Advisory Board

The Bren School Advisory Board is a University-wide Advisory Committee that provides high-level direction to ensure that the School and its programs are the best in the world for their comprehensive, balanced, cutting-edge approach to Environmental Science & Management.

Front row (from left): Mel Willis, Lindene Patton, Robert Weber, John Melack, Brigitte Bren, John Flynn

Back row (from left): Angel Martinez, Mark Baldassare, Bruce Darling, Vered Doctori Blass, Michael O’Connell, James Salzman,

Not shown: Michael Chrisman, Glen Prickett, Henry Yang

Members Only

Advisory Board

Brigitte Bren

Brigitte Bren is an attorney who co-founded International Strategic Planning, Inc., a business consulting firm, in 1992. She has served as “of Counsel” to the law firm of Arter and Hadden, with an area of emphasis in International Affairs and Entertainment Law, and she was Vice President of International Marketing for Mark Goodson Productions.
 
A graduate of Loyola Law School and the College of Honors at the University of California, Los Angeles, Ms. Bren has been a director and member of the Audit Committee of Ambassadors Group, Inc. since 2001. She is a Trustee of the California Institute of Technology, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Think Together. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and on the Advisory Committee of the Los Angeles Universal Preschool Master Plan.

Michael Chrisman
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Mike Chrisman California's ninth Secretary for Resources on November 21, 2003. As a member of the cabinet, Secretary Chrisman serves as Governor Schwarzenegger’s chief advisor on issues related to the State's natural, historical, and cultural resources. As the State of California’s Secretary for the Resources Agency, Mr. Chrisman oversees policies, activities, a budget of $4.1 billion, and 14,712 employees in 24 departments, commissions, boards, and conservancies related to conservation, water, fish and game, forestry, parks, energy, the coast, marine life, and landscape.

Secretary Chrisman brings extensive expertise in natural resource management and environmental issues to the Schwarzenegger Administration. From 1996 to 2003 he served as Region Manager for Southern California Edison (SCE), where he managed all phases of company/customer business, political, and civic activities in the San Joaquin Valley service area. From 1994 to 1996 SCE, he served as Undersecretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), where he provided leadership in developing and implementing sound policy for the state's agricultural industry and consumers, while managing a $190 million budget and 3,800 employees.

Secretary Chrisman served as Deputy Secretary for Operations/Legislation at the Resources Agency in the Pete Wilson Administration from 1991 to 1994, and was Staff Director of the Assembly Republican Caucus in 1991, advising legislative members about issues related to water, agriculture, and the environment, areas he continued to specialize in as Chief of Staff to former Assemblyman Bill Jones, for whom he managed the State Capitol and District offices from 1986 to 1991.

Since 1966, Secretary Chrisman has been the owner/partner of Chrisman Ranches in Visalia, a family ranching and farming operation in Tulare County. In 1997, Governor Pete Wilson appointed Secretary Chrisman to the California Fish and Game Commission, where he also served as Chairman of the Wildlife Conservation Board. He is past Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Great Valley Center, and currently serves on the boards of the private nonprofit Central Valley Organization and the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Foundation, a nonprofit, public-benefit Corporation to preserve, protect, and enhance the cultural and natural features of Sequoia and Kings Canyon. He is also a member of the Sequoia National History Association.

Secretary Chrisman holds a MS in Agricultural Education and a BS in Agronomy/Plant Science from the University of Arizona. As Secretary for Resources, he is dedicated to providing Californians with the same integrity and vision he learned as a fourth-generation San Joaquin Valley resident. He and his wife, Barbara, have two children - Jessica Nelson of Visalia and Josh Chrisman of Exeter - and five grandchildren.

Bruce Darling
As Vice President for University Affairs for the University of California, Bruce Darling has wide-ranging responsibilities that include integrating University-wide internal and external planning and policy; serving as the principal liaison with The Regents; acquiring UC's operating and capital budgets; overseeing the University's governmental relations programs in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and its communications with the news media and public; maintaining and forwarding alumni relations; and overseeing philanthropic giving to the University.

In 2003 Mr. Darling was named UC's Interim Vice President-Laboratory Management, which carried oversight responsibility for UC's management of three national laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. The three facilities - Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - employ nearly 18,000 people and have combined annual budgets of nearly $4 billion.

Previously, Mr. Darling served as Vice Chancellor for Development and University Relations at UC San Diego, and as Special Assistant to the Director of the National Science Foundation. He has received several scholastic and professional honors and is active in numerous professional and civic activities. He serves on the boards of the California Council on Science and Technology and Californians for Higher Education. He is also a member of the California Policy Research Center's Steering Committee and an ex-officio member of the UC President's Board on Science and Innovation.

Mr. Darling graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA in 1974. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, having spent much of his childhood living in South America and the Caribbean.

John Flynn
John Flynn is a director of the Irvine Ranch Conservancy and the Executive Vice President of both the Donald Bren Foundation and Bren Investments.

Mr. Flynn is responsible for coordinating and monitoring the major-gift programs for Donald Bren, the Donald Bren Foundation, and The Irvine Company. He also has executive responsibilities for the administration and operations of Donald Bren’s private family office.

Before joining Bren Investments in 1999, Mr. Flynn was a senior partner in the Los Angeles office of Arthur Andersen, an international accounting and advisory firm. He specialized in services to the real estate industry.

Mr. Flynn is a CPA with an MBA degree from the Wharton School and a B.A. degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a retired naval officer whose service included duty with the Navy Seabees during the Vietnam conflict.

Angel Martinez
A leader in product and marketing innovation and in recognizing and shaping future trends, Angel Martinez, 53, is the Chief Executive Officer of Deckers Outdoor Corporation and the former Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the Reebok portfolio of brands. As one of the Reebok Corporation’s founding employees, Angel’s vision was instrumental in the creation of the Reebok brand worldwide.

Angel’s professional career began with Carter Hawley Hale department stores and joined Reebok International Ltd. in 1980 as a West Coast sales representative. He positioned Reebok at the forefront of the women’s fitness movement, led the team that designed and marketed the legendary Freestyle aerobic shoe, introduced a variety of other shoes, and established Reebok’s presence in Hollywood.

In 1994, Angel was named President and CEO of The Rockport Company, Reebok’s largest subsidiary, where he directed the development and global implementation of a successful product and marketing program dedicated to broadening the brand’s appeal. The turnaround of the Rockport brand earned Angel the title of 1997 Man of the Year by Footwear News, the leading trade publication in the footwear industry. Angel retired from Reebok in 2001 after 21 years with the company.

In 2003, Angel partnered with Martin Keen to launch Keen Footwear. Keen was selected Launch of the Year in the footwear industry in 2003 and in 2005 received REI’s “Vendor Partner of the Year” award. Angel joined Deckers Outdoor Corporation in 2005 as Chief Executive Officer and President, and was named Chairman of the Board in May 2008. Deckers offers five brands of footwear -- Deckers, Teva, Ugg Australia, Simple Shoes, and Tsubo. In 2008, Deckers Outdoor was honored as Company of the Year by both Footwear News and Footwear Plus.

Angel is a founding member of the Board of Advisors for the Reebok Human Rights Awards and was executive producer of the “Human Rights Now!” tour in 1988, working with Amnesty International and Bill Graham to produce the global concert tour that played in 17 countries on five continents over a seven-month period. He serves on the boards of Tupperware and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

A native of Cuba, Angel emigrated to the United States in 1958. He is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, where he was an All-American in cross-country and track. He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife, Frankie, and their four children.

John Melack
John Melack (BA Cornell; PhD Duke) is Acting Dean of the Bren School. He also leads a research program in limnology, biogeochemistry, aquatic ecology, and remote sensing that has active studies in tropical Brazil, coastal catchments in California, and alpine and saline lakes in the Sierra Nevada. He conducted research in tropical Africa for a decade and has studied lakes, rivers, wetlands, and catchments in Australia, Japan, central Asia, and the southeastern United States.

Dr. Melack has published more than 200 scientific papers, edited two books and a special issue of Limnology and Ocenography, and written numerous book reviews and technical, workshop, and committee reports. He serves on the editorial boards of Biogeochemistry and Hydrobiologia and has served on the editorial boards of Ecological Applications and Limnology and Oceanography. He is a member of the Science Steering Committee for the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia and the Independent Science Board for the California Bay-Delta Authority’s CALFED Bay-Delta Program, and is an elected U.S. representative to the International Society of Limnology.

Previously, Dr. Melack was president of the International Society for Salt Lake Research, and for the past six years he has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Geophysical and Environmental Data. He has represented the limnological community on NASA’s Science Steering Committee for the Earth Observing System and served on the National Academy of Sciences committee that prepared report titled The Mono Basin Ecosystem-Effects of Changing Lake Level. He has also served for 25 years as the faculty manager of the Valentine Eastern Sierra Reserve, a teaching, research, and outreach facility in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Michael O'Connell
Mike O’Connell is the Executive Director of the Irvine Ranch Conservancy (IRC). He came to the IRC after a 13-year career with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), where he held a number of positions.

From 2001 to 2004, he was managing director of the South Coast Eco-region, overseeing projects and staff in coastal Southern California and northwestern Baja California. From 1998 to 2001 he was Senior Advisor for Science and Policy, responsible for the Conservancy’s work in the science, policy, and funding of regional conservation plans. From 1995 to 1998 he was director of Natural Community Conservation Planning in Southern California. Mike also spent four years with TNC in Florida, where, as Director of Habitat Conservation Planning, he facilitated the development of a regional conservation and land use program in Brevard County.

Before his career at TNC, Mr. O’Connell served as section program officer for land and wildlife for the World Wildlife Fund, and worked on private land conservation and endangered species issues in both state government and private consulting. From 1998 to 2003, he chaired the Policy Committee of the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology.

Mr. O’Connell has co-authored two books: Reconciling Conflicts Under the Endangered Species Act (1991) and The Science of Conservation Planning (1997), as well as a number of articles for the scientific, technical, and popular media. Mike has an AB in geology from Carleton College and an MES in conservation biology from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Lindene Patton
Ms. Patton serves as Chief Climate Product Officer at Zurich Financial Services. She manages the Underwriting Counsel staff and the Cost Engineering Services staff, which provide support to the environmental and architects and engineering underwriting divisions. She also oversees the group that underwrites guaranteed fixed-price remediation stop loss and all environmental impairment liability programs.

Ms. Patton has substantial expertise in all aspects of environmental insurance and professional liability insurance for the design professional, and she supports the development and improvement of all lines of environmental insurance. Additionally, Ms. Patton has extensive experience in standard property and casualty insurance and other specialty insurance coverages, such as political risk. She evaluates issues related to climate change and has developed products to support carbon trading and other unique solutions designed to assist customers in their adaptation to climate change.

Ms. Patton serves as a member of several advisory boards, including the Environmental Financial Advisory Board, a federal advisory committee. The purpose of the Environmental Financial Advisory Board is to provide authoritative analysis and advice to the EPA Administrator on finance issues to assist the Agency in carrying out its environmental mandates.

Ms. Patton is an attorney licensed in the State of California and the District of Columbia, and an American Board of Industrial Hygiene Certified Industrial Hygienist. She holds a bachelors degree in Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis. She received her Masters in Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley, and her J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law.

Glenn Prickett
Glenn Pricket is Senior Vice President of Conservation International (CI) and Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB).

CELB, a division of CI, engages the private sector worldwide in creating environmental solutions to global environmental problems. CELB works with leading firms in key industries, including natural resources, agriculture, travel and leisure, transportation, finance, and information technology, to create business practices that reduce industry's ecological footprint, contribute to conservation, and create value for the companies that adopt them. Examples of this work can be found in Footprints in the Jungle: Natural Resource Industries, Infrastructure and Biodiversity Conservation.

Prior to joining CI, Prickett served as Chief Environmental Advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development and as Senior Associate with the International Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust. He lives in Great Falls, Virgina with his wife Lisa and son Benjamin. He earned his B.A., Economics and Political Science from Yale University.

James Salzman

Jim Salzman holds joint appointments at Duke University as the Samuel Fox Mordecai Professor of Law at the Law School and as the Nicholas Institute Professor of Environmental Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment.

A popular classroom teacher, Professor Salzman teaches the Bren School's core course on Environmental Law and has twice been voted Professor of the Year by students at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. He has lectured on environmental policy to audiences in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.

In more than sixty articles and five books, he has called upon his broad-ranging scholarship to address topics spanning trade and environment conflicts, the history of drinking-water, environmental protection in the service economy, wetlands mitigation banking, and the legal and institutional issues in creating markets for ecosystem services.

Prior to entering academia, Professor Salzman worked for the OECD in Paris and served as the European Environmental Manager for Johnson Wax in London. He has been a visiting professor at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford.

Professor Salzman earned his BA in history from Yale College in 1985, graduating magna cum laude with distinction. He received his JD cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1989, and his MSc in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University in 1990.

Robert Weber
Robert C. Weber is President and Chief Executive Officer of ENSR/AECOM, one of the world’s leading environmental consulting, engineering, and remediation firms, with 70 offices around the world and 45 in the United States. ENSR, which has completed environmental projects in more than 100 countries, recently merged with AECOM, a global design and management company with a staff of 24,000.

A highly experienced environmentally focused executive and technical leader, Mr. Weber joined ENSR in 1981 after serving with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to his role as ENSR President/CEO, he led the company’s North American operations and launched its highly successful Key Account Program.The program has served to forge strong relationships with ENSR's major multinational corporate clients and has fueled the company's recent exemplary performance and profitable growth, culminating in a 2005 Environmental Business Journal Gold Medal.

Previously, Mr. Weber served ENSR in progressive leadership and technical roles, including that of Senior Industrial Remediation Program Leader. A registered professional engineer, Mr. Weber holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from Lehigh University and an M.S. in environmental management/public health from the University of North Carolina. He also attended the Amos Tuck School Executive Business Program at Dartmouth College.

Mel Willis
Visiting Lecturer Mel Willis has more than 25 years of experience as a professional environmental planner.

Having entered the Bren School’s Master’s program as a mid-career professional, Dr. Willis graduated in 1999, then entered the doctoral program and received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science & Management in 2003. He also holds a Master of City and Regional Planning degree from California State University, Fresno, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, Dr. Willis was Vice President for Environmental Sciences and Planning Services with Fugro West, a subsidiary of Fugro NV, an international engineering, environmental, and geotechnical consulting firm. In that position, he supervised the provision of environmental services to government and industry in the western United States, and served as the principal-in-charge of a project office in Moscow, the Russian Federation.

Dr. Willis’s experience includes major environmental projects throughout the U.S., Russia, South America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In addition to serving on the Bren School Advisory Board, Dr. Willis serves on the board of directors of the California Association of Environmental Professionals.

Henry Yang
Henry T. Yang joined UC Santa Barbara as chancellor in 1994. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering. He was formerly the Neil A. Armstrong Distinguished Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, where he also served as the dean of engineering for ten years, and as director of the Computer Integrated Design, Manufacturing, and Automation Center. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Dr. Yang has remained active in teaching and research. He has received 12 outstanding undergraduate teaching awards, and he still teaches one or two undergraduate courses in structural analysis each year and guides several graduate students. He has authored or co-authored more than 160 articles for scientific journals, and served as principal or co-principal investigator for 30 sponsored research grants. His book "Finite Element Structural Analysis," published by Prentice-Hall, has been adopted by many universities and has also been published in Japanese and Chinese.

Dr. Yang has served on numerous governmental, corporate, and academic committees and advisory boards, such as the Defense Science Board, USAF Scientific Advisory Board, Naval Research Advisory Committee, NASA's Aeronautical Advisory Committee, and the Engineering Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation. He has received many honors and awards for his research, teaching, and service, including the Benjamin Garver Lamme gold medal from the American Society of Engineering Education and four honorary doctorates in engineering. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.