The Resilient Connecticut! Workshop & Toolkit scheduled for Thursday, June 6, 2013, at Kroon Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut is a groundbreaking workshop that will provide attendees with a toolkit of turnkey projects that will create more resilient, cost-effective communities. Mayors, first selectmen, town managers, sustainability directors, community task force leaders and community stakeholders are all invited to attend the workshop that will be held from 8:30am – 2:30pm. The cumulative efforts and focus of government, businesses, organizations and community members working together to create smarter and healthier communities have taken root. The Resilient Connecticut! Workshop & Toolkit will capture this energy, and provide a statewide opportunity for people to come together and learn how to solve some of our state’s biggest challenges.
The three major goals of the workshop are to share turnkey projects that bind resilient projects with economic payback, identify companies that can easily implement these projects, and to start the process of assembling a Resiliency Task Force to help support these efforts and lead the way; offering encouragement, information and answering questions for those who are just getting started on the road to resiliency. Attendees will receive a pre-workshop and post-workshop packet of resources to help support their local efforts as well as support from mentors that will help guide them through the process.
Special guests include James Boyle, Ph.D., Co-founder and Managing Director of the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute and Floyd Lapp, Ph.D., Executive Director of the South Western Regional Plan Agency.
Dr. James Boyle is a co-founder and Managing Director of the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI), a business/educational unit within Yale University with the mission of mentoring students with new venture ideas. Prior to forming YEI, Boyle was previously responsible within the Office of Cooperative Research (OCR) for the licensing and venture startup of a number of engineering-based technologies. Before joining OCR, he developed and actively managed the University’s largest corporate research alliance, managing a large array of both Yale and external scientists in bioimaging-based collaborations. Earlier, Boyle co-founded and grew a predictive analytics consulting practice, providing both technical and pricing guidance on new product development to a wide array of Fortune 1000 companies in the scientific equipment industry.
Dr. Boyle began his entrepreneurial career while still a Yale graduate student, developing novel instruments for characterizing trace biomolecules with the support of the National Institutes of Health, and later commercializing these devices through a wide array of OEM partnerships as part of a Yale startup.
Dr. Boyle comments, “If municipalities are going to truly embrace ‘green behavior’, it’s vital that they not only have access to best practices but also fully understand the economics of their choices. And if there truly are double-bottom line approaches then these benefits need to be communicated to their constituents”.
Dr. Floyd Lapp, Executive Director of the South Western Regional Plan Agency, has both master’s and doctoral degrees from New York University and many decades of experience in urban and regional planning, development and transportation. He has worked for the Westchester County, New York Department of Planning, the New Jersey State Planning Office, the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, a northwest Bronx development corporation, NYC City Planning, as director of The Bronx Office and the transportation division, Planning/Zoning Director, Orange New Jersey and Executive Director of the South Western Regional Planning Agency, based in Stamford, Connecticut, since 2006. He also has worked as a consultant.
Dr. Lapp has served as an adjunct professor of urban planning at 15 colleges and universities including the last nine years in the graduate urban planning program at Columbia University. He served on the national boards of the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Certified Planners and was President of the N.Y. Metro Chapter of APA.
“Resiliency, sustainability and smart growth are starting to bring back the green in our landscape taken by the highway men and a once thriving auto-centric environment” says Dr. Lapp. He continues. Since Rome wasn’t built in a day, this movement will take decades to redress the grievances for our landscape to recover. Sessions like this one, which includes energy efficiency, train station solar projects, and so much more are part of the exciting movement that is about to leave the station and we should all get on board!”
Featured panelists include Mayor Bill Finch, First Selectman Mike Tetreau, and Bryan Garcia, President & CEO, Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority (CEFIA).
The Resilient Connecticut! Workshop & Toolkit Platinum Sponsor is NORESCO. Silver Sponsors include Energize Connecticut, Encon, Inc., Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Southwestern Connecticut, Grassroots Environmental Education, GreenTowns and Live Green Connecticut!
Daphne Dixon, Director, Resilient Connecticut Workshop & Toolkit, Director, GreenTowns and Executive Director of Live Green Connecticut! states “The Resilient Connecticut Workshop & Toolkit is unique in that we will provide real-world projects that are working, and presented by the people that have successfully implemented these projects and are now reaping both the environmental as well as economic benefits. The workshop affords people in every town in Connecticut the opportunity to learn the secrets of municipal projects that provide both environmental as well as economic resiliency.” The workshop offers the chance to network and get great ideas and information, as well as the opportunity to be a part of a growing network of people who are interested in and dedicated to supporting each other and building true resiliency into our communities.
The workshop is open to the public and to municipal leaders. Organizers encourage participation by all sectors of the community. The sharing of information from a cross-section of people, creates the necessary synergy that supports true sustainability efforts that will improve our local communities and economy.
To register for the event, visit: http://resilientctnewhaven.eventbrite.com
