played a key role in the development, Congressional passage and implementation of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. After passage of that landmark law, Rob focused on innovative, cost-effective ways to implement its provisions, particularly through the use of market-based approaches such as emissions trading and other economic incentives. He was a leader in EPA's efforts to promote development of new, more effective pollution-control and pioneered the use of economic analysis in evaluating the effectiveness of EPA programs. He has known the Hennekes since the early 1990’s when Ben served as a charter member of EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee. He believes that TIST demonstrates the potential for reforestation initiatives to cost-effectively sequester billions of tons of CO2 while providing agricultural and economic benefits to smallholder farmers struggling to fend off the adverse impacts of climate change.
Megan Reilly Cayten
Megan has 20 years of experience developing, financing, implementing and managing environmentally and socially responsible energy and infrastructure projects on four continents. She has expertise in impact structuring and measurement, and working across cultures and between the private and public sectors to successfully launch and grow new projects and ventures. In addition to advising TIST, Megan is active in blue carbon through an oceans initiative she is launching with Alexandra Cousteau, and in renewable energy development in the Caribbean with Javelin Capital. Megan chairs the board of the National Environmental Education Foundation; is a board member of the Fondo Mexicano para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza, the Environmental Voter Project and Educate 2 Envision; and is a National Council member of World Wildlife Fund. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and three children.
Paul Cicio
Paul is the Executive Director of the U.S. Climate Partnership Association (USCPA)
Brad Neff
Brad is an experienced multidimensional management professional in the energy sector by day and full-time husband, father and volunteer by night. Since 2012, Brad has collaborated with the TIST U.S. management team on operational details, made 3 trips to Kenya to see TIST in action and provides support for the in-country leadership team, as needed. He has developed business opportunities with some of TIST’s largest customers and has an innate ability to bring people together with complementary knowledge and know-how to effect positive change. He is excited about what he has seen on the ground and what TIST can do in the future and his deep commitment to the TIST farmers. His interactions with the women and men leading the program in the countries has brought fresh insights for TIST expansion.
Ashley Petus
Ashley is the founder and Director of Global HearthWorks Foundation, a private family foundation that supports sustainable energy solutions and climate smart agriculture in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. She currently lives in Houston, Texas where she is an advocate for juvenile justice reform and serves as a Guardian Ad Litem in the juvenile courts.