Meghan Fay Zahniser, Executive Director, AASHE

Meghan has been with AASHE since 2011 and previously held the positions of Director of Programs and STARS Program Manager. Prior to AASHE, Meghan worked as Sustainability Specialist at NELSON, where she provided sustainability expertise and consulting services to various clients. She also spent over five years working at the U.S. Green Building Council where, as Manager of Community, she developed and managed a local chapter network for building industry professionals and helped create the Emerging Green Builders program that integrates students and young professionals into the green building movement.

Christine Knapp, Office of State and Community Energy Programs, DOE

Christine Knapp leads the Community Innovation and Technical Assistance team within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of State and Community Energy Programs (SCEP). In this role, she manages the technical assistance offerings included in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG), and leads the EECBG Competitive Program, the Local Government Energy Program, and is the Acting Program Manager for the Communities Local Energy Action Pilot (Communities LEAP) program.

Prior to joining DOE, Christine served as the Director of Sustainability for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Jim Kenney for nearly seven years. In this role, she led the city’s cross-agency implementation of Greenworks Philadelphia, the City’s sustainability framework. Some of her key accomplishments include creating the City’s first Climate Action Playbook, leading the passage of a Building Performance Policy, signing a solar power purchase agreement to provide the City with 70MW of clean electricity, launching a business diversification study for the municipally-owned gas utility, and establishing an Environmental Justice Advisory Commission.

She previously held leadership roles at the Philadelphia Water Department, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Efficient Buildings Hub, and at PennFuture. She is a graduate of Villanova University and lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter.

Cynthia McCoy, GISP, Federal Engagement Director, USDN

Cynthia McCoy joined USDN in 2022 as the Federal Engagement Director. In this role, she provides training and technical assistance to increase USDN members’ understanding of and ability to access federal funding programs that support local sustainability. Additionally, she engages with various federal agencies and the US Congress to inform future policy and program design that advances equitable, ambitious climate and sustainability action. Cynthia has largely worked for local and federal government agencies on climate change adaptation and pre-disaster mitigation planning and projects, analyzing and mapping risk to various natural hazard events, and managing grant and technical assistance programs that increase local hazard resilience. Cynthia received a Master’s in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. She’s from Cincinnati, OH, and now resides in Seattle, WA.