Eco Education Course Authors

Kevin R. Hopkins is a veteran energy and environmental policy analyst with extensive experience in training and professional services. His focus throughout his career has been on finding ways to make environmental protection and economic well-being compatible rather than competing goals. A trained economist, he was the primary energy and environmental policy staff advisor for the successful 1980 Reagan for President campaign, and subsequently served in The White House as Special Assistant to the President for Policy Development, staff director for the President’s Cabinet Council on Economic Affairs, and Director of the White House Office of Policy Information. In these roles, among other duties, he was responsible for helping to devise and communicate the nation’s economic, energy, and environmental policy in a way that promoted a union of economic and environmental goals.

Subsequently, Mr. Hopkins was appointed senior communications and policy counsel to the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, where his portfolio included alternative energy development, energy efficiency, and environmental protection. For the past 19 years, he has been a senior contributing editor to Business Week magazine, the world’s leading business publication, and has written widely on economic, energy, and environmental issues. He also was a senior policy advisor to the Mayor of San Diego, at the time America’s sixth largest city, where he focused on economic, energy, and environmental matters, and he was senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a world-renowned public policy research center.

In addition to his policy work, Mr. Hopkins has spent 15 years as a professional trainer and training program developer. He has delivered hundreds of educational seminars and training courses around the country, providing such services to government and private sector groups of all sizes and disciplines. More recently, he has developed online, coach-centered training programs for such organizations as the Professional Education Institute, the National Association of Realtors, Morningstar, the National Organization on Disability, the Pacific Institute, M3 Interactive, Stephen R. Covey, and Rich Dad Education/Robert Kiyosaki. He is the author of “Help Wanted: How to Survive & Thrive in the Coming Worker Shortage” and “Opportunity 2000: Strategies for a Changing Workforce.”

Michelle Lynn is a veteran energy executive with more than 30 years' in all aspects of corporate communications, policy and legislative analysis, and business counseling. Most significantly, she served for 17 years as a senior executive in a variety of key positions for Pacific Enterprises/Southern California Gas Company (now Sempra Energy) in Los Angeles, Calif.-one of the nations's largest and most progressive, customer-focused energy utilities. Among other posts , she was the company's first electronic publications initiative for its 10,000-plus employees.

In these roles, among other duties, she was responsible for communicating and promoting the company's extensive, consumer-oriented energy-efficiency programs-initiatives that assisted both homeowners and business owners in identifying energy-saving opportunities and implementing green-technology and green living solutions. She also worked closely with the company's energy-saving appliance efforts and its alternative-energy programs. And as the firm's broadcast relations supervisor, she led numerous company-wide communications initiatives focused primarily on customer service and new energy technologies.

Previously, Ms. Lynn served as assignment editor and news writer for KNX-CBS News Radio in Los Angeles, Calf., the leading all-news radio station in the Western United States. She is currently the Editorial Director and Managing Editor for AnalysisOnline, a leading public policy web site that covers economic, energy, and environmental issues.