Great Lakes Water Conference Speaker Profiles
23rd Annual Great Lakes Water Conference
"The Clean Water Act's Next Fifty Years"
Friday, Nov. 3, 2023
Panel One
Robin Craig
Robin Kundis Craig is the Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law at the USC Gould School of Law, where she teaches Environmental Law, Water Law, Ocean and Coastal Law, Toxic Torts, Civil Procedure, and Administrative Law. Craig specializes in all things water, including climate change adaptation in the water sector; the food-water-energy nexus; water quality and water allocation law; marine protected areas and marine spatial planning; and the intersection of freshwater and ocean and coastal law. She is the author, co-author, or editor of 13 books, including Re-Envisioning the Anthropocene Ocean (2023), The End of Sustainability (2017), and textbooks on Environmental Law, Water Law, and Toxic Torts. She has also written or co-written over 100 law or science journal articles and book chapters. Craig is an elected member of American Law Institute and the American College of Environmental Lawyers and a member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law. Her comments on contemporary water, marine, and climate change issues have been quoted in National Geographic, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Popular Science, and many other news outlets. Craig received her B.A. from Pomona College, Claremont, CA; her M.A. in Writing About Science from the John Hopkins University; her Ph.D. in English Literature, specializing in how the English Romantic poets used contemporary science to explain social change, from the University of California, Santa Barbara; and her J.D. summa cum laude with a Certificate in Environmental Law from the Lewis & Clark School of Law.
Jennifer Scheller Neumann
Jennifer Scheller Neumann is the Chief of the Appellate Section of the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Before becoming Chief, Jennifer served as a line attorney and Assistant Section Chief in the Appellate Section, directly managing the Section’s civil and criminal pollution control docket. Jennifer has briefed and argued or managed cases in all of the federal courts of appeals. She clerked for the Hon. M. Blane Michael on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and Allegheny College.
Jill Ryan
Jill Ryan has led Freshwater Future as Executive Director since 2000. She has a background in nonprofit management and capacity building, environmental toxicology, and human services and has taught environmental law and legal research. Jill’s focus spans planning, board development, facilitation, and cross-border collaborations, all geared towards nurturing grassroot capacity to protect communities and water resources in the Great Lakes Region.
Panel Two
Kim E. Ferraro
Kim E. Ferraro is the Senior Staff Attorney and Clinic Professor at IU Mauer School of Law’s Conservation Law Center (CLC). Before coming to CLC, Ferraro held that same position with the Hoosier Environmental Council (HEC), Indiana’s largest statewide environmental advocacy organization where she was the force behind numerous precedent-setting victories in federal and state courts that have held both violators and regulators accountable and enforced the laws and policies meant to protect the environment and human health. Among other successes, her legal advocacy stopped several factory farms from endangering the health of Hoosier communities, required the cleanup of millions of tons of steel-making waste dumped within feet of Lake Michigan, put an end to toxic exposures suffered by a low-income community in Elkhart from a nearby industrial waste processor, prevented a dangerous ethanol refinery from being built near the Kankakee River and required federal agencies to enforce existing protections for the state’s few remaining wetlands. Ferraro is a graduate of Valparaiso University School of Law and DePaul University. She is licensed to practice in Indiana and Illinois and is admitted to the bars of the U.S. Northern and Southern District Courts of Indiana, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Stephen M. Johnson
Stephen M. Johnson is a Professor of Law at Mercer University Law School in Macon, Georgia. He received his J.D. from Villanova University School of Law and an LL.M. in environmental law from the George Washington University Law School. Prior to teaching, he served as an attorney for the Bureau of Regulatory Counsel in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (now DEP) and as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division, Environmental Defense Section.
He joined the Mercer faculty in 1993 and served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2002-2012. While teaching at Mercer, he has also had the opportunity to teach or visit at Notre Dame Law School, the University of London and Strathclyde University. In 2004, he taught at the University of Tokyo and at Waseda University (Tokyo) on a Fulbright grant.
He specializes in Environmental Law and Administrative Law, but has also taught Torts, Statutory Law, and Dispute Resolution. His scholarship focuses on environmental law, administrative law, and technology and the law. He has served on the Board of Directors of CALI since 1998 and is currently the organization’s President.
Noah Hall
Noah Hall's expertise is in environmental and water law, and his research focuses on issues of environmental governance, federalism, and transboundary pollution and resource management.
Professor Hall joined the Wayne Law faculty in 2005. For the 2014-15 academic year, he served as the Law School's associate dean for student affairs. Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan Law School and was an attorney with the National Wildlife Federation, where he managed the Great Lakes Water Resources Program for the nation's largest conservation organization. Hall also worked in private practice for several years, representing a variety of business and public-interest clients in litigated and regulatory matters. He has extensive litigation experience and numerous published decisions in state and federal courts. He continues to represent a variety of clients in significant environmental policy disputes. From 2016-2019, Hall served as special assistant attorney general for Michigan for the Flint water investigation.
Hall is founder of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit environmental organization that provides legal assistance to community organizations, environmental non-governmental organizations, and local, state and regional governments. He continues to serve as the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center's scholarship director.
Professor Hall graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, concentrating in environmental policy. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Kathleen A. Blatz, chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court.