Workshop 1 Speakers

As the founder and president of Biohabitats, Keith Bowers leads a multidisciplinary mission driven organization focused on conservation planning, ecological restoration, and regenerative design. Keith has applied his expertise to more than 1,000 projects throughout North America. Keith’s work spans the scales from site-specific nature-based design projects that conserve biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and address environmental injustices, to regional landscape level projects that conserve habitat, sequester carbon and restore ecosystem processes. Keith served on the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management and currently serves on the board for the University of Pennsylvania’s Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology. Keith also served on the boards of the Society for Ecological Restoration and the Wildlands Network.

Dr. Regina E Ciphrah PhD, MT is Chair of the Advisory Board for the SC Coalition for Mathematics and Science as well as owner and principal of Verbalizing Visions LLC. As a STEM education practitioner, researcher and evaluator with over twenty years of experience, her efforts support research, learning and practice within culturally-sustaining operations and STEM education through fidelity of implementation and continuous improvement frameworks.

She is currently co-PI and Director of Education for the Culturally Sustaining STEM Institute, a feasibility study designed to support professional learning of in-service and preservice teachers in community-based settings. Funded by NSF’s AISL and ITEST programs, the primary goals are collaborating with community members on the cultural components of STEM practices, enhancing pre-adolescent learners’ knowledge of historical and current STEM practices in Gullah Geechee culture, and inviting dialogue that critique and challenge perceptions of who participates in STEM agency.

Liz is the Marine Conservation Director for the South Carolina chapter of The Nature Conservancy. She is expanding the Conservancy’s engagement in important coastal and offshore issues facing South Carolina, including using nature-based solutions to mitigate flood risk, supporting sustainable fisheries, and making informed ocean-use decisions. She received her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of South Carolina, studying climate change impacts on marine mussels around the world. Liz spent a year in Washington D.C. as a Knauss Marine Policy Fellow, working on ocean and coastal issues for the Third National Climate Assessment which was released in 2014.

Dionne Hoskins-Brown is a NOAA Research Fisheries Biologist on loan from the National Marine Fisheries Service to Savannah State University. Her long-term research on fish habitat and passion for African-American history on the coast led her to document the stories of Gullah Geechee fishing families in Georgia. For her work as an educator, she was selected as a recipient of the Emmeline Moore Prize, an honor bestowed by the American Fisheries Society for distinguished efforts to increase diversity in fisheries. Hoskins-Brown also serves as the Chairperson of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a National Heritage Area. Hoskins-Brown received a B.S. in marine biology from Savannah State University and a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina.

Todd Martin is a Park Planner/ Project Manager for the City of Columbia, SC. He is a registered landscape architect in both South Carolina and North Carolina with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Georgia. Professionally, Todd has over 16 years of experience in the field of landscape architecture with an additional 3 years in the turf-grass industry. Todd began his career maintaining athletic fields with the University of Georgia and the Boston Red Sox, before taking a path to become a landscape architect. As a landscape architect, Todd worked in the private sector of Charlotte, NC for 8 years, abroad in Oslo, Norway for 8 months and has worked with City of Columbia Parks & Recreation for the past 8 years. Todd received SITES AP certification in 2017, becoming the first landscape architect in SC to earn the credentials, and aspires to create sustainable and innovative parks for the City of Columbia.

Dale Morris is Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Charleston, SC. Morris’ primary role is the integration of comprehensive water management, planning and adaptation processes into City policy, land-use, and water projects and the addition of broader resilience approaches to City operations. Morris is the City’s PM for a USACE Coastal Storm Risk Management Project.

Morris previously served as Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Water Institute of the Gulf, an applied, technical research not-for-profit based in Louisiana. From 1994-2018, Morris served as Senior Economist at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington, DC, and, beginning in 2005, Director of the Dutch Government’s water management and adaptation work across the US. Morris started his career in the U.S. Air Force and was Legislative Director to two Members of Congress. Morris is co-founder of the Dutch Dialogues, a workshop process that integrates stormwater, groundwater, tidal and surge risks with planning and engineering in targeted cities. Morris hold a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.A. from the University of Virginia.

Joshua is a licensed professional engineer with 18 years of experience in analyses, planning, design, and implementation of natural resources and living infrastructure engineering projects across the Southeast. Joshua founded Robinson Design Engineers in 2008 in an effort to provide ecologically-based engineering analyses and design for low impact development projects, and to integrate ecosystem restoration into urban and rural communities.

Joshua also serves as adjunct faculty at the College of Charleston’s environmental geosciences department, where he teaches on watershed hydrology and advises graduate students on research projects involving tidal hydrology, rainfall hydrology, water quality, and ecosystem restoration. Joshua was recently an instructor in NOAA’s ”Nature-Based Infrastructure for Coastal Hazards” training workshop, and Clemson’s Coastal Low Impact Development workshop series.

Dr. Brandan Scully is a Research Civil Engineer with the Coastal & Hydraulics Lab of the Army Engineer Research & Development Center. He has worked in navigation and waterway related areas for over 15 years, with experience gained in shipboard operations and aids to navigation management in the US Coast Guard and as the Chief of Navigation at the USACE Charleston District. He earned a BS in mechanical engineering from the US Coast Guard Academy in 2003, a master's degree in coastal engineering from North Carolina State University in 2012, and a PhD from Mississippi State University in 2016. Dr. Scully's research is focused on user-centric waterways management.

Dr. Scully's current work with The Nature Conservancy is aimed at improving the Army Corps of Engineer's use of nature based solutions to address emergent problems within daily operations of existing projects.

A native of the South Carolina barrier islands, Erin Stevens acquired a Bachelors Degree in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University and a first-hand understanding of the power of varying environmental factors in shaping the human experience. To further explore this phenomenon, she moved to Manhattan to pursue urban studies at Columbia University. After a series of internships she completed her Masters in Landscape Architecture at the University of Georgia.

In her professional career, Erin has worked on a variety of planning and design projects including a federally-funded transit study for the Charleston region, the redevelopment of an environmentally sensitive low-impact residential neighborhood within a highly contaminated watershed, and development guidelines and public space design for multiple mixed-use and infill developments in the Charleston region. In 2016, Erin founded Surculus, a Charleston-based landscape architecture and urban design firm focused on increasing resilience and effectively integrating ecologically sensitive systems into urbanized and other human-affected contexts. In addition to her practice, she currently teaches a design studio within Clemson University’s Master of Resilient Urban Design Program.