Meet the MHET Governing Board
Susan is President of the Board of Mid-Hudson Energy Transition (MHET), a member of the Environmental Commission of the Town of Rosendale, and a co-founder and President of the Board of Citizens for Local Power (CLP). CLP made its reputation helping communities fight fossil fuel expansion, understand climate and energy issues, train young people for green jobs, defend against utility price hikes, and advance New York’s climate policy. CLP helped bring CCA to New York in 2016 and has continued to work with local elected officials and activists to create New York’s first advanced CCA, or “CCA 3.0,” as a platform for local control of energy supply, clean generation, energy justice, and community wealth-building.
Simon Strauss is a Partner at E/W Capital, a boutique Financial Advisory firm with particular expertise in financing infrastructure, including energy, especially renewables/alternatives (particularly solar). E/W Capital has substantial experience in project finance and complicated financial structures.
He is also part-time CFO at Hellenic LLC, an infrastructure company building utility-scale water desalination, energy and brine re-use plants.
Simon is a member of the Board of a wastewater technology company and is President of a not-for-profit US Foundation benefiting his High School; he is Co-Chair of the Town of Olive’s Conservation Advisory Council, sits on the Ulster County Environmental Management Council, and is Treasurer and a Board member of the Mid-Hudson Energy Transition.
Dana Hall is an attorney admitted to the bar in New York and New Jersey, with ten years’ experience in the clean energy sector. She first launched her consulting and legal services practice in 2010 and is thrilled to be providing services to clients once again in 2017.
From 2013 to 2017 Dana worked as Deputy Director of the Low Impact Hydropower Institute (LIHI), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to reducing the impacts of hydropower generation through the certification of low impact hydropower. She also served as Secretary of the Governing Board of LIHI from 2009 to 2015.
Dana has consulted on a broad range of energy policy projects and taught energy policy classes at The Cooper Union School of Continuing Education, Green Building Design Program. She previously worked as Energy Policy Coordinator at the Pace Energy and Climate Center in White Plains, NY, where she managed and contributed to a range of projects related to renewable energy, distribution resource planning, standby rates, demand response, and energy efficiency, particularly affecting the solar, combined heat and power, hydroelectric generation and building industries.
Dana has a J.D. from the Elizabeth Taub School of Law at Pace University (2008), a Master of Arts in Environmental Conservation Education from New York University (2000), and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from The Ohio State University (1996).
Marcy is a NYS licensed real estate salesperson and has been recognized as the Hudson Valley’s Green Realtor for her dedication to sustainable real estate and helping homeowners make more energy efficient choices. In addition to being a NAR designated Green Realtor and Earth Advantage broker, Marcy is also a certified BPI Building Analyst and Envelope Professional. She is owner and operator of Green Building Specialists, a Hudson Valley-based home energy assessment company offering diagnostic services and energy efficiency consultations to help homeowners decarbonize and electrify.
Marcy has served as a speaker on sustainable real estate and the emerging Green Jobs industry in addition to participating as an energy efficiency mentor with the Communities for Local Empower Kingston Green Jobs program. As a volunteer community liaison with the Heat Smart Orange and Heat Smart Sullivan-Ulster campaigns, Marcy helped promote the NYS Clean Heat program throughout the Hudson Valley.
Marcy is a current member of the Building Performance Association, Green Home Institute, Electric Vehicle Association and is a trained Climate Reality Leader with the Climate Reality Project. She is the Organizer of Repair Café Pine Bush and serves as a volunteer Board member for the Pine Bush Area Chamber of Commerce. Marcy’s real estate brand, Hudson Valley Green Homes at Keller Williams Real Estate, is a proud 2022 sponsor of Sustainable Hudson Valley.
Joel is a Rhinebeck-based technology-agnostic entrepreneur with successful startups ranging from retail financial marketing platforms to FDA cancer treatment systems to Wall Street analytic machine learning software. Raised on a Midwestern farm, he now brings that ‘can-do’ attitude to renewable energy as a hydropower developer working with Bard College and NYSERDA to develop financially-viable deployments of microhydro throughout New York State.
His development company, Current Hydro, is also in the process of building larger run-of-river hydro at existing Army Corps dams on the Illinois and Ohio Rivers. All hydro projects are based on the Uncommon Dialog principles which entail the Three Rs:
Removal – take down dams with no societal benefit
Rehabilitate working dams to address safety problems
Retrofit powered dams and add generation at non-powered dams to increase renewable energy production
Jasmine Graham is the Energy Justice Policy Manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, responsible for strengthening and advancing the organization’s energy policies. She joined from Sustainable Westchester, where she served as the Westchester Power Program Manager and developed initiatives to create and promote local renewable generation and community-scale efficiency. Prior to that, she was a Legislative Researcher at the University of Vermont’s VT Legislative Research Service, synthesizing economic and social policy issues and publishing legislative research reports.
Jasmine is a Founding Member of the Trust for Public Land’s Next Gen Steering Committee. She also served as the Founding Political Chair of the Women of Color Coalition at the University of Vermont, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies, with a concentration in Environmental Policy and Development.
Peggy specializes in business development and marketing and is the owner of Greenologists, a firm with a mission to save the planet one boiler, one window, and one light bulb at a time!
Peggy began her career as a real estate manager in the early ‘80s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She was part of a real estate development team that saw the renaissance of East Village. She rose from a property manager to Controller and partner of the firm which oversaw the management of 1,500 apartment units in Lower Manhattan and Harlem.
In 1998, she received her law degree from Brooklyn Law School and joined the real estate law firm of Michael H. Kane and Associates where she was responsible for the management of the firm’s real estate investments in Manhattan, Philadelphia, and Syracuse.
In 2002, Peggy relocated to Syracuse to spend more time developing the firm’s Central NY real estate portfolio. She worked closely with the NYSERDA Multifamily programs and P.E.A.C.E., Inc., the weatherization agency for Onondaga County. She was soon smitten by the good work of her colleagues at P.E.A.C.E., Inc. and was recruited in 2005 to become the manager for their multifamily weatherization division. She was in charge of $17 million of energy improvements during ARRA program.
Samrat is a passionate advocate for the environment and former chair and coordinator of the New Paltz (NY) Climate Action Coalition. He is a trained Climate Reality Leader and chairs the Hudson Valley chapter of the Climate Reality Project. Samrat is an Energy Navigator coach and tables frequently throughout the Hudson Valley providing education about making smarter energy choices and the benefits of electric vehicles.
Samrat teaches physics, mathematics and software programming at Wallkill High School. He is especially concerned with the impact of digital technologies on human well-being and flourishing. After receiving a degree in mechanical engineering from the Nat’l Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur (India), Samrat worked as a software engineer with multinational corporations. He earned a B.S. in Math and Secondary Education Physics from SUNY New Paltz with outstanding graduate awards in each.
Samrat was the sole winner of the 2017 STEM Teacher Scholarship from the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and won a 2017 Mathematics Graduate Course Work Scholarship from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. He strives to bring the benefits of multiple inquiry-based learning (IBL) to mathematics and science education and is currently co-authoring a university level textbook for secondary school teachers.