Profit & Purpose Sustainable Business Conference

Joris Veldhoven has served as President of New York Transco since March 2026, overseeing the company’s overall strategic direction, performance, and P&L.

In this role, he is leading New York Transco’s continued growth into the bulk electric transmission developer of choice for New York State, while cultivating partnerships with regulators, supply chain companies, and stakeholders.

A central focus of his leadership is aligning high-performing internal teams with trusted, senior-level external relationships to deliver critical infrastructure that powers New York’s clean energy future.

An internationally experienced energy executive Joris brings deep expertise in the energy sector, with a proven track record of originating, structuring, and delivering largescale, complex energy and infrastructure projects. He is known for his passion for deal-making, strategic execution, and mobilizing teams to turning ambitious ideas into reality.

Previously Joris worked for over 17 years at Shell, including many years at Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind as the company’s President and CEO.

Joris graduated cum laude with a degree in Industrial Engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology. He is based in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife and three daughters.

John transforms intricate environmental challenges into clear legal solutions.

John represents industrial and commercial clients facing complex environmental exposure and remediation cases, successfully defending clients in class and mass actions, citizen suits, private cost recovery actions, and contract disputes. Applying a detailed understanding of his clients’ operations, John develops strong, fact-based defenses grounded in reliable science to focus the legal issues in complex litigation. While John’s practice centers on cases involving technical, scientific, and engineering issues, the key is to make these issues clear and relatable.

John also counsels permittees and project developers navigating environmental permits and transactions. The same strengths that John uses in litigation also steer his clients through multi-layered permitting processes. Ensuring that regulatory agencies understand how a client’s operation fits within the legal framework, John works with clients and consultants to secure logical and sustainable permit requirements. In agency enforcement actions, he helps defeat unsupported claims while charting practical paths toward compliance when necessary.

In any context, John bases defenses, negotiations, and permitting strategies on a close understanding of his client’s goals and operations, the purposes of the legal framework, and the forces driving agencies, litigation opponents, or other parties in a transaction.

John leads B&D’s Waste Management & Recycling Practice Group. Before entering law school, he served in the U.S. Peace Corps in the Republic of Moldova.

Pete Harckham was elected to the New York State Senate in November 2018 and re-elected in 2020. 2022 and 2024—the culmination so far of a distinguished career in public service. Currently, he is chair of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee.

Through his three full terms in office, Harckham has become one of the most productive members of the New York State Senate. He worked to make the 2% Property Tax Cap permanent; delivered record aid to education; and addressed the opioid crisis by doubling minimum treatment times and reducing barriers to life saving treatment.

Well-regarded as a champion of the environment, Harckham helped pass the toughest climate protection legislation in the nation, and also introduced legislation, later enacted, requiring all new passenger car and truck sales to be zero emission by 2035 and allowing municipalities to build solar canopies and jumpstart community renewable energy projects. In 2023, Governor Kathy Hochul placed Harckham’s landmark wetlands legislation protecting Class C streams statewide, which will safeguard fragile drinking water resources, into her proposed 2023 State Budget.

Additionally, Harckham has been a leading voice to hold the utilities accountable in the wake of failed responses to natural disasters, and has been there for residents during the Covid-19 pandemic. To date, he has held 18 food drives to fight hunger, assisted thousands of residents with unemployment claims and delivered PPE to first responders and municipalities throughout the 40th Senate District.

In 2015 Harckham was appointed Assistant Director of the Office of Community Renewal, responsible for the roll out and implementation of a special allotment of $4.3M in CDBG funding for Westchester municipalities. Afterwards, he served for two years as the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge project.

From 2008 to 2015 Harckham served on the Westchester County Board of Legislators (BOL), where he was a leading voice for protecting the environment, maintaining vital services and investing in our families. He was the BOL’s Majority Leader from 2010 through 2013.

Before being elected to the BOL, Harckham served as board president of A-HOME, a not-for-profit housing corporation that builds affordable housing in northern Westchester, and worked as

a communications professional on Madison Avenue for major advertising agencies. He also helmed his own communications and marketing firm, and founded K&E Farms, a small horse farm in Katonah, NY, where he donated conservation easements from the farm to the Westchester Land Trust. Both his prior residence and farm were converted to solar power.

In addition to his professional work, Harckham served on the President’s Council for the Northern Westchester Hospital, and was a board member for the United Way of Westchester and Putnam, the Junior League of Northern Westchester Community Advisory Council and the Livable Communities Council.

Jeshica Patel focuses her practice on government, law, and policy matters with a focus on New York State environmental and energy issues. She has deep experience representing government agencies and authorities on environmental, energy, and agriculture matters, and coordinating legal affairs for state agencies including the Department of Environmental Conservation, Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Department of Agriculture and Markets, Department of Public Service, Office of Renewable Energy Siting, New York Power Authority, and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

Prior to joining Greenberg Traurig, Jeshica served as assistant counsel to Governor Kathy Hochul for Energy, Environment, and Agriculture in the New York State Executive Chamber.

Christopher Raup leads state and federal regulatory engagement on topics including customer affordability, service reliability, transmission and distribution system development, renewable energy, and electrification.

Chris joined Con Edison in 2006, and has worked in energy markets policy, state regulatory affairs, new business opportunity development, and regulatory innovation.

Prior to Con Edison, Chris worked as an engineer for nine years at Brooklyn Union Gas, in positions of increasing responsibility, with rotations in Natural Gas Vehicles and Strategic Planning.

Chris received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from The Cooper Union in 1996, and in 2006 Chris earned an MBA from the Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Business in the Netherlands.

About Con Edison.  Con Edison and its affiliate Orange & Rockland provide electric delivery service to 4 million customers, natural gas delivery service to 1.3 million customers, and district steam service to 1,500 customers, all in the greater New York City metropolitan area.

Michael N. Romita, a business leader with extensive public policy expertise, was named the President & CEO of the Westchester County Association in March of 2020.  Since taking on this role, Michael has helped to create and advance groundbreaking initiatives designed to strengthen the economy in Westchester and the surrounding region.  He has led the WCA’s growth in focus areas such as real estate and housing, healthcare and life-science, workforce development, energy and sustainability, and digital opportunity.  He is repeatedly recognized as one of the region’s leading voices in business, economic development, and sustainability.

Prior to the Westchester County Association, Michael was Executive Vice President in charge of corporate strategy and operations at Castle Oil Corporation, a mid-stream energy company founded by his grandfather.  He started his career as an environmental litigator at the U.S. Department of Justice where he represented the United States in federal court on a broad array of environmental and energy matters.

Michael holds a B.S. from Tufts University, J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, and Master of Laws from The London School of Economics. He has served on the boards of many charitable and civic organizations, including the Westchester County Parks, Recreation, and Conservation Board and MINT, a mental health foundation.  In addition, he recently co-chaired the Westchester County Executive’s Transition Committee on Economic Development.  Michael and his wife Melissa live in Westchester and wait patiently for their daughter to face time them from college from time to time.

Daniella Piper is the Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at the New York Power Authority, where she drives NYPA’s corporate strategy, leads advanced nuclear development, and accelerates an innovation agenda aimed at boosting operational performance, advancing decarbonization, and transforming the state’s energy grid. With more than 18 years of leadership across operations and strategic transformation, Daniella has steered NYPA’s flagship Niagara Power Project and propelled major statewide infrastructure and technology initiatives. A licensed professional engineer with advanced degrees in electrical engineering and construction management—and a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program—Daniella also amplifies industry progress through her service on boards that support research, executive education, and workforce development.

Paul Daniele is a Senior Vice President and Operations Area Manager with Arcadis, with more than 30 years of consulting engineering experience across the energy, water, wastewater, sustainability, environmental services, digital infrastructure, and technology market sectors.

Throughout his career, Paul has led complex planning, design, construction, and operational programs for public and private sector clients nationally and across the Northeast.  His expertise spans water and wastewater systems, infrastructure resilience, asset management, capital program delivery, and large-scale multidisciplinary engineering projects. He has successfully directed major initiatives for organizations including New York City DEP and Westchester County, overseeing projects that improve critical infrastructure, public health, and community sustainability.

Paul is a passionate, client-focused thought leader who has been recognized for building high-performing teams, fostering strategic partnerships, and driving business growth while maintaining his commitment related to innovation, sustainability, and client success. He is passionate about developing future leaders, mentoring, growth and advancing collaborative solutions that create lasting value for communities, industry, and government stakeholders.

Adjunct Professor Jessica Bacher is the Executive Director of the Land Use Law Center. Established in 1993, the Land Use Law Center is dedicated to fostering the development of sustainable communities and regions through the promotion of innovative land use strategies and dispute resolution techniques. As the Executive Director, Professor Bacher’s responsibilities include development and implementation of projects relating to local land use practice, energy siting, distressed property remediation, sustainable communities, land use responses to sea level rise, and affordable housing, as well as providing strategic assistance to numerous municipalities.

Most recently, Professor Bacher led the City of Newburgh, NY, in the development of a distressed property remediation implementation plan that focuses on the development of a land bank. Additionally, she serves as a trainer for the Center’s award-winning Land Use Leadership Alliance Training Program that has educated over 2,500 local leaders in land use strategies, consensus building, and regional stewardship. Professor Bacher previously chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of State and Local Government Law. At the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, Professor Bacher serves as an Adjunct Professor, teaching Land Use Law, Sustainable Development Survey, and the Advanced Land Use and Sustainable Development Seminar.

Professor Bacher also administers the Center’s academic programs and guides student research. In addition, she is a Lecturer and project supervisor at Yale School of the Environment, where she manages the school’s Land Use Clinic. She authors regular land use features in New York and national publications and has edited numerous small books in the fields of Land Use and Real Estate Law, including Breaking Ground and Planning and Building in Priority Growth Districts. She also presents at regional and national conferences and served on the New York State Climate Action Plan Land Use and Local Government Working Group, Climate Smart Communities Standards Committee, Master Plan for Aging Task Force, and the Sea Level Rise Task Force Legal Work Group. Professor Bacher was selected by the American Bar Association to receive the Jefferson B. Fordham Award, an award presented to a young practitioner who has shown great promise through her contributions to the field. Professor Bacher received her JD summa cum laude from Haub Law in 2003, along with a certificate in Environmental Law.

Amy Nunziata is a nationally recognized healthcare facilities, operations, and real estate executive with more than 30 years of leadership experience across academic medical centers, healthcare systems, higher education, national laboratories, and healthcare advisory services organizations.

As Senior Vice President of Facilities Design, Construction and Planning at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), Amy leads the strategic planning, development, operation, and optimization of the institution’s extensive real estate and facilities portfolio. She oversees engineering, facilities management, environmental services, security, design, construction, planning, real estate and capital program delivery, ensuring that HSS’s infrastructure supports its mission of providing world-class patient care, research, education, and innovation. She works closely with executive leadership and the Board of Trustees to advance major strategic growth initiatives and capital investments.

Previously, Amy served as Executive Vice President, Healthcare Operations at JLL, where she helped healthcare organizations across the United States transform facilities operations, real estate strategy, project delivery, and workplace services. She was responsible for advancing operational performance, fostering innovation, driving growth, and developing integrated solutions that improved both organizational outcomes and patient experience.

Prior leadership roles include Vice President of Facilities Operations and Engineering at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Associate Laboratory Director for Facilities and Operations at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and multiple executive and senior leadership positions at Stony Brook University and Stony Brook Medicine. Throughout her career, Amy has successfully led complex organizations, large-scale capital programs, enterprise infrastructure operations, regulatory and safety programs, and high-performing multidisciplinary teams.

Amy earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Manhattan College and an MBA from Dowling College. She is a LEED Accredited Professional and Certified Healthcare Facilities Manager, and is widely respected for her ability to align operational excellence, strategic vision, and organizational growth.

Gina Tesla builds purpose-driven organizations that deliver societal impact alongside business results. Over two decades at IBM, Microsoft, and Coupa Software, she built strategy, partnerships, and teams from the ground up, leading global corporate responsibility work at IBM across its 170-country footprint, launching a $50M sustainability consulting line at Microsoft, and building Coupa’s sustainability, philanthropy, and social impact function from zero under private equity ownership.

That foundation now shapes how she thinks about responsible AI: the governance frameworks needed to set meaningful guardrails, AI’s often-overlooked environmental footprint, whether historically excluded communities are shaping and benefiting from AI’s development, and the workforce disruptions reshaping both mature and developing economies. She holds an MBA from Cornell University and an Advanced AI Governance Certification and serves as Lead Advisor at Pace University’s Lubin Center for Sustainable Business.

Her path began in Panama, where she served in the U.S. Peace Corps within the Kuna Nation, an early lesson in building trust and impact across cultures that has anchored her work ever since.

Francesca Rossi is an internationally recognized computer scientist, AI researcher, and thought leader in AI ethics and governance. She serves as an IBM Fellow and IBM’s Global Leader for Responsible AI and AI Governance at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.

Over the course of her career, her research has spanned several areas of artificial intelligence, including multi-agent systems, neuro-symbolic AI, and the ethical and societal implications of AI. More recently, her work has focused on trustworthy AI, AI governance, and the design of AI systems that are not only capable, but also aligned with human values and societal objectives.

At IBM, she has played a leading role in developing the company’s AI ethics strategy and governance framework, helping establish organizational processes and technical approaches for the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies. She has also contributed extensively to international discussions on AI policy and governance through collaborations with governments, international organizations, industry, and civil society.

Dr. Rossi is the Past President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and has served in numerous international advisory roles related to AI governance, including initiatives of the OECD, the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), the World Economic Forum, the European Commission, and the Partnership on AI. Throughout her career, she has worked at the intersection of AI research, public policy, and governance, helping bridge technological innovation with societal responsibility.

She is a Fellow of AAAI and the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), and has received numerous honors for her scientific and professional contributions. She has published extensively in artificial intelligence and is a frequent invited speaker at international conferences, universities, policy forums, and industry events around the world.

She currently teaches a graduate course on AI ethics at Columbia University, covering topics such as ethical challenges in AI, AI governance throughout the lifecycle, ethical frameworks, corporate AI governance, and AI regulation.

Dr. Rossi holds a Laurea degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pisa, Italy. Before joining IBM Research in 2015, she was a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Padova for twenty years.

Her current work explores how advances in generative AI and AI agents are reshaping society, and what approaches to governance, ethics, and human-AI collaboration are needed to ensure these technologies remain trustworthy, beneficial, and aligned with human values.

She is driven by the conviction that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. She believes that our goal should not simply be to build ever more capable AI systems, but to harness AI to expand human knowledge, creativity, opportunity, and well-being.

Kelly Raskauskas is the Senior Managing Director of Sustainability, Government and Public Affairs at Webster Bank. She leads the bank’s sustainability strategy, ensuring it supports long-term shareholder value and meets evolving regulatory expectations. Kelly has structured Webster’s sustainability program to support transparency, strengthen risk management and improve operational efficiencies.

Kelly chairs Webster’s cross-functional Sustainability Council as well as the Climate Working Group. She also oversees the bank’s federal Political Action Committee, aligning corporate advocacy with governance priorities.

A graduate of Harvard Kennedy School with a Master in Public Policy and a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Kelly brings a data-driven, strategic mindset to sustainability and public affairs.

Angela is an experienced sustainability consultant, whose entire career has been focused on educating and coaching owners, architects, and contractors on sustainability best practices and implementation. Her areas of focus include LEED, Living Building Challenge, Passive House, zero energy and zero carbon, building commissioning, facilities planning, and sustainability visioning services. Angela’s technical expertise and community-focused nature make her well-suited for untangling complex challenges and working across the entire sustainability spectrum. As a Senior Sustainability Manager for Skanska, Angela helps clients across all building scales and sectors outline, apply, and push forward their sustainability goals. Integrating with teams from design through occupancy, she works to deliver low-impact, high performance projects that look holistically at the larger green picture. Angela has talked all things sustainability at conferences across the country and is a Board Member of Green Building United, Sustainability Council Member of the Urban Land Institute, and participates in other regional and international volunteer and advocacy organizations. Angela received a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and a Master of Engineering in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Lehigh University, and is a LEED Accredited Professional, Certified Passive House Consultant, Living Future Accredited, and Building Enclosure Commissioning Provider.

Professor Joshua Galperin is the Faculty Director of the Sustainable Business Law Hub. He joined the Haub Law faculty in July 2021. Before that, Professor Galperin was on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law since 2018, where he taught Torts, Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, and Environmental Law, Policy, and Practice. Professor Galperin was a student nominee for the Distinguished Public Service Professor award and a dean’s nominee for the Provost’s Diversity in the Curriculum award. He was also a two-time winner of the Most Valuable Professor award.

Prior to the University of Pittsburgh, Professor Galperin was the Director of the Environmental Protection Clinic, Lecturer in Law, and a Research Scholar at Yale Law School. He has been a fellow at Yale University’s Pauli Murray College from 2017 to the present. Professor Galperin was also a lecturer and the Environmental Law and Policy Program Director at the Yale School of the Environment (YSE). In addition to directing and teaching the Environmental Protection Clinic, Professor Galperin directed the dual law-environment degree program between YSE and Pace, Vermont, and Yale law schools. He was a lead collaborator in the Land Use Collaborative between YSE and Pace. Professor Galperin was also the associate director for the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, where he oversaw all operations of the Center including budgeting, fundraising, research, and teaching. Professor Galperin received the award for excellence in research, teaching, and service from the YSE graduating class of 2017.

Professor Galperin’s research and teaching cover environmental law, administrative law, food and agriculture law and policy, property, constitutional law, and tort law. He has published extensively on environmental law, with particular emphasis on the role of non-governmental advocates in the creation and maintenance of environmental law, takings and just compensation, invasive species policy, and private environmental governance. His research in administrative law looks at constitutional democracy and administrative legitimacy with a focus on how governance intuitions influence political power. He has also written about food and agriculture law and policy, particularly where agriculture and food law intersect with environmental policy and administrative law doctrine. His work appears in the Georgetown Law Journal, the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, University of Pittsburgh Law Review, Cambridge University Press, University of Virginia Journal of Environmental Law, Denver Law Review, Arkansas Law Review, Vermont Law Review, Fordham Urban Law Journal, George Washington Journal of Energy and Environmental Law, and elsewhere.

Before Yale, Professor Galperin worked for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), where he was a policy analyst and research attorney. In that position he established and managed SACE’s coal plant retirement campaign, which was a hybrid legal, grassroots, and analytical effort to catalyze retirement of the Southeast’s oldest, dirtiest, and least efficient coal plants. Before SACE, Professor Galperin was a legislative counsel for the Vermont General Assembly, where he primarily staffed the House and Senate committees on agriculture. In that role he was involved with a number of bills that eventually became law including Vermont’s farm-to-plate investment program, dairy price stabilization, and creation of the Vermont Grape and Wine Council. Professor Galperin studied law at Vermont Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and was a member of the Vermont Law Review’s senior editorial board. He earned a master’s degree in environmental management from the Yale School of the Environment (then the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies), and a bachelor’s degree in political science with a minor in wildlife conservation from the University of Delaware.

Michael Hamersky is the Executive Director of the Pace Energy and Climate Center (“PECC”) and teaches Natural Resources Law and Energy Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. At PECC, Michael focuses on policy solutions related to clean energy deployment, sustainable development, climate change mitigation, and renewable energy incentive structures. Importantly, Michael prioritizes PECC’s work on the impact that the clean energy transition will have on vulnerable communities. Prior to leading PECC, Michael practiced corporate reorganization law in New York City for over fifteen years.