People

The network is a small group of Western Massachusetts residents. Here is who we are. Members list their affiliations for identification. They speak for themselves, not for any employer.

Juniper Katz

Juniper Katz is an assistant professor of public policy at UMass Amherst and a research affiliate at Berkeley Lab. Her research connects environmental governance, nonprofit management, and policy implementation, with a focus on land use and renewable energy siting. She spent a decade in land conservation, where she led work that protected more than 49,000 acres of habitat and farmland. She now studies how policy design and implementation shape both environmental outcomes and civic engagement. She teaches governing the energy transition, program evaluation, policy analysis, and the politics of the policy process. She holds a PhD in public affairs from the University of Colorado Denver, an MS in resource management and administration from Antioch University New England, and a BA in international studies from Marlboro College.

John Pepi

John Pepi has lived in the Valley since 1972. Working for the Mass. DEP between 1989 and 1997, he managed a planning grants program, researched waste disposal bans and coordinated with western municipalities on Springfield MRF operations. He retired from UMass Amherst in 2020, where he managed waste and recycling and helped the campus excel in electronics recycling and food-waste composting. His energy and climate work followed. He has commented on the state's renewable energy siting, permitting, and SMART regulations, and built a forest-solar carbon calculator. In 2025 he wrote "The Case Against Placing All of the Commonwealth's Eggs in the Rooftop Basket." He served on the Easthampton Energy Advisory Committee from 2022 to 2025 and earned an MA in Urban and Environmental Policy at Tufts in 1986.

Patrick Quinlan

Patrick Quinlan co-founded SolaBlock, a maker of solar masonry products, and serves as its CEO. He earlier ran Black Island Wind Turbines, whose turbines run in Antarctica, and was associate director of the UMass Renewable Energy Research Laboratory. His public-sector work includes a White House technology fellowship at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, a congressional technology fellowship, and a term as national policy analyst for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. As an engineer he worked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, at Southern California Edison, and for the inventor Paul MacCready, and he advised electric cooperatives and municipal utilities for the Department of Energy's Western Area Power Administration. He holds a BSc in mechanical engineering from the wind energy program at UMass and an MSc from the Solar Energy Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, and he is a licensed professional engineer in California.

Keith Hastie

Bio forthcoming.

Bruce Scherer

Bio forthcoming.