Dr. Karin Hilgersom serves as the president of Truckee Meadows Community College, an HSI serving the Reno-Sparks region. Dr. Hilgersom’s doctorate in Educational Policy and Management and her Master’s in Rhetoric and Communication were earned at the University of Oregon in 1994 and 1986, respectively. 

The community college mission has been Dr. Hilgersom’s lifelong passion. She has taught thousands of students in numerous professional technical, health careers, and transfer majors. Her management experience has included the supervision of executive leadership teams, academic programs, tutoring centers, community and extended learning, small business development centers, libraries, distance learning, capital projects, and campus IT. She has worked steadily to transform the lives of students at urban and rural community colleges and believes that workforce education is vital to the health of communities and regions. She spent most of her professional life in Washington State and served on leadership committees convened by the SBCTC. Dr. Hilgersom was an active AHE member, campus leader, and state leader during these years.

Dr. Hilgersom has engaged with external and internal TMCC stakeholders and charted new directions for TMCC.  These directions include a college-wide commitment to campus sustainability; expanding access to higher education; navigating approvals and resource needs for new programs, including Bachelor’s degrees in Nursing, Dental Hygiene, and Architecture; growing and sustaining excellent workforce and transfer prep programs; expanding dual credit options for high school students; setting and meeting fundraising goals with the Foundation team, and improving student engagement offerings that create vibrant campus experiences. She is also proud of major renovations to the TMCC library, now known as the Learning Commons (includes centralized tutoring), and the completion of a Health Fitness Center and Soccer field (a persistent request by Student Government and funded with student fees).  

Dr. Hilgersom is active in the Reno/Sparks community. She serves ex-officio on the Board of Directors of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDAWN) and PBS Reno. She also serves as Board Chair for the nonprofit organization iCelerate, whose mission is to serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and the families who support them. She has been an active Rotarian for twelve years.

She previously served as the president of SUNY Sullivan in Loch Sheldrake, NY.  During her time at SUNY Sullivan, her work included the Sullivan Solar Garden, a two-megawatt solar array that brought SUNY Sullivan close to carbon neutrality. 

Maurie McInnis is the sixth president of Stony Brook University, an internationally recognized research flagship institution ranked as the number one public university in New York. She also oversees Stony Brook Medicine, Long Island’s premier academic medical center, and serves on the management team of nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility. President McInnis is the inaugural board chair of the New York Climate Exchange that was selected in April 2023 to build an international climate solutions center on Governors Island. This historic partnership brings together universities, researchers, non-profits, community leaders, entrepreneurs and businesses to develop equitable climate solutions for New York City that can be scaled and applied globally.

Julie Beth Zimmerman serves as the inaugural Vice Provost for Planetary Solutions at Yale University. Julie holds joint appointments as a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the School of the Environment.  Her research focuses on innovations in sustainable technologies and the policies necessary to advance them.  She serves as the deputy director for the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale and holds leadership positions in both national and international research consortia. In addition, Julie teaches in the Yale School of Management’s Executive Education program on sustainability and leadership. Throughout her career, Julie has consulted for a wide range of organizations and institutions, including Fortune 500 companies and state and international organizations, providing guidance on sustainability, innovation, green chemistry, and green engineering. Beyond her roles at Yale, Julie is the editor-in-chief of Environmental Science & Technology, the most highly cited journal in the fields of environmental science and engineering. Prior to joining Yale, Dr. Zimmerman was an Engineer and program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development.  Dr. Zimmerman earned her B.S. from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan jointly from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the School of Environment and Sustainability.