Tom Jacobs
Chief Resilience Officer
Mid-America Regional Council
Tom Jacobs has more than 30 years of experience working in Kansas City and internationally at the intersection of sustainable community development and natural resource management. He currently serves as the Chief Resilience Officer at the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), Kansas City’s regional planning organization, where he has worked for over 25 years. In this position, Tom oversees regional environmental policy and planning initiatives related to climate resilience, open space conservation, air quality, watershed management, energy efficiency and conservation, and solid waste management.
Karie Kneller, AICP, ENV-SP
Senior Planner
City of Leawood
Karie Kneller has been a Planner and Urban Design professional for more than a decade in various capacities in the private, non-profit, and public sectors. Her passion for helping improve environmental and socioeconomic outcomes for communities through professional consulting and public service is a consistent thread throughout her career.
Environmental design and climate change/resiliency planning is her major focus, guiding her professional and personal life. She is currently fulfilling this purpose as Senior Planner for the City of Leawood, having also recently served the City of Mission as its City Planner. Both roles involve current and long-range comprehensive planning, public engagement, development project design review, and policy analysis at the local municipal level.
She has served on the City of Mission’s Climate Action Task Force, helping to prioritize the City’s climate initiatives to align with Climate Action KC’s goals and objectives. She is also the Chair of the Kansas Chapter of the American Planning Association’s (KS APA) Legislative Committee, advocating legislative action for affordable housing, economic development, efficient land use, and transportation alternatives in the State of Kansas. Karie is a certified member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and a certified Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV-SP).
Scott Schulte, MUP, ENV SP
Associate Professor of the Practice
Environmental Studies/Environmental Assessment PSM
University of Kansas Edwards Campus
Scott Schulte has over 30 years of professional, academic, and not-for-profit experience revitalizing natural and human communities and the built environment. He has led watershed assessments and planned, design, implemented, and developed policy promoting multi-benefit, nature-based solutions for water resources and community and climate resilience.
Since 2022, Scott has served as an Associate Professor of the Practice, instructing and conducting applied research in the Environmental Assessment Professional Science Masters (PSM) and undergraduate Environmental Studies programs at the University of Kansas Edwards Campus in Overland Park. He has 12 years prior experience as a lecturer for the PSM and the Urban Planning Program. He continues to consult part-time as a Senior Environmental Planner for a small consulting firm. Scott is a Board member and was the founding President of the Heartland Conservation Alliance. He earned a Master of Urban Planning with an Environmental and Land Use Planning emphasis from KU in 2002.
Jay Antle, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Center for Sustainability
Professor of History
Johnson County Community College
Dr. Jay Antle was born in Texas where he lived for the first 21 years of his life. While at Lee College, he took a field course in Yellowstone National Park that led him to become deeply interested in environmental issues. He completed his undergraduate education in history and then moved on to Arizona State University for his master’s degree and then to the University of Kansas in 1992 for his Ph.D. in American Environmental History. While in graduate school, he participated in an exchange program with Johnson County Community College (JCCC) that ultimately led him to secure a professorship there in 2000 that he still holds.
His responsibilities at JCCC have grown to include heading up the College’s Sustainability program as the Executive Director of the College’s Sustainability Center. He is a four-time winner of the JCCC Distinguished Service Award. He served as the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) and served on that Board from 2014-2022. He currently lives in Lawrence and is an avid hiker and storm chaser. He is also a distance runner with over 180 half-marathons and ten marathons to his credit.