Board and Team

Board

Helen Spiegelman
President
Vancouver, BC
Bio

Helen is co-founder of the Product Policy Institute. She worked with citizens and local governments in British Columbia during the 1990s (as Director of Communications for the Recycling Council of British Columbia) to build the political support that resulted in the most advanced and comprehensive EPR program in North America. She is currently spearheading a new civic organization, Zero Waste Vancouver, that is functioning as a test laboratory for PPI to learn how to effectively engage citizens in local EPR campaigns. She has been a leader of the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation (Vancouver) and is a former Steering Committee member of the Computer TakeBack Campaign.

David Sitzhal
Vice President
Seattle, WA
Bio

David is co-founder of the Northwest Product Stewardship Council and President of Full Circle Environmental, Inc., a Seattle-based resource conservation consulting firm established in 1993. He is a Board member and past President of the Washington Toxics Coalition, a board member of the Washington Citizens for Resource Conservation, and a founding member of the National Waste Prevention Coalition. He served as one of the stakeholders of the groundbreaking National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative, and is currently involved in program work as well as state and national policy development for the take-back of unwanted medications.

Steven Sherman
Treasurer
Berkeley, CA
Bio

Steve is a resource economist with training as a financial planner and a leading technical expert on composting. Steven serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union (Berkeley, CA). He is currently California Director for Cascadia Consulting Group. He has worked as a recycling and composting consultant for the past 20 years, mostly on West Coast, with some years on the East Coast. He holds leadership positions with the Global Recycling Council (a technical council of the California Resource Recovery Association), the Northern California Recycling Association, and the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club. He received his B.A. from Yale College and M.S. in Resource Economics from Cornell University.

Carolyn Raffensperger, J.D.

Ames, IA
Bio

Carolyn is founding executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network. She began working for SEHN in December 1994. As an environmental lawyer she specializes in the fundamental changes in law and policy necessary for the protection and restoration of public health and the environment. Carolyn is co-editor of Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy published by M.I.T. Press (2006) and Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle, published by Island Press (1999). Carolyn is at the forefront of developing new models for government that depend on these larger ideas of precaution and ecological integrity. The new models include guardianship for future generations, a vision for the courts of the 21st century and the public trust doctrine.

Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt, D.P.A
Ramsey County, MN
Bio

Commissioner Reinhardt has worked on environmental policy at the local, state and regional level for over 20 years. She holds leadership positions with the National Association of Counties (NACo) where she wrote and facilitated adoption by NACo of four product stewardship resolutions, including one supporting the framework approach to product stewardship. In Minnesota, she chairs the Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the Association of Minnesota Counties. She currently serves as chair of the Ramsey/Washington Resource Recovery Board, Secretary/Treasurer of the Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board for the Twin Cities region and is a member of the National Paint Product Stewardship Initiative. Commissioner Reinhardt holds a Doctorate of Public Administration from Hamline University.

Raymond Gaudart
Secretary

Rossland, BC
Bio

Raymond is a founder of the British Columbia Product Stewardship Council. Raymond was the Director of Environmental Services for the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary based in Trail, BC for 17 years until his retirement in June 2007. He is former a Board President of the Recycling Council of British Columbia.

Bill Sheehan, Ph.D.
Ex Officio (non-voting)
Executive Director
Athens, GA
Bio

Bill co-founded the Product Policy Institute in 2003.  After developing, with Helen Spiegelman, an historical analysis that showed how municipal recycling and waste management enables the producers of throw-away and toxic products and packaging, Bill spent the last several years working with local governments, communities and NGOs to bring extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies to the U.S., to spur green product design. This work resulted in the formation of local government Product Stewardship Councils in California, New York, Texas and Vermont, and Bill is working in several other states to form Councils.  Bill was co-founder and Executive Director of the GrassRoots Recycling Network from 1995 to 2003, and a board member of the National Recycling Coalition in the late 1990’s.  Bill holds a Ph.D. in ecology from Cornell University and held research positions at the University of California at Berkeley and with the U.S.D.A. Agricultural Research Service.   

The PPI Team

Bill Sheehan, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Athens, GA
Bio

Bill co-founded the Product Policy Institute in 2003.  After developing, with Helen Spiegelman, an historical analysis that showed how municipal recycling and waste management enables the producers of throw-away and toxic products and packaging, Bill spent the last several years working with local governments, communities and NGOs to bring extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies to the U.S., to spur green product design. This work resulted in the formation of local government Product Stewardship Councils in California, New York, Texas and Vermont, and Bill is working in several other states to form Councils.  Bill was co-founder and Executive Director of the GrassRoots Recycling Network from 1995 to 2003, and a board member of the National Recycling Coalition in the late 1990’s.  Bill holds a Ph.D. in ecology from Cornell University and held research positions at the University of California at Berkeley and with the U.S.D.A. Agricultural Research Service.   

Bill co-founded the Product Policy Institute in 2003 and serves as its executive director. After developing, with Helen Spiegelman , an historical analysis of waste management that showed the pivotal role of local government in enabling unsustainable production and consumption, he has spent much of the last three years organizing local governments on the West Coast of North America, and especially in California, to shift responsibility for product discard management to producers. This work resulted in the formation of the California Product Stewardship Council, for which PPI continues to provide technical and financial assistance. More recently, Bill helped form Product Stewardship Councils in New York, Vermont and Texas and is working with local governments in several other states to form Councils. Bill holds a Ph.D. in insect ecology from Cornell University and held research positions at the University of California at Berkeley and for U.S.D.A. Agricultural Research Service. From 1995 to 2003 Bill co-founded and led the GrassRoots Recycling Network.

Heidi Sanborn, MPA
Outreach Director
Sacramento, CA
Bio

Heidi is PPI outreach director outside of California, while within the state she leads the California Product Stewardship Council as executive director. She has been working in the solid waste industry for over 17 years. In 2000 she served as Technical Advisor to CIWMB Chair Linda Moulton-Patterson. She subsequently worked as an independent consultant to the Product Stewardship Institute to assist in facilitation of the Paint Product Stewardship Initiative, and as Senior Manager at R3 Consulting Group Inc. in Sacramento California. Heidi is a graduate of the University of California at Davis and received a Master’s of Public Administration from the University of Southern California. She received the “Recycler of the Year” Award in 2002 from the California Resource Recovery Association.  Visit Heidi's consulting site.

Sego Jackson
Local Government Strategist
Everett, WA
Bio

Sego is principal planner for Snohomish County Solid Waste Management Division located in Washington State and a former Board member of PPI. For four years he served as one of fifteen government negotiators in the National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative, representing the concerns of local governments regarding toxicity and end of life management of electronic products. He has been engaged in development of local, state and national policies, pilots and programs related to product stewardship and electronics, as well as pharmaceuticals and other products. Sego is a founding councilor of the Green Electronics Council, is a founder and steering committee member of the Northwest Product Stewardship Council and he is a frequent contributor to projects of the Product Stewardship Institute.

Alicia Culver
Product Stewardship Purchasing Strategist
Berkeley, CA
Bio

Alicia is executive director of the Green Purchasing Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing the amount of toxic chemicals in consumer products through the development of bid specifications and policies promoting the procurement of environmentally preferable products, and is a Board member of PPI. She is currently working directly with local governments and other entities in New York, Washington State and the Bay Area (including San Francisco Department of the Environment, Alameda County General Services Agency, Bay Area Green Business Program) on a variety of green purchasing initiatives. In the past decade she has been a senior researcher at INFORM Inc., Deputy Director of the New Jersey Office of Sustainable Business, and Director of the Government Purchasing Project.

Susan Hubbard
Minnesota Product Stewardship Organizer

Bio

Susan Hubbard is founder, co-president and the CEO of Eureka Recycling, a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation whose mission is to demonstrate that waste is preventable. Eureka Recycling comprises over 80 employees with a $8 million operating budget. Since 2001, Susan and her partner/co-president Tim Brownell lead Eureka Recycling in the provision of a variety of zero waste programs and services that aim to reduce waste through the redesign of goods and services, recognize the resources in what we currently define as waste and inspire our community to rethink our potential to improve the quality of life through the preservation of our environment. From 1998 through 2001, Susan led the award-winning recycling programs at the Saint Paul Neighborhood Energy Consortium. She served as the President of the National Recycling Coalition in the mid-1990s.

Lynne Pledger
Northeast Product Stewardship Organizer
Hardwick, MA
Bio

Lynne became engaged with waste management issues when a regional landfill tried to expand in her rural community. She honed community-organizing skills and went on to serve on the Sierra Club Zero Waste Committee, which broadened her understanding of waste issues and solutions. A writer and editor, she has helped develop PPI documents, and has made numerous presentations on EPR to citizen groups and officials in the Northeast. She is co-founder of Don’t Waste Massachusetts, an alliance of 25 environmental organizations supporting EPR and other waste reduction measures. She also works with Zero Waste groups around the Northeast. She was recently appointed to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Solid Waste Advisory Committee.

Chris Sparnicht
IT and Design

Bio

Visit Greenman Design to learn more about Chris

Sky Campbell
Accountant

Bio

TBA

Malcolm van Delst
Web Design

Bio

Visit Cutelab.com to learn about Malcolm

Valerie Hoy
Web Master

Bio

Visit valsgalore.com to learn more about Valerie.

Stephanie Welsh
Social Media
Consultant

No bio available.

No Bio Available