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BIOGRAPHIES OF PANELISTS

Michelle DePass was confirmed by the Senate as the Assistant Administrator, Office of 

International and Tribal Affairs (OITA), on April 28, 2009. DePass comes to the United States 

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after serving as an Environment and Community 

Development Program Officer at the Ford Foundation. As Program Officer, she was responsible 

for supporting the development of sound environmental policies and practices in the local, 

national and international arenas. As Assistant Administrator, she leads EPA's international 

program and is responsible for the full range of EPA's international environmental policy 

development and program implementation. In this capacity, DePass represents the EPA within 

the United States government and before foreign governments and international organizations 

on matters relating to environmental foreign affairs. DePass is a lawyer, public administrator 

and policy analyst who has worked with environmental and human and civil rights

organizations, academic institutions, and labor. She has also worked in all levels of government, 

including city, state, and federal. She received her B.A. in Political Science from Tufts 

University, her law degree from Fordham University School of Law, and a Master’s degree in 

Public Administration from Baruch College School of Public Affairs.

Enrique Escorza is the head of the Political and Border Affairs Section of the Embassy of Mexico 

in Washington D.C. He has held various posts in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations and 

previously served as the Director for Foreign Affairs and Coordinator of the Mexico-United 

States Intersecretarial Group of Bridges and International Crossings, within the General 

Directorate for North America. He was formerly a researcher at the CIDE’s Institute of United 

States Studies, and also served as Professor of Mexican Foreign Policy and Diplomatic Practice 

at the Universidad Iberoamericana. Mr. Escorza holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in International 

Relations from the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Profesionales Acatlán and also studied foreign 

policy and the U.S. political system at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas 

(CIDE).

Russell Frisbie is the newly appointed liaison for the U.S. section of the IBWC in Washington, 

D.C., responsible for representing the Commission’s affairs with the Department of State and 

other components of the U.S. Government, including the U.S. Congress, and with private 

entities that have an interest in the Commission’s work. Previously Mr. Frisbie was an officer of 

the Department of State’s Senior Foreign Service and served in a number of economic policy 

positions before retiring as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in San José, Costa 

Rica in 2007. His career included two assignments to Mexico and a secondment to the Office of 

the United States Trade Representative during the year of the negotiation of the North 

American Free Trade Agreement. He holds a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law 

and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a bachelor’s from Middlebury College.
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Paul Ganster has served as the chair of the Good Neighbor Board since he joined in 2004. He is 

currently the Director of Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias and the Associate 

Director of the Office of International Programs at San Diego State University. He is author of 

more than fifty articles, book chapters, and edited works on policy questions of the U.S.-

Mexican border region, the Baja California peninsula, border environmental issues, Latin 

American social history, and comparative border studies. Dr. Ganster chairs the Management 

Committee of the Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research, and Policy and the 

Committee on Bi-National Regional Opportunities of the San Diego Association of 

Governments. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the 

University of California Los Angeles. 

Steve Niemeyer has in-depth knowledge of the environment along the Texas-Mexico border. 

He is the Border Affairs Manager and Colonias Coordinator for the Texas Commission on 

Environmental Quality. He is currently the U.S. co-chair of the Enforcement Task Force, TexasCoahuila-Nuevo León-Tamaulipas Regional Work Group, under the Border 2012 program. His 

areas of expertise include water debt and colonias. He has served on the Good Neighbor Board 

since 2005. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the state of Texas, holds a Bachelor’s of 

Science in Chemistry from the University of Texas San Antonio, and a Master’s in Public Affairs 

from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas Austin.

Allyson Siwik currently manages a non-profit coalition that works on regional water 

management issues. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Border 2012 Rural Task Force, and 

facilitates strategic planning between border communities in southwestern New Mexico and 

northwestern Chihuahua. Her former positions include Border Outreach Coordinator for EPA’s 

El Paso Border Office. She has served on the Good Neighbor Board since 2008. Ms. Siwik holds 

a Master’s of Environmental Management in Resource Economics and Policy from Duke 

University, and a Bachelor’s of Arts in Biology from Colby College. 

Nancy Sutley is the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). In her 

role as Chair, she serves as the principal environmental policy adviser to the President.

Prior to her appointment, Sutley was the Deputy Mayor for Energy and Environment for the 

city of Los Angeles, California. She represented Los Angeles on the Board of Directors for the 

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and served on the California State Water 

Resources Control Board from 2003- 2005. Sutley also worked for California Governor Gray 

Davis as Energy Advisor, managing state and federal regulations, legislative affairs, finances 

and press relations. She served as Deputy Secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations 

in the California EPA from 1999-2003. She advised on water and air pollution policy, and 

established budget and legislative priorities. During the administration of President William J. 

Clinton, Sutley worked for the EPA as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Regional Administrator in 

San Francisco and special assistant to the Administrator in Washington, D.C. Sutley received 

her Bachelors degree from Cornell University and her Masters in Public Policy from Harvard 

University.

Dolores Wesson joined EPA as the Designated Federal Officer for the Good Neighbor 

Environmental Board in September 2009. Most recently, she was the Director of Environment, 

Conservation, and Sustainable Communities at the International Community Foundation. Prior 

to that, she was Principal Investigator and Manager of the Southern California Coastal Storms 
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Program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Senior Analyst for Science and Policy at 

the NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. Other positions she has held include: Deputy 

Director at the University of California's Sea Grant Program, Executive Director of the 

California Regional Marine Research Program, Acting Associate Director of the Council of 

Ocean Law, Professional Staff Member of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on 

Merchant Marine and Fisheries, John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow, and Research Fellow at 

the UN International Maritime Organization. She has served on several advisory committees, 

and nonprofit boards, including: the National Advisory Committee to the U.S. Representative to 

the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (which she chaired from 2005 to 2009), the 

Pacific Rivers Council and the Committee on the Bight of the Californias. 

Anne Marie A. Wolf is the President of the Sonora Environmental Research Institute. Her 

experience with hazardous waste management, wastewater and environmental regulation at 

the federal, state and local level have significantly contributed to the Board. She previously 

served as the Deputy Director of the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality. She 

has served on the Good Neighbor Board since 2004. Ms. Wolf holds a Bachelor’s of Chemistry 

and a Bachelor’s of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis, 

along with a Master’s of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of CaliforniaDavis.

John Wood serves as Cameron County, Texas Precinct 2 Commissioner. He has been involved 

in planning between Brownsville and its neighboring Mexican city of Matamoros. One of his 

areas of expertise is water, including the provision of water and wastewater services to 

unincorporated communities called colonias. He also has experience developing regional water 

plans, safety issues related to railroads, and has worked with state and federal agencies in both 

the U.S. and Mexico. He has served on the Good Neighbor Board since 2007. Mr. Wood holds a 

Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Marketing from the University of Texas-Brownsville.

Duncan Wood is Full Professor, Director of the Program in International Relations and also 

Director of the Canadian Studies Program at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México

(ITAM) in Mexico City. He is also a researcher in the Centro de Derecho Economico Internacional

(CDEI) at ITAM. He studied in the UK and Canada, receiving his PhD in Political Studies from 

Queen’s University, Canada in 1996. He is a member of the Mexican National Research System 

(level 2), a member of the editorial board of Foreign Affairs Latinoamerica and has been an 

editorial advisor to Reforma newspaper. In 2007 he was a non-resident Fulbright Fellow. 

Between 2007 and 2009 he was technical secretary of the Red Mexicana de Energia, a group of 

experts in the area of energy policy in Mexico. He is a Senior Associate at the Center for 

Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, and Senior Advisor for the 

Renewable Energy Initiative with the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International 

Center for Scholars. His research focuses on the reform of the Mexican energy sector, Latin 

American energy policy, migration and remittances, the political economy of international 

finance, Canadian and Mexican foreign policy, and Canada-Mexico relations. He has published 

on Mexican energy, renewable energy, banking supervision, North American relations, Latin 

American oil policy and remittances.