Communicating About Clean Air
Managing Relationships among California Government, the Public, and the Business Community
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
11:00am - 12:50pm
McCune Conference Room
UCSB Humanities and Social Sciences Building Room 6020
UCTV
Broadcast
Leo Kay, the Communications Director for the agency charged with carrying out California's landmark global warming program, will discuss how his office is working with print, TV, radio and the Web to explain how the Air Resources Board is building the country's first regulatory program to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In a process rife with ... well, process ... reporters are already clamoring for results. Leo will also talk about the challenges of navigating the line between activists who sometimes feel that not enough is being done and the business community, though so far muted, could soon step forward with economic concerns once regulations set in.
Biography
Leo Kay was sworn in as the Communications Director for the California Air Resources Board in July 2007 as a political appointment to the Schwarzenegger Administration. Since then, he has spearheaded efforts to communicate the Board's efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions under California's landmark climate change law, AB32. Leo has also worked to publicize all of the precedent-setting regulations ARB is passing in terms of cutting diesel pollution throughout the state.
Prior to joining the Air Resources Board, Leo ran the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's media office in San Francisco, also having served as an agency press officer in Boston prior to transferring back to the West Coast.
Leo graduated cum laude with a BA in journalism from San Francisco State University in 1992 and worked for the next year editing a weekly newspaper in northern Alaska and doing freelance journalism work in San Francisco, Boston and Indianapolis. Leo also served in the U.S. Coast Guard for five years in the 1980's, the last three of which he spent in Southern California serving as a spokesman on search and rescue cases, oil spills and other maritime issues.
A Berkeley, Calif.-native, Leo has written hundreds of guest columns, op eds, speeches and press releases on environmental issues over the past 15 years. He has also served as a spokesman on hundreds of issues, including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Space Challenger disaster.
Presented By:
The Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media; the Department of Communication, and the IHC’s Environmental Media Research Focus Group
