NAEP 2024 Keynote Presentations

Chair Brenda Mallory of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality

Brenda Mallory was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 14, 2021 and sworn in as the 12th Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). She is the first African American to serve in this position. As Chair, she advises the President on environmental and natural resources policies that improve, preserve, and protect public health and the environment for America’s communities. She is focused particularly on addressing the environmental justice and climate change challenges the nation faces while advancing opportunities for job growth and economic development.

Chair Mallory grew up the oldest of four children in a working-class community in Waterbury, Connecticut. Raised in a family of dedicated community and public servants, she learned the importance of hard work, service, and perseverance. She saw the impacts on her community and the larger city when the industrial base of the “Brass City,” as Waterbury was known, abandoned the area, leaving deep physical and economic scars behind. Her personal experience fuels her commitment to making America’s environmental laws work for all people and ensuring that no community is left behind as the nation pursues a clean energy future.

Chair Mallory earned a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school for high school that changed the course of her life. She became the first in her family to attend college, graduating from Yale College with a double major in history and sociology and then from Columbia Law School as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. She began her environmental law career in private practice, where much of her work involved helping local governments secure federal environmental approvals for economic development projects. She eventually chaired the law firm’s Natural Resources Practice Group. Through this work, she gained valuable experience in the application of the National Environmental Policy Act, the bedrock statute that created CEQ in 1969 and which the agency administers. In 2000, she joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds, commencing an almost 20-year career in Federal service.

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Eric Beightel, Executive Director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council

Biden-Harris Administration Presidential appointee Eric Beightel serves as the Executive Director of the Permitting Council. As Executive Director, Beightel assists Permitting Council member agencies in managing a portfolio of nearly $100 billion in large-scale infrastructure projects— including those in the renewable energy, coastal restoration, broadband, and electricity transmission sectors.  Executive Director Beightel assists federal agencies in developing and implementing comprehensive, project-specific timetables for all required infrastructure permitting reviews and authorizations for FAST-41 covered projects, advancing the administration's goal to build innovative and transformative once-in-a-generation infrastructure. 

A nationally recognized expert in the environmental and infrastructure fields, Beightel brings more than 20 years of experience to the Permitting Council, including significant time spent in federal service. Beightel’s extensive public and private sector experience honed his command of the National Environmental Policy Act and his capacity for solving complex environmental permitting problems on the local, state and national level. His experience includes serving as a senior environmental policy advisor at the Department of Transportation, developing and implementing strategies to reduce permitting and review timelines while delivering better outcomes for communities and the environment. He also worked as a policy advisor at the Office of Management and Budget, serving as a subject matter expert on the federal permitting and review process for major infrastructure projects. In the private sector Beightel worked for WSP, USA as a senior director and vice president, working with clients to develop innovative strategies to navigate the federal environmental regulatory framework efficiently. Most recently he served as an associate vice president and national lead for infrastructure policy and environmental strategy at HDR, Inc., a global engineering, architecture, environmental and construction services firm. 

Eric Beightel holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and a Master of Public Policy degree from George Mason University. 

Sara C. Bronin was confirmed by unanimous consent by the United States Senate in December 2022 to serve as the 12th chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. A Mexican American, she is the first person of color to serve in this position.

Prior to her confirmation, Chair Bronin spent her career as a professor and public servant. Her interdisciplinary research in the areas of property, land use, historic preservation, and energy has focused on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. She has published five books and treatises and dozens of articles, book chapters, and shorter works on these topics. She also founded the National Zoning Atlas, which aims to translate and standardize information about how zoning regulates housing in around 30,000 jurisdictions nationally.

While chairing the ACHP, she is on leave from her tenured position at Cornell University, where she serves as Professor in the College of Architecture Art & Planning, Professor in the Rubacha Department of Real Estate, an Associate Faculty Member of the Law School, and a member of the Graduate Faculty in the Field of Architecture. At Cornell, she founded and directs the Legal Constructs Lab, serves as a faculty fellow of the Atkinson Center for Sustainability, and is an affiliate of the Cornell Center for Social Sciences. She has also held visiting positions at the Yale School of Architecture and the University of Pennsylvania Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.

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