Board of Directors

Dr. Rev. Jessica Moerman is a climate and environmental scientist, pastor, educator, and advocate. She serves as the President and CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network and is a Board Member of the National Association of Evangelicals. Jessica received her Ph.D. in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has held research positions at John Hopkins University, University of Michigan, and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where she researched how climate has changed throughout Earth’s history. Prior to joining EEN, Jessica was a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Jessica regularly speaks on issues related to climate change, pollution, children’s health, the clean energy transition, environmental stewardship, and the intersection of science and faith. She has appeared on the NBC TODAY Show, Good Morning America, Christian Broadcasting Network, Newsmax, nationally syndicated Christian and secular radio talk shows, and has been featured in Christianity Today, CNN, the Washington Post, and other national news outlets. In 2021, Jessica was named a Yale Public Voices for the Climate Crisis Fellow. 

Jessica is co-founding Pastor at her church, which she planted in 2016 with her husband Chris in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. Jessica is passionate about leading church communities towards positive solutions to safeguard our cities, neighborhoods, and the next generation from the effects of a warming world and life-threatening pollution.

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The Rev. Mitchell C. Hescox is the President Emeritus of the Evangelical Environmental Network and served as EEN's President and CEO for fifteen years.

Rev. Hescox co-authored Caring for Creation: The Evangelical Guide To Climate Change and a Healthy Environment (Bethany House) with nationally known meteorologist Paul Douglas and contributed to Sacred Acts: How Churches are working together to Protect Earth’s Climate (New Society Publishers) and Health of People, Health of Planet, Our Responsibility (Springer Publishing). He has testified before Congress, spoken at the White House, and presented at the Vatican and The Council for Foreign Relations. Rev. Hescox has appeared on CNN, NPR, PRI, MSNBC, BBC, and numerous radio programs, both Christian and secular.  

Rev. Hescox has served as a member of the National Association of Evangelicals’s Board of Directors, the EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Citizen Advisory Council, and the Board of Reference for the Center for Sustainable Climate Solutions. He also leads a small group at his local Pennsylvania church.

Prior to joining EEN, Mitch pastored a local church for eighteen years, and before the call to ordained ministry, served in the coal and utility industry as Director, Fuel Systems for Allis Mineral Systems (York, PA). He is married to Clare with four grown children and seven grandchildren.

Rev. Dr. Phil Covert retired United Methodist Pastor was born and raised in New Jersey. He graduated from James Caldwell High School, Drew University with a BA degree in Economics, Methodist Theological School of Ohio with a Master of Divinity Degree and from Drew University with a Doctor of Ministry degree. While at Drew, as an undergraduate, he attended the London School of Economics minoring in the International Monetary Fund. In 1968, he was ordained an Elder in the United Methodist Church. Additional education included 4 units of Clinical Pastoral Education.

Dr Covert served in the United States Naval Reserves as a Chaplain to the Reserve Mobile Seabees Battalion 19 for 14 years retiring with the rank of LCDR. He also was a hospital chaplain at Morristown Memorial Hospital, Morristown, NJ and at St. Francis Hospice, Colorado Springs.

Dr. Covert has served churches in Ohio, New Jersey, Iowa, Colorado, Utah, and Pennsylvania. He was trained as a New World Missioner, New Life Missioner, Key Event Herald by the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church. He has consulted, preached, and taught throughout the United States, Fiji, Kenya, England, Ireland, and Russia. While in Russia, he, twice, was the Conference speaker and teacher at the Northwest Conference of the Eurasia Methodist Church. He helped to start new churches in Novgorod and Archangels, Russia and led continuing education events for both lay and clergy. He and his wife, Sue, were missionaries to Haiti in the summers of 1970, 1971 and 1972 working at Grace Children’s Hospital. While a pastor at Grace United Methodist Church, Davenport, Iowa, he taught a course, “Holistic Health,” at the Quad-Cities Communiversity.

He chaired the Northern New Jersey Conference Board of Evangelism; served on the Northeast Jurisdiction Board of Evangelism. While serving in Iowa he led the Spencer District New Life Mission Emphasis. In Colorado he served on the Conference Board of Stewards as Director of Church Redevelopment. He chaired the Board of Trustees for the Samaritan Counseling Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado. For 12 years in the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church, he served as a member of the Conference Response Team, helping churches recover and heal from leadership infidelities and unethical practices. Currently, he is the Chairperson for the governing Board of the Evangelical Environment Network, a Christian advocacy ministry focusing on Creation and climate care.

Dr. Covert is married to Sue. They have 3 children, Tim, Andy, and Kris and 9 grandchildren and two great-grandsons. They currently live in York, Pennsylvania.

Brittany Michalski is an ecologist for A Rocha USA serving as the Director of Conservation Projects. In her role she supports A Rocha’s conservation projects in achieving results that benefit the full community of creation. 

Brittany served on the Steering Committee of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action from 2014-18. Brittany has an M.S. in Environmental Conservation (2017) and a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology (2012), both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

She lives in Sparta, Wisconsin, home of the first Rails to Trails bike system, with her husband and two rescue dogs.

Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist who began her career with a B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto. As she was finishing her degree, she took a class in climate science with Danny Harvey, who had previously been a postdoc at NCAR with Steve Schneider. There, she learned that climate change isn’t just an environmental issue – it’s a threat multiplier. It takes the most serious humanitarian issues confronting climate change today – hunger, poverty, lack of access to clean water, injustice, refugee crises and more – and it makes them worse.She later received her M.S. and Ph.D. in atmospheric science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

To date, her work has resulted in over 125 peer-reviewed papers, abstracts, and other publications and many key reports including the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Second National Climate Assessment; the U.S. National Academy of Science report, Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts over Decades to Millennia; the 2014 Third National Climate Assessment; the 2017 Climate Science Special Report; and the 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment. In addition to these reports, she has led climate impact assessments for a broad cross-section of cities and regions, from Chicago to California and the U.S. Northeast. The findings of these studies have been presented before Congress, highlighted in briefings to state and federal agencies, and used as input to future planning by communities, states, and regions across the country.

Today, she is the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy as well as a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor and the Political Science Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University, where she is also an associate in the Public Health program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She is a principal investigator for the Department of Interior’s South-Central Climate Adaptation Science Center and the National Science Foundation’s Global Infrastructure Climate Network. My research currently focuses on establishing a scientific basis for assessing the regional to local-scale impacts of climate change on human systems and the natural environment. To this end, I analyze observations, compare future scenarios, evaluate global and regional climate models, build and assess statistical downscaling models, and constantly strive to develop better ways of translating climate projections into information relevant to agriculture, ecosystems, energy, infrastructure, public health, and water resources.

Together with her husband Andrew Farley who is a pastor and a best-selling author, she wrote A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, a book that untangles the complex science and tackles many long-held misconceptions about global warming.

She frequently gives public talks on climate science, impacts, communication, and faith. Her TED talk has over 4 million views and her latest books, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World (Simon & Schuster/One Signal) and Downscaling Techniques for High-Resolution Climate Projections: From Global Change to Local Impacts (Cambridge University Press), were both released in 2021.

Philip Landrigan, MD, MSc is a pediatrician and epidemiologist. He is a Professor in the Biology Department at Boston College where he directs the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good and the Global Observatory on Planetary Health. Dr. Landrigan’s research examines health impacts of toxic environmental hazards. His studies of lead conducted at CDC in the 1970s demonstrated that low-level lead exposure reduces children’s IQ and contributed to EPA’s 1975 decision to remove lead from paint and gasoline, actions that reduced blood lead levels by 95% and increased the IQ of all American children born since 1980. His documentation of children’s exquisite sensitivity to pesticides as Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children contributed to enactment of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the only federal environmental law in the United States containing explicit provisions to protect children’s health. In the 1990s, he served as Special Assistant to the Administrator of the US EPA and helped to establish EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection.  From 1985 to 2018, Dr. Landrigan was a member of the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics, and Dean for Global Health. He co-chaired the Lancet Commission on Pollution & Health, which reported in 2018 and confirmed in 2022 that pollution causes 9 million deaths annually and that pollution prevention is feasible, cost-effective and saves lives. Since 2019, he has led the Monaco Commission on Human Health and Ocean Pollution. Dr. Landrigan served for 41 years in the US Public Health Service and the Medical Corps of the United States Navy and retired from the Navy at the rank of Captain. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

John Lyon is a global development visionary and a licensed law practitioner with 18 years of experience working with World Hope International and 12 years of experience in international law. John was elected President of World Hope by the Board of Directors in September 2013. Prior to this, John served as General Counsel for Joule Africa, an innovative London-based renewable energy company focused on developing hydroelectric and solar energy in Africa. John also served as a World Hope board member and volunteer. John’s foremost technical experience is with water, sanitation, and construction projects. He has developed water and sanitation plans for several World Hope locations, including Sierra Leone. Prior to his time at World Hope, John practiced law at Wilmer Hale, an international law firm, where he helped World Hope develop its microfinance and social enterprise program. John served in the United States Peace Corps in Jamaica from 1998 to 2000, where he raised more than $200,000 to build a primary school and helped popularize a typhoid-proof latrine model. John holds a bachelor’s degree from Houghton College and a JD from the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law.

George H. Soltero is an attorney in Tucson, Arizona.  Passionate about the outdoors, George is an Assistant ScoutMaster, loves hiking and camping, and at a much lighter weight was an avid hunter. George serves on the Board of the National Association of Evangelicals and has served on the Board of Trustees of his Alma Mater, Bethel University in St. Paul, Mn. George is married to Crystal, a Professor in the Education College at the University of Arizona, they have two adult children.  The Soltero's passion is the mentoring and development of young, future leaders. In his down time George anchors the Bass section with the Arizona Repertory Singers.

Rev. Nathaniel Goodson is the chairman of the Bywood Community Association and the Pastor of the Prayer Chapel Church in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a position he has held for over 30 years.

The Bywood Community Association (BCA) is a non-profit 5013c organization created to provide a cooperative platform of outreach designed to work collaboratively with residents, government, and businesses connected by situations or issues that affect the well-being of the residents of the Bywood section of Upper Darby, PA.

Pastor Nate has a master’s in social work (MSW) from the University of Pennsylvania. He has been married to his wife, Audrey, for 51 years. They have one daughter, Dea, a son-in-law, Kwan, and a granddaughter, Layla, who is the apple of his eye.

Jeff Kopaska is a fisheries and aquatic scientist living and working in central Iowa.  He is passionate about water, and all the rest of God's Creation. 

Dr. Ron Vos is emeritus professor of Agriculture and Environmental Science at Dordt University and serves as a professor at Au Sable Institute.  He holds a BA in Biology, an MA in Environmental Science and a Ph.D. in Agronomy.  His research interests involves projects which promote sustainable agriculture, specifically nitrogen issues.  Ron and his wife Nancy live on and operate a farm where they raise sheep, alfalfa, corn, and soybeans.  On their farm they have restored and now steward a large prairie.

Earl White is a retired Air Force intelligence officer, engineer, program manager, and
atmospheric scientist. Most of his career involved building and using reconnaissance satellites. He commanded the nation’s only space intelligence squadron and served as the senior intelligence advisor for satellite protection to the department of defense and the intelligence community. Earl has a BS in Agriculture from the University of Delaware, an MS is Electrical Engineering and an MS in Atmospheric Science both from the University of Michigan, an MS in Military Operational Science from the Air Command and Staff College, and is working on an MA in biblical studies at the Reformed Theological Seminary.

Earl first encountered Christ at an Assembly of God church at the age of 17. His path to faith led him from charismatic churches to interdenominational churches, and finally to the reformed faith. His career observing the earth from space built a deeply emotional appreciation of the uniqueness of our amazing planet, and reformed theology provided him with the intellectual foundation for creation care. Earl’s focus is on “evangelizing” evangelicals, explaining why managing the earth’s environment is an important task of the church. 

Earl has been married for 37 years to Chong-Pil White, a native of Songtan-Si, South Korea. They have three daughters, two grandchildren, and one cat. Earl and Chong Pil live in Leesburg, Virginia with the cat.