Session 4: Resiliency in Appalachia

Climate impacts in the Appalachian region have been devastating with the intensity and frequency of storms increasing every year. This panel will look at recovery and mitigation efforts in areas damaged by recent storms and what it will take to rebuild and strengthen everything from the physical infrastructure to workforce development in the region.

Plenary Speaker: Rebecca Goodman

Energy and Environment Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Goodman was appointed as the state’s top environmental officer in December 2019 by Gov. Andy Beshear. Secretary Goodman has spent more than four decades in service to the Commonwealth. She is well acquainted with the intersection of infrastructure and the needs of customers. She most recently advocated on behalf of Kentucky utility ratepayers as the executive director of the Office of Rate Intervention within the Office of the Attorney General.

Through her work on both state and federal cases, Secretary Goodman regularly dealt with social and environmental justice issues that frequently involved low income, disadvantaged and residential customer needs. She has served as general counsel for the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the Kentucky Executive Branch Ethics Commission and the Kentucky Electric Generation and Transmission Siting Board. Secretary Goodman has also served as the executive director of the Office of Legal Services at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet after beginning her career as a staff attorney for the Kentucky Public Service Commission.

Secretary Goodman earned her Juris Doctor from Salmon P. Chase College of Law, and her Bachelor of Science, Business Administration, Magna Cum Laude, from Kentucky State University

Moderator: Eric Dixon

Eric works on economic and environmental policy in Appalachia and beyond. His recent research has focused on labor issues in the reclamation industry and disaster recovery in Appalachian Kentucky. Previously, Eric was an organizer and policy advocate at Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, where he worked on black lung issues and testified before Congress on policy related to fossil fuel cleanup.

Panelist: Nicole Dias

Nicole Dias from Morgantown, WV is Coalfield Development’s Conservation Coordinator. She received her Master’s in Urban Planning with a concentration in Environmental Hazard Mitigation from Texas A&M, where her main interest was post-flood resiliency amongst socially vulnerable populations.

After graduating she returned home to run the BAD Buildings Program at the Northern WV Brownfields Assistance Center for 5 years before joining Coalfield Development. Nicole has a passion for environmental justice and community development in rural areas.

Panelist: Amanda Killen

Amanda, a native of Southwest Virginia, brings extensive experience in economic and community development projects across Central Appalachia. With a passion for advancing the region, she has undertaken freelance fundraising and grant-writing for numerous nonprofits and municipalities. Notably, Amanda served as Executive Director of community development for Tazewell, VA, driving downtown revitalization efforts for transformative years. She firmly believes in grassroots efforts for economic diversification in coal-impacted communities, actively engaging stakeholders and business leaders.

Additionally, Amanda lends support to flood-affected areas, securing funding for community resilience and disaster preparedness initiatives. Amanda is deeply committed to helping the Central Appalachian region grow. 

Panelist: Kenya Stump

Kenya Stump was appointed as the Executive Director of the Kentucky Office of Energy Policy in March of 2020. Prior to that, Kenya served as Assistant Director for the Division of Energy Assistance within the Office of Energy Policy. Before her work in OEP, Kenya managed the environmental assistance programs at the Cabinet, including environmental leadership, brownfields, and compliance assistance with the Division of Compliance Assistance. She also served as an environmental scientist and policy advisor in the director’s office at the Division for Air Quality.

Prior to her work in state government, she served as an environmental consultant with the Kentucky Business Environmental Assistance Program at the University of Kentucky. Kenya has master’s degrees in Environmental Science from the University of Kentucky and Public Administration from Indiana University.

She graduated from Western Kentucky University with a BA in Chemistry and holds a post-graduate certificate in Environmental Systems.

Panelist: Dr. Peter Thornton

Dr. Peter Thornton studies the interactions of land ecosystems with all other components of the Earth’s climate system, including biogeochemical and physical  land-atmosphere feedbacks, and interactions with human systems. His research spans spatial scales from organisms to the global Earth system, and involves model development, model evaluation against observations and experimentation, and model applications to discover emergent properties of ecosystems. A special focus of his research is the coupling of carbon, water, and energy cycles with the biotic and abiotic cycling of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus which limit growth and metabolism of plants and microbes. Other primary research topics include the influence of disturbance on biogeochemistry-climate system feedbacks, model evaluation and uncertainty quantification, and biometeorology.

Dr. Thornton is a scientist in the Climate Change Science Institute and the Environmental Sciences Division, and has been a member of the scientific staff at ORNL since 2008. Dr. Thornton also serves as a mentor to several technology projects within the Oak Ridge Public Schools, and serves as a board member for the Oak Ridge Public Schools Education Foundation.