South Salem's Mike Gordon, CEO and co-founder of Joule Assets, Elected Co-Chair of Sustainable Westchester, Inc.

Chris Burdick, Supervisor of the Town of Bedford, and Mike Gordon, CEO and co-founder of Joule Assets, Inc., have been elected co-chairs of the Board of Directors of Sustainable Westchester, Inc., the group announced.

Sustainable Westchester is a recently formed consortium of municipalities organized to work together toward a more sustainable future for Westchester County. The election of Burdick and Gordon was held at a meeting of the Board at the White Plains Library last month.

“We have an amazing board that is working beautifully together,” said Burdick in a prepared statement. “Our charge is to provide value to county municipalities by creating savings for members and members’ taxpayers through shared services, by growing the region’s green economy, and by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We have hit the ground running.”

Other officers elected include Co-Vice Chairs Nancy Seligson, Supervisor of the Town of Mamaroneck, and Mike Spano, Mayor of the City of Yonkers; Co-Secretaries Dan Chorost of Rye, a partner at Sive, Paget & Riesel, and Peter McCartt , chair of the Eastchester Environmental Committee and formerly chair of the Advisory Board of the Southern Westchester Energy Action Coalition, and Treasurer Herb Oringel of Somers, one of the founders of the Northern Westchester Energy Action Consortium and Sustainable Westchester.

Other members of the Board include Noam Bramson, Mayor of the City of New Rochelle; Sara Goddard, founding chair of the Rye Sustainability Committee; Camilo Patrignani, CEO of Greenwood Energy; Tom Roach, Mayor of the City of White Plains; and Laura Rossi of Katonah, Senior Program Officer at the Westchester Community Foundation.

Background on Gordon and Burdick:

In his role with Sustainable Westchester, Mike Gordon has been instrumental in fostering progressive opportunities for municipalities, such as the recently approved Community Choice Aggregation program and an emerging “resilience through micro-grids” program. He pioneered the Collective Buying market, setting up the nation’s first heating oil and prescription drug buying groups, and the demand response market, paying consumers scores of millions of dollars annually for their energy efficiency, through ConsumerPowerline (later CPower, the nation’s first service company in the industry). More recently, Gordon has been an architect of new financing solutions for the energy efficiency marketplace, coining the term “Energy Reduction Assets.” He has also served as counsel to U.S. and European governmental bodies and regulators, including FERC and the European Commission. Gordon holds an MA in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School, an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA from SUNY Binghamton. He is a resident of South Salem.

Before becoming Supervisor in 2014, Chris Burdick served six years on Bedford’s Town Board, after nine years as a Commissioner of Bedford’s Wetlands Control Commission, eight of which as Chairman. A lifelong environmental advocate, Chris began his career as a legislative aide to US Representative Andrew Maguire, a member of the Health and Environment Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee, which led to strengthening amendments to the 1977 Clean Air Act. Chris has extensive experience in title insurance and real estate, most recently for Stewart Title. Chris holds an LLD from Seton Hall University, an MA from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a BA in Economics and History from University of California at Berkeley. He resides in Bedford.

For more information, go to www.sustainablewestchester.org.

Photo: Chris Burdick (left), Supervisor of the Town of Bedford, and Mike Gordon (right), CEO and co-founder of Joule Assets, Inc., were recently elected Co-chairs of Sustainable Westchester, a newly-formed consortium of municipalities working to secure a more sustainable future for Westchester County. For more information, go to www.sustainablewestchester.org. Photo credit: Contributed

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