Speakers

Craig Schwarze

Craig Schwarze is an environmental regulatory compliance expert with more than 30 years of hands-on experience assisting clients to achieve and maintain compliance nationwide. He has provided environmental compliance support to more than 400 private companies and Federal agencies, ranging from steel mills to the US Army, and has led environmental compliance assistance audits for more than 350 facilities in 42 states, and has been approved by multiple EPA regions, the Department of Justice, and several state environmental departments as a third-party compliance evaluator. Mr. Schwarze is the President of Aarcher Institute and has served as an instructor since 2005, helping to deliver training to more than 9,000 students. He has been awarded a Certified Instructional Trainer for Environmental, Health, and Safety (CIT) certification based on this experience and knowledge of adult education methods.

Gene Guilford

Executive Director, IHMM

Gene Guilford is the Executive Director of the Institute of Hazardous Materials Management (IHMM), responsible for guiding the growth, promotion, and recognition of its certifying credentials. He is a Certified Association Executive (CAE), with more than 25 years of successful experience on Capitol Hill, Executive branch agencies, and in state legislatures leading government relations programs. He has a comprehensive understanding of how credentials are valued by private industry and government sectors, from his experience as executive in the business, government, and political environments, particularly in navigating challenges in highly regulated and scrutinized industries with intense media attention. Gene is an expert in national and international energy markets across biofuels, renewables, solar, wind, electricity, nuclear, oil, natural gas. Serves as the organization’s primary spokesperson to the local, state, regional, national, and industry media.

Jeffrey Kissell

Senior Managing Consultant, Ramboll

Jeff Kissell is an environmental engineer with more than 25 years of industrial water and wastewater process consulting and operations experience. Mr. Kissell advises manufacturing and other industrial clients in understanding their often complex wastewater issues and managing wastewater projects. He assists clients with improving operations of existing facilities by providing training and data management tools, and with implementing new treatment systems or upgrades to existing treatment systems by helping the clients define and manage their projects, including developing the design basis, evaluating technology options, preparing bid documents and specifications for required equipment and services, and interpreting submittals, as wastewater treatment is usually very different than the client’s core business. Mr. Kissell is a technology expert and an exceptional problem solver who can objectively evaluate each client’s facilities to identify sources of perceived issues and/or opportunities to improve performance and operability while reducing costs. Mr. Kissell has also served as a course instructor for Educational Training Courses on NPDES permitting. He has worked for both domestic and international clients representing many types of industries, including food and beverage; home and beauty care; petroleum refining; chemical manufacturing; metals finishing; electronics manufacturing; iron and steel; aluminum; power generation; oil and gas; petroleum and coal coke production; chloralkali; rum distilling; munitions manufacturing; and landfill leachate. Mr. Kissell is a Senior Managing Consultant with Ramboll, a global architecture, engineering, and consultancy company founded in Denmark in 1945.

Jeremy Clark

Zweig Group

Jeremy Clarke is a nationally recognized Architecture / Engineering / Consulting (AEC) recruiting and retention strategist bringing deep insight and experience into helping AEC firms and HR teams to integrate forward-thinking recruiting and retention programs. Notably, Jeremy’s 25+ years of critical thought-leadership in the areas of recruiting strategic planning, metrics design, selection process flow, compensation strategies, retention program development, employee referral programs, interview methodologies, ATS integrations, and Recruiter Training programs have helped to bring about game-changing talent outcomes for AEC clients across the country. Jeremy is a Certified Targeted Selection Administrator (CTSA), and Competitive Intelligence Professional (CIP). He is also a decorated Air Force combat veteran and holds a B.A. in Business from American Military University.

Jeremy is the COO | Managing Director of Talent with Zweig Group, a leading management consulting firm providing strategic advisory services to help AEC firms improve their operations, performance, and market position. He will share the latest data from Zweig Group’s “Best Firms To Work For” employee survey and its latest Total Compensation and Salary reports to gain understanding of what environmental professionals are seeking in their next position, compensation trends and benchmarks, and strategies firms are using to recruit and retain the best talent.

Joel Eagle

Partner, Thompson Hine

Joel Eagle is a partner in Thompson Hine’s Environmental practice in Cleveland. As an environmental attorney with more than 18 years experience with EPA and in private practice, Mr. Eagle represents public and private entities in the industrial, commercial, and manufacturing sectors. He focuses his practice on all aspects of environmental law including regulatory development, site remediation, and risk management counseling for PFAS and other emerging contaminants.

John Kumm

PE, BCEE, CC-P, CEM, LEED-AP

John is an environmental regulatory compliance specialist with over 40 years of experience in industry and consulting.  He is a registered Professional Environmental Engineer (PE), Board Certified in Air Pollution Control (BCEE), a Certified Climate Change Professional (CC-P), a Certified Energy Manager (CEM), and a LEED Accredited Professional (LEED-AP).  John holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Engineering Management from the University of Maryland, and an M.E. and Post-Master’s Advanced Certificate in Environmental Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University.  He is currently a Senior Engineer/Senior Project Manager and Technical Chief of Environmental Health, Safety and Sustainability at EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, Inc., PBC in Hunt Valley, Maryland. He specializes in environmental regulatory compliance management, and sustainability.

Mark Howard

EPA SPCC National Program Manager

Mark Howard is an Environmental Scientist with the Headquarters Office of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), Regulation Implementation Division (RID) in Washington D.C. He is the Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) National Technical Subject Matter Expert (SME). He also serves as the SPCC Team Leader, national project manager for the Inspector’s Training Program, the Oil Program representative/instructor for the OSC academy, and the lead for the Oil Program Technical Workgroup. He also was the lead technical member of the SPCC rulemaking workgroup and is one of the authors of the SPCC rule (40 CFR part 112).

Mr. Howard served as the OEM lead for reviewing the Keystone Pipeline Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Agency Hydraulic Fracturing Study. Mr. Howard was consulted by the National Academy of Sciences on their diluted bitumen paper. Mr. Howard is an active voting member of the STI SP001 committee. Mark also is the EPA executive Committee representative for the International Oil Spill Conference. EPA has awarded Mr. Howard with a 2018 National Notable Achievement Award for inspector training, a silver medal and several bronze medals.

Prior to his Federal service he worked ten years as a State oil/Haz-Mat responder and AST inspector with the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality. Mr. Howard holds a Master of Science Degree in Biology (Specializing in Environmental Science and Policy) from George Mason University. He holds Virginia Emergency Services certifications as a Hazardous Materials Specialist and Incident Manager. He is most proud of his relationship with his wife Christine and daughter Hope.

Ray Coss

Esq.

Ray Coss is a Consulting Counsel with Latitude Legal, a global flexible legal staffing company.  He is a seasoned attorney with over 35 years of experience, most of which was as an EHS in-house counsel at four Fortune 500 companies.

After college, Ray served in the U.S. Marine Corps, first as a Bombardier/Navigator in the A-6 Intruder, an all-weather attack jet aircraft.  After attending law school, he was a criminal prosecutor and civil law advisor.  Following active duty in the Marines, Ray attended George Washington University and received a Master of Law (LLM) degree in Environmental Law.  During his time at GW, Ray was a graduate law intern at U.S. EPA (Toxics Litigation Division) and U.S. DOJ (Environment and Natural Resources Division). 

Ray has experience with all matters EHS, mostly in manufacturing and big box home improvement retail.  He enjoys getting out on the manufacturing floor to ‘go and see’ and talk with the operators who are actually over the processes.  In 2008, Ray retired from the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve as a Colonel.  Ray retired from Nissan North America, Inc. in 2018. 

Sean Grady

CHMM

Sean Grady is a Director of the Alliance of Hazardous Materials Professionals (AHMP) and the Digital Market Leader for EHS and ESG with GHD, a multinational technical professional services firm providing advisory, architecture and design, buildings, digital, energy and resources, environmental, geosciences, project management, transportation and water services. He is an environmental professional with more than 25 years of experience in environmental regulation, consulting, business development, and digital innovation. Sean is passionate about delivering thought leadership through podcasting, video blogs, and support of AHMP.