Board

As CEO of the Bullitt Foundation, Denis leads an effort to mold the major cities of Pacific Northwest and British Columbia into models of sustainability for a rapidly urbanizing planet. The Foundation applies ecological principles to the design of healthy, resilient human ecosystems. Under his leadership, the Foundation designed and constructed the Bullitt Center—the world’s greenest office building—which it operates as a successful commercial enterprise.

Denis was the principal national organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, and he took the event international in 1990. It is now the most-widely-observed secular holiday in the world. He is now board chair emeritus of the international Earth Day Network. During the Carter Administration, Hayes was the director of the federal Solar Energy Research Institute—since renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Over his career, Hayes has been special assistant to the Governor of Illinois for natural resources and the environment; senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute; adjunct professor of energy engineering and human biology at Stanford University; Regents’ Professor of Natural Resources at the University of California at Santa Cruz; and a Silicon Valley lawyer at the Cooley firm. Denis has been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC and at the Bellagio Center in Italy, as well as a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Bosch Foundation.

Hayes has received the national Jefferson Medal for Outstanding Public Service, the Ridenhour Courage Prize, an inaugural Green Swan Award, and the Rachel Carson Award as well as the highest awards bestowed by the Sierra Club, the Environmental Law Institute, the Humane Society of the United States, the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Council of America, the Global Environmental Facility of the United Nations, the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, the American Solar Energy Society, and the Commonwealth Club. He has served on dozens of governing boards, including those of Stanford University, the World Resources Institute, the Federation of American Scientists, the Energy Foundation, Children Now, the National Programming Council for Public Television, the American Solar Energy Society, Greenpeace, CERES, and the Environmental Grantmakers Association. In 1999, Time magazine selected Hayes as one of its “Heroes of the Planet.” Life magazine selected him in 1990 as a member of “The Life 100 Most Important Americans of the 20^th Century.”  He has been profiled as “Newsmaker of the week” by ABC News and by the New York Times. Denis wrote Rays of Hope: The Transition to a Post-Petroleum World (WW Norton, 1977) and, together with his spouse, Gail Boyer Hayes, co-authored COWED: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America’s Health, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Environment (WW Norton, 2015).

Throughout her life and career, Jessie Woolley-Wilson has been driven by a singular belief that all children need and deserve high-quality learning opportunities, regardless of who they are or where they live. She believes that by supporting great teaching and learning, everyone wins: kids, families, communities and the world. Jessie has worked in the education technology space for nearly 20 years to support school and district leaders to improve learning and life outcomes for K-12 students.

Jessie joined DreamBox Learning® in 2010 as Chair, President, and CEO. The startup software company had pioneered Intelligent Adaptive Learning™ in 2006 and began partnering with schools soon after Jessie joined. Today, DreamBox serves more than 3 million K-8 students and over 120,000 teachers. The company provided more than 350 million math lessons across the U.S. and Canada in 2018.

Jessie recently secured a $130 million investment in DreamBox from The Rise Fund, a global impact investing fund managed by TPG Growth. Prior to joining DreamBox, Jessie served as president of Blackboard’s K-12 Group and LeapFrog SchoolHouse, the K-12 division of LeapFrog Enterprises. Jessie also served in leadership positions at collegeboard.com, the interactive division of The College Board, and at Kaplan, the leading test preparation company in the U.S.

Jessie supports the broader K12 industry by serving on the boards of several educational organizations including Rosetta Stone, the Western Governors University Board of Trustees, and Ursuline Academy. She is also a board member for Boeing Employees Credit Union, Pacific Science Center, and The Bullitt Foundation. She has been a featured speaker at international events including TEDx Rainier, SXSWedu, DENT and GeekWire Summit 2018.

Jessie is a two-time recipient of EdTech Digest’s EdTech Leadership Award for her work in transformative innovation in education, and she has been honored as one of 2018’s Top 100 Influencers in EdTech. Forbes placed her on its “Impact 15” list for being a disruptor in education and The New York Times featured Jessie in their Corner Office column. Regionally, Jessie has received multiple accolades for her leadership, including, Seattle Business Magazine’s 2015 Executive Excellence Award in the CEO of the Year category, GeekWire’s 2019 Big Tech CEO of the Year award, and the Puget Sound Business Journal’s “Women of Influence” award.

Jessie holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of Virginia. She is also a 2007 Henry Crown Fellow and moderator for the Aspen Institute.

Rob Peña is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington where he teaches architectural design and building science with an emphasis on ecological design and high-performance buildings. He serves as the Graduate Program Coordinator and leads the Design Technology curriculum. Rob works regionally with design teams on the development of high performance and net-zero energy buildings and is helping convene knowledge communities to re-imagine the future of our cities. Rob was an advisory member of the design team for the Bullitt Center, and his research seeks to draw lessons from this groundbreaking high-performance building to inform the future of the built environment.

While Harriet Bullitt passed away in April 2022 at the age of 97, her memory as a multi-talented entrepreneur and long-time supporter of the arts and environmental conservation in the Pacific Northwest will live on. She and her sister assumed leadership of KING Broadcasting Company, founded by their pioneering mother, Dorothy, from the mid-1940’s until sale of the company in 1989. Harriet founded Pacific Northwest Magazine (now Seattle Magazine) and Pacific Search Press. She was the developer, owner and CEO of Leavenworth’s Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat, which opened in 1995. Reprising her interest in broadcasting, in 1999 Harriet founded KOHO FM radio in Leavenworth, purchased the Lake Chelan station, KOZI, and created the Icicle Broadcasting Company. In 1988 she founded the Icicle Fund, a charitable foundation supporting the arts and environmental protection in the upper Wenatchee Valley. Ownership of the Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort transferred to the Icicle Fund in 2019 to operate in perpetuity. Over the years, Harriet served on many boards, including the Seattle Pacific Science Center, The Nature Conservancy, Reed College, Icicle Creek Music Center, Icicle Creek Watershed Council, and National Audubon.

Mark Edlen is Co-Founder and Chairman of Gerding Edlen. He is recognized for his expertise and success in creating sustainable communities in mixed-use commercial, residential, educational and retail developments. For 20 years, Mark led the firm’s vision and growth with the belief that the path to preserving the environment leads directly to a new urban reality, where transformative buildings and quality assets foster communities. In his words, cities are the solution for a growing population. Since 1996, when Mark co-founded the firm with his good friend, Bob Gerding, who died in 2009, Gerding Edlen has grown into a leader of sustainable real estate investment, developing and owning more than 75 LEED certified buildings throughout the Western United States, Boston and Chicago. Gerding Edlen originated the 20-minute living concept and established a set of criteria called Principles of Place—where community plays a pivotal role alongside design and technology in the success of their properties. Mark is committed to developing buildings that attain net-zero energy use and embraces the fundamental philosophy of community that integrates neighborhoods, educational institutions and builds strong business, government and community partnerships. Mark and his wife, Ann are actively involved in the Portland community and are deeply committed to education, healthcare, the arts, sustainability and the built environment. They believe that as engaged citizens we must always be asking, how can we add to our community, what is our responsibility to the livability of the built environment and how can we help less fortunate Oregonians attain their dreams. They share these values with their three grown children, their spouses and two grandchildren. In addition to his role as a trustee for The Bullitt Foundation, Mark is as a member of the Board of Directors for Ecotrust and currently serves on the Portland Development Commission. Mark earned a BS degree and MBA in Finance from the University of Oregon.

Howard Frumkin is Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington School of Public Health, where he served as Dean from 2010-2016. After serving as Dean, he led the “Our Planet, Our Health” initiative at the Wellcome Trust in London from 2018-2019. Previously, he directed the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR), and served as Special Assistant to the CDC Director for Climate Change and Health, from 2005-2010. Dr. Frumkin was Professor and Chair of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Emory Medical School from 1990-2005.

Dr. Frumkin is an internist, environmental and occupational medicine specialist and epidemiologist. His research interests include public health aspects of the built environment, climate change, energy policy and nature contact. He has served on the boards of the Seattle Parks Foundation, the Washington Global Health Alliance, the American Public Health Association, the US Green Building Council, the Children and Nature Network, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, among others, on several NASEM and IOM committees, on the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance (Harvard University) and on advisory committees to the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (Harvard University), HERA (Health Environment Research Agenda for Europe, INSERM and ISGlobal), the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (Columbia University), the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health (George Mason University), the European Centre for Environment and Human Health (University of Exeter), the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health and the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (University of Toronto).

He is the author, co-author or editor of over 250 scientific journal articles, chapters and books, including textbooks on general environmental health (Environmental Health: From Global to Local), planetary health (Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves) and the built environment (Making Healthy Places: A Built Environment for Health, Well-Being, and Sustainability).

Erim Gómez is a faculty member in one of the nation’s top Wildlife Biology Programs, the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana. He is also a past award winner of the Patsy Prize (Bullitt Environmental Fellowship). Gómez used the fellowship to conduct conservation research on Palouse Prairie amphibians in Eastern Washington. He has formerly served as Co-Director of Southern Oregon University’s Ecology Center of the Siskiyous (now the Environmental Resource Center). While at SOU, he co-led an effort to pass a green-tags initiative to offset the university’s carbon footprint. He served on the board of Oregon Stewardship and board of the Society of Northwestern Vertebrate Biology. Gómez holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies from Southern Oregon University and Masters and PhD in Natural Resource Sciences from Washington State University. Gómez is a naturalist at heart and thus has eclectic research interests, including the conservation of endangered species, the ecology and sustainability of freshwater ecosystems, and amphibians and freshwater fish.

Gómez is devoted to encouraging students from under-represented groups to pursue higher education, particularly the sciences. In service to this goal, Gómez frequently gives presentations to students and their parents. He often enjoys giving these presentations in Spanish to connect with LatinX communities. He also offers educational workshops and mentors undergraduate LatinX student groups and students from the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. Gómez hopes to create applied ecological research while helping diversify the conservation and environmental field.

Dean Lisa J. Graumlich, Mary Laird Wood Professor, is the inaugural dean of the College of the Environment at the University of Washington. As dean, she leads a College with unparalleled depth and breadth in environmental systems: from the forests to the seas and from the depths of the earth to the edges of the solar system. As a scholar, Graumlich pioneered the use of tree-ring data to understand long-term trends in climate, focusing on the mountains of western North America.

Graumlich has served as a faculty member at University of California-Los Angeles, the director of the University of Arizona’s Institute for the Study of Planet Earth and Montana State University’s Mountain Research Center, as well as executive director of their Big Sky Institute. She received her B.S. in Botany and M.S. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her Ph.D. in Forest Resources from the University of Washington. She was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 1999 and was elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2004. In 2017, she was elected to the American Geophysical Union’s Board of Directors.

Paul is an energy geek, an engineer, an educator, and an entrepreneur.

For over 35 years, Paul has been collaborating with architects to design beautiful, high-performance buildings. His projects include high-rises, museums, offices, educational facilities, and labs. Paul’s highest performing projects include the Bullitt Center, the largest commercial Living Building in the world, and the Rocky Mountain Institute Innovation Center. One of his current projects, the Portland Living Building, will be Oregon’s largest and Portland’s first Living Building.  It has recently been cited as “the most important building the city has seen this century.”

As President of PAE since 2004, Paul and his partners successfully run a triple bottom line company. The firm has grown from a staff of 60 in one office to a staff of over 380 in four offices. With 11 consecutive years on the 100 Best Green Workplaces in Oregon, PAE has been inducted into the 100 Best Hall of Fame, and continues to receive awards for employee health and well-being as well as prominent engineering and design accolades.

As a thought leader, Paul has spoken extensively throughout the nation at events including Living Future, Verge, Greenbuild, Labs 21, and the New York Academy of Science. He has helped educate the next generation as an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon and New York University. Paul has also served on national juries to select the best projects in the country for both Engineering News Record (ENR) and the AIA National Committee on the Environment.

Rico Quirindongo, AIA, has been working for 27 years to revitalize and reimagine Seattle historic landmarks and neighborhoods. He is Interim Director of the City of Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development. Rico believes that through proactive design, vision, and multi-agency collaboration, opportunities for social change can be realized through community-invested civic projects.

Rico was a mayoral appointee to the Historic Seattle Council for six years, was a founding member of the National Organization of Minority Architects Northwest Chapter and Rico sat on the AIA+2030 national steering committee, a committee born out of AIA Seattle that has seen to it that 24 cities nationally provided curriculum to help design teams and owners meet the 2030 Challenge.

Rico works with organizations to positively influence communities through design and is committed to the betterment of his hometown, Seattle, through public engagement, design, and civic service. Rico is a recognized expert on civic projects and city-convened taskforces to create and execute processes for inclusive and authentic engagement. Rico was chair of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority Council, was a Downtown Seattle Association board member, and was AIA Seattle President in 2012-13. Rico completed his first Ted talk, called Transforming Communities Through Architecture last year and this year was given a Commercial Real Estate Leadership Award as a Neighborhood Champion by the Puget Sound Business Journal. Rico is a 1999 UW CBE alumni and worked in 2019 and 2020 with the Deans Office, CBE Facilitation Team, faculty and students to help develop the UW CBE Strategic Framework.

He was recognized by AIA as a Citizen Architect in 2020 and is a Northwest and Pacific Regional Representative on the AIA Strategic Council, a national think tank of the member organization.