2026 Annual Meeting Keynote Speakers
Red Bank, New Jersey from June 7-10 2026
We hope to see you in Red Bank, New Jersey from June 7-10 2026 at the Molly Pitcher Inn for the 2026 NAREA Conference!
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Dawn Thilmany
Colorado State University
Dawn Thilmany is a Professor of Agricultural Economics, Interim Head of the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Director of the Northwest and Rocky Mountain USDA Regional Food Center and Co-Director of the Regional Economic Development Institute at Colorado State University. She served on both USDA and Colorado Food Advisory Councils and has led a number of academic food and ag associations (AAEA, WAEA, FDRS). Her research and outreach focus on food systems and rural economic development, primarily focused on opportunities related to value-added food market supply chains and rural entrepreneurs.
Dr. Destenie Nock
Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Destenie Nock is a leader in energy affordability, energy justice, and sustainable energy transition trade-off analysis. In her role as an Assistant Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE), and Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) she creates optimization and decision analysis tools which evaluate the sustainability, affordability, and reliability of power systems in the US and Sub-Saharan Africa. In another project she created new measures of energy poverty to help utility companies identify energy limiting behavior in low-income households, which puts them at risk of heat stroke in the summer and pipes freezing in the winter. Dr. Nock is also the CEO of Peoples Energy Analytics, a data driven company which uses energy analytics to identify energy poverty in vulnerable households. Prior to her current position at CMU, Dr. Nock received her PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a MSc in Leadership for Sustainable Development at Queen’s University of Belfast, and two BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Math at North Carolina A&T State University.
Keynote Speakers For Workshop
Sanya Carley
Sanya Carley is the Mark Alan Hughes Faculty Director of the Kleinman Center. She is also Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action at the University of Pennsylvania and Presidential Distinguished Professor of Energy Policy and City Planning at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Carley holds secondary appointments at the Wharton School and the School of Social Policy and Practice. She also co-directs the Energy Justice Lab and is a Resources for the Future (RFF) university fellow.
Carley’s research focuses on energy justice and just transitions, energy insecurity, electricity and transportation markets, and public perceptions of energy infrastructure and technologies. With the Energy Justice Lab team, she built and maintains the Utility Disconnection Dashboard. Carley is an author of the Fifth National Climate Assessment report and a member of the Innovation Policy Forum and the Roundtable on Macroeconomics and Climate-related Risks and Opportunities, respectively, for the National Academies.
Prior to her appointment at Penn, Carley was a Paul H. O’Neill Professor at Indiana University, and held administrative positions there as a Chair, Program Director of the top-ranked Master of Public Affairs program, and as Associate Vice Provost of Faculty & Academic Affairs. Before academia, she worked at the World Bank Group as a consultant.
Carley received her Ph.D. in public policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her M.S. in urban and regional planning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and bachelor’s degrees in economics and sustainable development from Swarthmore College.
Madhu Khanna
Dr. Madhu Khanna is the ACES Distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics and Alvin H. Baum Family Chair and Director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research is at the intersection of agricultural, energy and environmental economics. She has served on the USEPA Science Advisory Board for 10 years and as a Chair/member of panels and advisory committees for NIFA, USEPA and NSF and the National Academy of Sciences. She has also served on the Board of Directors of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE). She is a University of Illinois Scholar, a Stanford Woods Institute of Environment Leopold Leadership Fellow, AAEA Fellow and AAEA past President, and fellow of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) and member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Agricultural Economics and the International Consortium of Applied Bioeconomy Research.
About the Molly Pitcher Inn
This Red Bank, New Jersey waterfront hotel is on the banks of the Navesink River and has a marina. The hotel features an outdoor seasonal pool and rooms with free Wi-Fi. Molly Pitcher Inn rooms include a work desk and air conditioning. The rooms come with cable TV and a safe. The Molly Pitcher provides guests with a concierge service, which has information on area attractions and events. The Molly Pitcher Inn is within a 3 minute drive of Marine Park. The hotel is a one minute drive from Two River Theater, which features live entertainment. The hotel is approximately a 40 minute drive from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR).
For More Information
Further information concerning annual meeting registration and the final program will be provided in the spring issue of the NAREA Newsletter and on the NAREA website. For more information, please contact the Selected Papers Committee Chair:
- Neha Khanna, (nkhanna@binghamton.edu), Binghamton University