Meet the 2021 Fellows
Atticus Carnell
Climate Action Fellow
Atticus supported GPCOG's Sustainability team on a number of climate action planning initiatives. Throughout his service, he assisted with data collection and created vulnerability assessments for Falmouth, Bridgton and Windham's climate action planning. He also created and distributed the regional sustainability bulletin, Meeting the Region's Climate Challenge.
Atticus grew up in Baltimore. He received his bachelor's degree in Government from Bowdoin College in 2018 before heading to Balliol College, Oxford, for his master's degree in Political Theory. (Because of COVID, he completed his Masters from his childhood home in Baltimore last spring.) His Master’s work focused on moral reasoning; democracy; the public sphere and how the internet is transforming it; moral and political motivation; and environmental justice. He hopes to continue this research with a PhD soon, and in the long term he'd like to research, teach and do whatever he can to protect American democracy and the climate. He is very excited to help Portland develop its capacity to justly weather the climate disaster as a Resilience Corps member. In his free time, Atticus likes to hike, dance and play board games and soccer with friends. He has been playing piano for as long as he can remember and listens to music whenever he can—lots of Townes Van Zandt and Nadia Reid, these days! He recently discovered the Great British Baking Show.
Casey Zorn
Sustainability Fellow
Casey Zorn served as the Sustainability Fellow with the City of Portland Sustainability Office. In this position, Casey launched the City’s first free public food waste recycling program; managed the outreach for the City’s joint climate action plan with South Portland, One Climate Future; and supported building owners in their first year of disclosing energy and water data in accordance with the City’s Energy Benchmarking Ordinance. Through this service year, she learned to broaden her definition of resilience to encapsulate projects such as low-income housing, broadband access, and racial equity—a more wholistic definition that she believes will empower her to find more creative and impactful solutions in her future work.
Casey grew up in Somers, New York. She later moved to Medford, Massachusetts, where she attended Tufts University and studied Environmental Engineering and English. Casey enjoys hiking and mountaineering, having summited mountains including Mt. Rainier and Mt. Kilimanjaro. She is very excited to hike Maine and New Hampshire’s local treks now that she lives in Portland. She also enjoys reading and writing short stories and poetry. Casey is excited about joining the Resilience Corps because this is an opportunity to have a tangible impact on environmental health and sustainability. She is also excited to learn about how government and nonprofit organizations function in order to create lasting change.
Catherine Flaherty
Small Business Support Fellow
Catherine Flaherty spotlighted the COVID-19 response related to resiliency and innovation of Maine’s service industry via the Maine Outdoor Dine campaign. The campaign served as an interactive business directory for the public to view outdoor dining options throughout the state that followed open-air and sanitation guidelines. She also assisted the City of Portland’s Housing and Economic Development Department with administering federal and state COVID-19 relief funds to small businesses in Portland. She was also elected Director of Fun by the GPCOG Events and Communications Team to organize several staff appreciation events for 40+ attendees.
Catherine (or Cat) is a lifelong Portlander. She attended the University of Southern Maine and studied Environmental Planning and Policy. She enjoys being outside and loves to spend time on Maine’s beautiful coastline as much as possible. Having been born and raised in Portland, Cat believes in giving back to the community that has given her so much. She is excited to learn, grow and connect with people.
Catie Murphy
Events and Communications Fellow
Catie Murphy supported GPCOG's communications team throughout her service year. She helped create and maintain project and partnership websites for GPCOG, including Maine Resiliency, Maine Clean Communities, TransitTogether, and Maine Outdoor Dine. She also distributed social media posts across all GPCOG's social media platforms and assisted with graphic design for public outreach campaigns. Catie most enjoyed learning about transportation initiatives happening in the region, and she is excited to see where the future of transit is headed in Greater Portland.
Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Catie graduated in 2017 from Richmond, the American International University in London with a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing. Following her graduation, she worked as a marketing and communications associate at Education Through Music in New York City. After a year in New York, she embarked on a year-long expedition to New Zealand. While there, she was inspired by the country’s efforts to protect their land, wildlife and people, and she decided to pursue environmental advocacy. Catie is passionate about clean energy and ocean conservation, and in her spare time she enjoys knitting and listening to music. She has been visiting Maine since she was a child, and she is excited to be part of the Resilience Corps to help the Greater Portland Region become more adaptable to the challenges it faces.
Clara McCool
Broadband Equity Fellow
Clara McCool split her time serving with the towns of Harrison and Naples on their broadband committees and also with the Maine Broadband Coalition. Recently, she supported the Cumberland Oxford Lakes Area Broadband Initiative, a regional effort to bring affordable and accessible broadband to the lakes region. Over the course of her service term, she really enjoyed getting to work closely with towns in Maine and learning more about the functions of a municipal committee and the role meeting facilitation, minutes, and project management play in their efforts.
Clara is from Newburyport, Massachusetts. She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia, where she majored in Psychology and Russian Language & Literature. In her free time, Clara enjoys hiking, doing crossword puzzles and spending time with friends and family. She also loves to play piano and is very passionate about Russian literature and game-based learning. She spent the past year and a half as a research assistant for the Center for Leadership Simulation and Gaming at UVA’s public policy school. Her work focused on the development of simulation tools to help future local and civic leaders gain a better understanding of how policies, financial priorities and urban planning approaches encourage the use of sustainable transportation and renewable energy. While she loves the research aspect of educational game design, she is excited about working in a hands-on environment where she can assist in creating a framework to respond to the current coronavirus crisis. She is ready to incorporate the needs and priorities of the specific municipalities GPCOG serves into her research and help make data and program information easily accessible to all community members.
Eric Hall
Data and Digital Services Fellow
This past year Eric served as the Digital Services Fellow for Standish and Sebago. He helped facilitate community outreach efforts for both towns and enjoyed working with passionate volunteers and local leaders. His service on the Resilience Corps underscored the importance of community-driven solutions, especially when tackling the region’s most pressing concerns.
Eric is from Lewiston, Maine, and a recent graduate of Bowdoin College. At Bowdoin he double majored in History & Government and Legal Studies and was a member of the sailing team. He also co-led the Ski and Ride Club and volunteered with Big Brother Big Sister his senior year, serving as a mentor and friend to a local middle school student. On the weekends he enjoys skiing on Maine’s mountains or playing board games with his friends. Eric is very excited to be a member of the Resilience Corps team because of his passion for public service and love of the state of Maine. He looks forward to helping to solve the pressing problems of the Greater Portland region.
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Juliana Dubovsky
Regional Planning Fellow
Julie Dubovsky served as a Regional Planning Resilience Corps fellow for the 2020-2021 service year and contributed to a number of projects. She developed and implemented research strategies on affordable housing for GPCOG’s Metro Regional Coalition and for the Town of Yarmouth’s nascent Affordable Housing Committee. She also helped to draft transportation planning reports like Transit Tomorrow, a long-range strategic plan, the Biddeford-Saco Transit Oriented Development Concept Plan and Connect 2045, the long-range transportation plan for the region. Julie also collected data on federal funding for rapid transit, and on the design and implementation of Complete Streets policies. Her year of service was an immersive and rewarding experience learning about the region, and plans to continue working in Portland’s civic realm afterwards.
Juliana is thrilled to join GPCOG as a Resilience Corps member for the next year. Since she first learned about regional planning at Smith College, she has been dedicated to serving communities with technical skills, strategic thinking, collaborative training and a genuine desire to implement equitable and environmentally sustainable improvements in communities. She went to Pratt Institute for her master's in City and Regional Planning, and she has participated in training programs in grassroots organizing, leadership development and urban design. She hails from Queens, New York, and made Portland her new home in 2019 along with her husband, young daughter, two dogs, a fish and an abundance of houseplants. The majority of her civic and professional work centers around Smart Growth, transportation planning, park and open space stewardship, and sustainability initiatives in neighborhoods, cities, and regions. Upon first moving to Maine, she jumped into learning about her new home state, and she immediately started following GPCOG’s work throughout the region. She worked as a 2020 US Census Bureau enumerator into the fall. Eager to help more, she joined the AmeriCorps.
Kelly Rehberg
Regional Planning Fellow
As a regional planning fellow, Kelly served alongside GPCOG’s Planning and Sustainability teams assisting on a range of transportation, municipal planning, and climate action projects. Examples include Connect 2045, Long Island Comprehensive Plan, and the Resilience Pilot. Her role included extensive community engagement and outreach, data collection and analysis, and document preparation. The Resilience Corps was a great way to get involved in projects that help shape the region for a more sustainable future.
Kelly has hometown roots in both Durham, NC, and Milwaukee, WI, but she has called Portland home for the last two years. She has a master’s in Geography from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s in Environmental Geoscience from the University of Notre Dame. After grad school Kelly worked as an environmental planner for a large engineering company but was looking for a change. She is excited to connect with and have an impact on her local community here in the Portland area through the Resilience Corps, and she looks forward to helping communities problem-solve and plan for a sustainable future. Outside of work Kelly enjoys playing Ultimate frisbee, globetrotting, baking, playing board games, hiking, and enjoying anything outdoors. While her ultimate frisbee season and traveling plans unfortunately got cancelled thanks to the pandemic, the past few months have been filled with delicious desserts, beautiful Maine hikes, picnic dinners and many cozy nights at home with a warm mug of tea in hand and a new board game on the table.
Madeline Tripp
Environmental Resilience Fellow
Madeline's main placement was with the Casco Bay Regional Shellfish Working Group, doing outreach for the development of a Community Intertidal Data Portal and developing other resources to help inform shellfish co-management. Throughout her term, she also worked with the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership to develop a story map on living shorelines in Maine and with the Greater Portland Council of Governments to create maps to inform brownfields investments in the region. Throughout her service, she enjoyed the chance to connect to Mainers of all walks of life and gained skills in facilitating meaningful conversations about resource management.
Madeline grew up in the one-stoplight town of Bethel, North Carolina, kayaking the local rivers and developing an appreciation for the resilience of the surrounding rural communities. She graduated from East Carolina University in 2020 with bachelor's in Geography, a minor in Community Planning and a certificate in Geographic Information Systems. She is fascinated by the connections between environmental health, social equity and the ways that data can empower communities to become more resilient and fair. Being a part of the Resilience Corps is an exciting opportunity for her to learn what communities in the region are doing to address the wide range of issues they face, and to see the similarities between Maine and North Carolina. Madeline also can’t wait to get to know the rest of the Resilience Corps cohort. In her free time, she is excited to explore all the local shops and restaurants in Portland, to bike all the trails in the area and to see Maine in the snow!
Maria Guerra
Air Quality Fellow
For the past 11 months, Maria served as the Environmental Health Fellow, working alongside the Bureau of Air Quality at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection on the special air monitoring project in South Portland/Portland. In June of 2021, she picked up an assignment with the South Portland Sustainability Office that focused on further expanding the South Portland Food Waste Recycling Program within the city. Both positions have allowed her to observe and participate in the implementation of environmental planning and policy, while hearing from residents to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the impacts of environmental conditions on the quality of life here in Maine.
Maria is from Falmouth, Maine, where developed appreciation for the natural resources at hand. She graduated in 2018 from the University of Southern Maine with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences. While in school, she was an intern with a local land trust that provided hands-on experience in monitoring the effects of land usage on the Presumpscot River. She also learned the importance of volunteer organization in the work of resource conservation. After graduation, Maria was an intern with the Maine Department of Transportation and developed an interest in the impacts of infrastructure on water quality and the connectivity of natural habitats. As a member of the Resilience Corps, she is excited to work with the community she has grown up with and expand her knowledge on current issues Maine people face concerning the quality of the natural environment. Maria looks forward to applying her background in the natural sciences to the Resilience Corps, as well as building upon her experience in community engagement.
Matthew Starr
Community Development Fellow
Matthew served with Cumberland County’s Community Development Office as the Resilience Corps’s Community Development Fellow. He spent the last year researching and writing the County’s consolidated plan for distributing CDBG funds and helping the County ensure their CDBG program's records comply with HUD’s administrative guidelines. All of those hours thinking about what characterizes effective compliance with federal record-keeping guidelines has taught him that administering federal money effectively and equitably is almost unconditionally an arduous process. In short, he thinks that means there's almost always a lag between passing ambitious legislation and seeing those laws even partially fulfill their effective promise.
Matt grew up in New York City. He graduated from Bates College in 2020 with Bachelor's degrees in Economics and Psychology. While at Bates, he also completed a concentration in Community Engagement and a semester in which he studied at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He sees his work in the Resilience Corps as an opportunity to apply what he learned at Bates about quantitative and qualitative research, critical creative thinking and community engagement to helping GPCOG improve the lives of Mainers. Outside of work, he loves to read, travel and spend time with close friends.
Patrick Robinson
Economic Development Fellow
Patrick was the Economic Development Fellow at GPCOG. For the first half of his service term, he supported GPCOG’s Resilience Exchange program as well as the Maine Black Business Pledge, an initiative from Black Owned Maine. In the second half of his term he pivoted to doing research for GPCOG, laying the groundwork for our 2023 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) as well as looking into the future of hybrid work in Maine. He also built out the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center’s Immigrant Business Hub and Citizenship and Civic Engagement programs. He appreciated learning about the support systems that the region has in place for small business owners as well as how a council of governments can advocate for working Mainers.
Patrick is from New York City and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Dickinson College. Prior to attending Dickinson, he did a year of service with City Year Philadelphia, where he tutored and mentored 7th grade students. He is passionate about community service, advancing equity and working on teams to solve complex problems. In his free time, he loves cooking, watching soccer and listening to podcasts. He is excited to join the Resilience Corps to help communities recover and adapt for a post-pandemic future.
Will Parker
Outreach Fellow
Will worked as the Transportation Outreach Fellow, hosted internally at GPCOG. He conducted public outreach, supported mapping and web design, and contributed to transportation planning. He particularly enjoyed working with the various perspectives of transportation professionals all across the state.
Will is from Princeton, New Jersey, and has happily transplanted to Maine. You can generally find him on a bike somewhere, checking out mundane pieces of infrastructure. A recent graduate of Bowdoin College with a double major in Environmental Studies and Earth Science and a minor in History, Will is especially interested in transportation, justice and climate. He became interested in transportation planning after a cycling trip from New Haven, CT, to Bath, ME, which showed him some of the consequences of the way we live and move. During his junior year, he spent a semester in Freiburg, Germany, where he was inspired by the ubiquity of transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure. While attending Bowdoin, he made occasional trips to Portland by bike, METRO or Amtrak and fell for the area. The Resilience Corps with GPCOG is the perfect way for Will to apply his transportation interests together with a place he loves!
Una Huang
Outreach Fellow
Una served as the Outreach Fellow, where she worked with Casco Bay Lines and GPCOG on public health outreach, transportation planning, and web and document accessibility. Una really enjoyed meeting, working with, and learning from so many civically minded people, and learning about how government works on a local level.
Una grew up in various places throughout New England and the East Coast, but she most recently arrived in Portland from Cleveland, where she attended Case Western Reserve University. She studied Medical Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology for her bachelor's degree and Bioethics for her master's degree. She is a self-professed nerd and enjoys reading, playing Dungeons & Dragons and drinking large quantities of tea. She is excited to join the Resilience Corps to assist this wonderful area in pandemic recovery and to learn more about local government functions.