ELPC’s Board

Cameron S. Avery is of counsel with the K&L Gates law firm, which combined with Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, where he was co-chairman. His practice focuses on representing and advising corporations, investment companies and their board members on securities and corporate matters. He has served as principal legal counsel to hundreds of investment companies and a major long distance telephone company, and General Counsel of PathoGenesis Corporation. He is a co-founder of Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, former Chairman of Harris Bank Winnetka and a life trustee of Ravinia Festival, Chicago Music and Dance (Harris) Theater and North Shore Country Day School.

Ellen C. Craig is an attorney and telecommunications and utility consultant and a Senior Advisor to The Brattle Group, an economic consulting firm. Previously, she was Vice President for Regulatory Affairs at a national telecommunications company. Ms. Craig served as the Chairman and Commissioner of the Illinois Commerce Commission and Deputy Chief of Staff to Illinois Governor James R. Thompson. Ms. Craig is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Metropolitan Planning Council.

Richard Day is President of Richard Day Research, a full-service opinion, market and public policy research firm based in Evanston, Illinois. Mr. Day conducts a wide range of customer research for financial service and pharmaceutical companies, as well as survey research and strategic consulting for clients seeking to strengthen their position on public policy issues. He has provided voting research and election night commentary for Channel 7 ABC-TV in Chicago for 20 years. Mr. Day is the past Chair of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations and serves as a Board member of the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Harry W. Drucker is Chair of ELPC’s Board of Directors. He is the President and Founder of Revere Corp., a real estate advisory, investment and property management company. Mr. Drucker specializes in the development and management of multi-unit residential housing in downtown Chicago. Since 1994, he has served as a Trustee on the Illinois Board of The Nature Conservancy. In 1996, Mr. Drucker founded the Friends of the Depot, dedicated to the economic redevelopment and environmental preservation of the former Savanna Army Depot in Illinois. Mr. Drucker has served as Chair and a Commissioner of the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission.

Robert L. Graham is the Co-Chair of the Board’s Nominating Committee and is the founder and Chair of Jenner & Block’s Environmental, Energy and Natural Resources Law Practice. Mr. Graham is an experienced environmental attorney who practices before federal and state courts and regulatory agencies across the country. He also teaches environmental law at Northwestern University School of Law. Mr. Graham served as the Chair of the Environmental Law & Policy Center’s Board from 1998 to 2003, is a past President of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, and is a delegate to the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates.

Howard A. Learner is an experienced attorney who serves as ELPC’s President and Executive Director, and he is responsible for ELPC’s overall strategic leadership, policy direction and financial platform. Mr. Learner previously served as the General Counsel for Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, specializing in environmental, energy, economic development and civil rights litigation and policy development. He was the founding Chair of the Illinois Citizens Utility Board and the founding Chair of the eco-business Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. He served as a trustee and Chair of the Grantmaking Committee of the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, and served on the Executive Committee and Board of the Environmental Law Institute. Mr. Learner is an Adjunct Professor at the Northwestern University Law School and the University of Michigan Law School, teaching advanced seminars in environmental and energy law and climate change solutions policy.

Daniel Levin is the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors. He is the Chairman of The Habitat Company, a real estate developer in Chicago and other areas of the country since 1957. He has been active in development and management activities involving more than 15,000 residential units, and has been principally responsible for the financing, structuring, and equity syndication of all developments. In 1987, Mr. Levin and The Habitat Company were appointed Receiver of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Scattered Site housing development program. Mr. Levin is also the Managing General Partner of the East Bank Club in Chicago, which is considered the finest physical fitness and social facility in the country. Mr. Levin is a member of the Visiting Committee of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, a Trustee of WTTW, the Chicago public television station, and a member of the IIT College of Architecture Board of Overseers.

Lois Lipton is an experienced litigation attorney and the most recent past Chair of the Board of the Chicago Foundation for Women. She was previously an attorney for AT&T after beginning her career as a staff attorney for the ACLU in Chicago working on high-profile civil liberties case. Ms. Lipton became the first director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Rights Project, working on abortion rights litigation, and early landmark cases involving in vitro fertilization and a woman’s right to receive medical fertility assistance after age 35. She serves on the Executive Committees of the Boards of Directors of the ACLU of Illinois and the Chicago Foundation for Women, and has served on many professional boards and public committees.

Nancy Loeb is the Treasurer and Secretary of the Board of Directors. Ms. Loeb is an experienced attorney who directs the Northwestern University Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic. She recently served as the General Counsel & Corporate Secretary for Takeda Pharmaceuticals, N.A. and was previously the Vice President and General Counsel for Honeywell International’s Automation and Control Solutions division. Before then, she worked as a deputy general counsel at Allied Signal Co. and as counsel at General Electric, where she specialized in antitrust matters. Following law school, she served as a law clerk for Judge Dolores K. Sloviter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Philadelphia) and practiced law as an associate at the Arnold & Porter law firm.

William F. McCalpin is the Independent Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Janus Funds, a family of approximately 70 mutual funds with collectively more than $65 billion in assets, and the Independent Chairman of the family of four mutual funds offered by The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF) Investment Program, with assets totaling $2.3 billion. Mr. McCalpin helped to found the TIFF funds, which are open exclusively to foundations and other nonprofit organizations, in the early 1990s and served as a director of them from 1994 to 1998 before rejoining the Board in 2008. Mr. McCalpin served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. For much of the 1990s, he was a member of the investments staff of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and directed the Foundation’s investments related to program initiative.

William McNary is the President of US Action, the national umbrella group for 28 state grassroots affiliated organizations advocating health care, education, environmental and consumer policy reforms, and he serves as the Co-Executive Director of Citizen Action/Illinois, the state’s largest consumer organization. He has led Leadership Training forums for the AARP, Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and the NAACP. Mr. McNary is a founding board member of the Fannie Lou Hamer Project and also serves as a Board member for Public Campaign, the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and Women’s Voices Women Vote.

Knute Nadelhoffer is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan and is Director of the University of Michigan Biological Station in Pellston where he coordinates programs of research, training and outreach in environmental sciences. He has published more than 100 journal articles and book chapters on ecosystem ecology, global climate change, and terrestrial biogeochemistry. He served as Chair of ELPC’s Science Advisory Council and is a leader bringing together Midwest scientists to advocate strong policy actions for climate change solutions. Professor Nadelhoffer was previously a Senior Scientist at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. He also served as a Program Director for the National Science Foundation’s Ecosystem Studies Program and was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) in Oslo, Norway.

Bob J. Nash is Co-Chair of the Board’s Nominating Committee. Mr. Nash is Senior Advisor at James Lee Witt Associates, a part of Global Options Group, Inc. He previously served as the Vice Chairman of ShoreBank Corporation, the country’s first and largest community development bank. Mr. Nash also previously served President Bill Clinton as Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Personnel and, before then, as the Under Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for Small Community and Rural Development. He served as the President of the Arkansas State Development Finance Authority and as the Senior Economic Development Assistant to the Governor. Mr. Nash is the Board Chair for the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, and on the Boards of Mercy Housing (Denver) and the South Side YMCA (Chicago).

Smita Shah is the Founder and President of SPAAN Technology, a professional engineering firm, based in Chicago, which provides construction management, project management and facility/technology services for major corporations and public agencies. She previously worked for the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States before receiving her Masters of Science degree in civil and environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ms. Shah was a delegate at the 1996 and 2004 Democratic National Conventions and was on the Rules Committee in 2000 and 2004. She is the chair of the Chicago-Delhi Sister City Committee and serves on the Boards of Directors of the Illinois Arts Council, Christopher House and Loyola University of Chicago.

David Wilhelm is the Founder and President of Woodland Venture Management, a company that raises and invests private equity in parts of the country that are underserved by the nation’s financial industry. Woodland has become one of the nation’s leading sources of capital in the Midwest and central Appalachia. In that capacity, Wilhelm founded Adena Ventures, a venture capital fund targeting central Appalachia, which includes the southeastern Ohio area in which he was raised. Wilhelm is a partner and member of the fund’s investment committee. Wilhelm also founded a second fund, Hopewell Ventures, which brings investment dollars to entrepreneurs in the nation’s heartland, a seven-state region stretching from Ohio to Nebraska. Wilhelm is best known for his political work, which has included managing campaigns for President Bill Clinton, Senator Paul Simon, Senator Joe Biden, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. In 1993, he became the youngest-ever Chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Brady C. Williamson is Chair of the Board’s Litigation Committee and is a partner with the LaFollette, Godfrey & Kahn law firm. His legal practice in Madison and Milwaukee involves several disciplines, including the Financial and Business­ Restructuring and Litigation Practice Groups. He is also a member of the firm’s Government Relations Practice Group, which focuses on elections and campaign finance law, and he heads the firm’s Media Law Group, which represents newspapers, magazines, ISPs and radio and television stations. Mr. Williamson is also a Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, teaching courses on federal and state constitutional law, campaign finance and election law.