Emily Carroll

Emily Carroll is a Central Region Organizer for Food & Water Watch based in Chicago, Illinois. Her background is in community and electoral organizing. Emily currently works to prevent the privatization of our public water resources and advocates for safe and sustainable food policies. Before joining Food & Water Watch, she completed Green Corps' leadership program in environmental organizing. Emily graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in Environmental Studies.

Ann Alexander

Ann Alexander is a Senior Attorney with the Midwest Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She is the lead attorney at NRDC in its advocacy of improved water quality standards for the Chicago River, an issue she has worked on for nearly 5 years. Her other work at NRDC covers a wide range of regionally significant issues, including clean energy, Clean Water Act implementation, and invasive species. Previously, she served as Environmental Counsel to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, overseeing a broad range of environmental initiatives; and as a Clinical Professor of Law at the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic in Newark, New Jersey. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1984, and her law degree from Columbia University in 1987.

Karen Hudson

Karen Hudson, an activist who works to counter the devastating impacts of factory farming, lives on a fifth generation family farm in Peoria County in West Central Illinois. She is President of F.A.R.M. (Families Against Rural messes), a grassroots organization that organized when livestock factories targeted Illinois for expansion. Karen has been named "Conservationist of the Year" by the Heart of Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club. Hudson has been featured in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun Times, the Dayton Daily News, the Los Angeles Times, and on NPR, as well as in various state and local media. She continues to educate and empower citizens in Illinois and across the nation who face the impacts of livestock factories by speaking and through her work with SRAP (Socially Responsible Agricultural Project). F.A.R.M. , and the Illinois Citizens for Clean Air and Water.

Nadine Anne Bopp, MLA

Nadine Bopp is currently a college professor in the Chicago area. She has a BA in Ecology from the University of Missouri and an MLA in Landscape Architecture/Urban Planning from Louisiana State University. Her education ignited an interest in water issues, from experiencing flooding along the Missouri River to seeing wetland destruction throughout southern Louisiana. Since moving back to the Chicago area Bopp has worked for the Cook County Forest Preserve District as an environmental planner and for the Chicago park District responsible for 124 parks on the city's south side.

Her environmental credentials prompted her to run for Commissioner for Chicago's Metropolitan Water Reclamation District to promote ecologically sound practices in waste-water management. She has also served as a Board member in the Chicago Chapter of the US Green Building Council that promotes sustainable architecture and building practices. Bopp is also the coordinator of the Chicago Greenside Map which is part of a global mapping project to document ecologically significant and toxic sites in cities around the world. The project's website is www.greenmap.org.

David Kraft

David Kraft was a founding member and is currently director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), a non-profit organization committed to ending nuclear power in Illinois, in the Great Lakes Bioregion, and on Planet Earth. NEIS educates, activates and organizes the public on energy issues; builds and mobilizes grass roots power and nonviolent opposition to nuclear power; and advocates sustainable and ecologically-sound energy alternatives.

A Chicago native, Mr. Kraft, attended Northwestern University and Northeastern University and the Industrial Areas Foundation/Alinsky Institute for Social Change. For five years he was a lead organizer for the Nuclear Free Great lakes Actions Camps, which trained anti-nuclear activists. He was a co-founder of EarthDay '90 Chicago, which planned Chicago's 20th anniversary Earth Day celebration in April 1990.

Mr. Kraft has written articles and op-ed pieces which have appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Crain's Chicago Business, Conscious Choice Magazine, The Reader, The Neighborhood Works, Heartland Journal and many other publications. He has made frequent appearance on Chicago-area and Illinois radio. He has been an interview and informational resource for many Illinois and national journalists writing stories about Illinois nuclear power, radioactive waste, renewable energy, utility de-regulation, and environmental issues. Most recently he has developed a community-access TV series called "Know Nukes!" He has served as a member of the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety's Citizen Advisory Group on Low-Level Radioactive Waster, the National Nuclear Waste Citizens Coalition. He was co-organizer for the international World Depleted Uranium/Uranium Weapons Conference held in Hamburg, Germany is October 2003 and the "Nuclear Power and Children's Health" conference held in Chicago in 2004, and most recently, "Nuclear Power and Children's Health," in Chicago in 2004, "Citizen Epidemiology - The next Step," held in Evanston in 2005 and "Chornobyl +20: Remembrance for the Future," held in Kiev, Ukraine in April 2006.