Who We Are

Professor Paul Arthur Berkman

SCIENCE DIPLOMAT , OCEANOGRAPHER, POLAR EXPLORER AND GLOBAL THOUGHT LEADER
Professor Paul Arthur Berkman is building connections between science, diplomacy and information technology to promote cooperation and prevent discord, balancing national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth. He became a visiting professor at the University of California at the age of 23, after wintering the previous year in Antarctica on a SCUBA research expedition, evolving two decades later into a textbook on Science Into Policy. He was a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar and Head of the Arctic Ocean Geopolitics Programme at the University of Cambridge, chairing the Antarctic Treaty Summit at the Smithsonian Institution in 2009 with legacy through the first book on Science Diplomacy. He chaired and co-directed the first formal NATO-Russia dialogue the following year regarding Environmental Security in the Arctic Ocean with legacy contributions through a Springer-published book of the same name. He currently coordinates the Arctic Options and Pan-Arctic Options projects (involving support from national science agencies in the United States, Russian Federation, Norway, France, China and Canada from 2013-2020) as well as a Carnegie Corporation project on US-Russia Relations. In September 2015, he joined the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University as Professor of Practice in Science Diplomacy, now as Director of the Science Diplomacy Center as a university-wide initiative that was launched in 2017. For his interdisciplinary research and publications – developing the theory of informed decision-making outlined in the November 2017 policy forum published in Science on Arctic Science Agreement Propels Science Diplomacy – Prof. Berkman has received many awards nationally and internationally. In November 2017, he received the Vernadsky Medal from the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Paul is happily married with two daughters.

Wellington Amaral, Jr.

Wellington is a renowned professional in the advertising and film industry. He headed the radio and television departments of the largest advertising agencies in Brazil,  and through his production company, 5.6 Productions, he  directed/produced over 2500 commercials along his award winning career.
Recognized in the market for his multi-discilinary activities, Wellington also acts as a writer, graphic designer, photographer and cinematographer. As a businessman, Wellington owns a successful bar/restaurant in Sao Paulo, and is presently investing in corporate real estate and residential developments.
Wellington is currently a partner and COO of BBL, a LATAM leading e-Sports holding company. (www.bbl.gg)
Wellington,’s main hobby is travel and photography. He’s been to Antarctica and the Arctic region a few times on board the  National Geographic Explorer , photographing and learning from scientists, researchers and other fellow photographers. In one of these exploration sailings, he met Our Spaces board members, Paul and Julie Berkman.
Wellington has  two children and  two grand children , plus a third on the way.

Dr. Julie A. Hambrook Berkman

After completing her Bachelor’s degree in Botany (1975) and Master’s degree in Education (1976) from the University of New Hampshire, Julie worked with the Boston schools creating outdoor environmental education programs, before pursuing botanical research in South America.

Julie’s environmental research spans decades and ecosystems from tropical marine environmental impact studies along the coast of Venezuela (1978-82) to freshwater Arctic studies on Baffin Island (1987-88) and the Alaskan North Slope (1990). Her PhD from the University of Rhode Island in Biological Sciences (1989) on headwater streams added to her watershed perspective –conceptually connecting the mountains with the sea. She applied this perspective during her National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellowship in 1993 focused on ‘Integrating National Water-Quality Assessment Programs between Japan and the United States’ with Japan’s Science and Technology Agency Ministry in Tsukuba.

Her career working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) (1992-2008) focused broadly on aquatic biological responses to physical and chemical conditions related to land use in watersheds throughout the United States mid-west. Her special emphasis was on algae as water-quality indicators.

Julie enjoys engaging people in thinking about their environments at different scales: from local school children to national leaders in business and government. Over the years she has designed and taught courses from the Cold Coast Course (Hurricane Island Outward Bound, Maine) to a capstone course at The Ohio State University on Natural Sciences and the Arts; been President of the Ohio Lake Management Society; lead watershed groups; contributed to the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program; and graduated from the Woman’s Executive Leadership Program.

She is currently Managing Director of the Foundation for Good Governance of International Spaces (Our Spaces) working with outreach networks for global education for youth regarding how our actions can influence the 70% of earth beyond national boundaries.

Sylvia Earle

Sylvia Earle’s work has been at the frontier of deep ocean exploration for four decades. Earle has led more than 50 expeditions worldwide involving more than 6,000 hours underwater. As captain of the first all-female team to live underwater, she and her fellow scientists received a ticker-tape parade and White House reception upon their return to the surface. In 1979, Sylvia Earle walked untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth than any other woman before or since. In the 1980s she started the companies Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technologies with engineer Graham Hawkes to design and build undersea vehicles that allow scientists to work at previously inaccessible depths. In the early 1990s, Dr. Earle served as Chief Scientist of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. At present she is explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.

Sylvia Earle is a dedicated advocate for the world’s oceans and the creatures that live in them. Her voice speaks with wonder and amazement at the glory of the oceans and with urgency to awaken the public from its ignorance about the role the oceans plays in all of our lives and the importance of maintaining their health

Prof. David W. H. Walton – (1945-12 Feb 2019)

After finishing a degree in Botany at Edinburgh University David went on a university expedition in 1967 to Iran researching animal diseases. On returning to the UK he went immediately down to Antarctica beginning a career with British Antarctic Survey (BAS). For the next 39 years David worked for BAS in a variety of research and management posts, gaining a PhD from Birmingham University. He was responsible for all the environmental management and conservation, mapping, databases and information management including the provision of scientific information to the educational system and the public, and was awarded the Polar medal for his contributions to Antarctic research. David is currently a Visiting Professor at Liverpool University.

Establishing the international journal Antarctic Science in 1989 David has since run it as Editor in Chief. The journal currently uses its profits for charitable support of young Antarctic scientists.

He headed the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) delegation to the annual Antarctic Treaty meetings from 1992 until 2006 and was awarded the first SCAR Medal for International Scientific Collaboration in 2006.

David has just published a book on Antarctic science and is researching a second book on Antarctic science and politics, currently acting as the editor for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting reports and lecturing at a number of universities.

Dr. Allen Pope

Originally from Newton, MA (USA), through a love of the outdoors and some fortuitous travel to Greenland, Allen came to develop a fascination with glaciers and all things polar. He trained as a glaciologist and remote sensing scientist and is the Executive Secretary of the International Arctic Science Committee, as well as a Research Scientists at National Snow and Ice Data Center. All came to Our Spaces after getting involved with the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists. More on Dr. Allen Pope

R. Andreas Kraemer

Active in sustainable development, environment policy, climate and energy policies for over 20 years, R. Andreas Kraemer has been Director of Ecologic Institute since its foundation in 1995. In April 2008, he became chairman of the Ecologic Institute in Washington DC – Ecologic’s newly incorporated presence.

Since 1993 he is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke University, lecturing on European integration and environmental policy in the Duke in Berlin Program. Andreas is Co-Chairman of the advisory board of OekoWorld, setting criteria for global investment for a group of ethical and ‘green’ investment funds or mutual trusts, and of Oekom Research, a rating agency specialising in corporate and governmental or ‘sovereign’ debtors’ ethics and sustainability. He also serves on the Boards of the Bellagio Forum for Sustainable Development and the French-Alsatian NGO Solidarité Eau Europe, and is a coordinator of the British German Environment Forum. He is also a board member of Oekom Verlag, a publishing house dedicated to sustainable development, based in Munich, Germany.

With a strong background in institutional analysis and capacity building in sustainable development, environmental policy and resource management, he now focuses on integrating environmental concerns into other policies, notably EU General Affairs and external relations, including trade, development, foreign affairs and security policy. He is particularly engaged in strengthening Transatlantic relations and cooperation on environment, climate and energy security

Andreas was awarded a fellowship by the Prince of Wales’ Business and the Environment Programme, and a scholarship by the Carl Duisberg Stiftung (now InWent).

Previous to the founding of Ecologic, Andreas worked for a range of policy institutes: Science Center Berlin (WZB), the Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (IÖW) and the Research Unit Environmental Policy of the Free University of Berlin (FFU). From 1991 to its closure in 1995, he was Senior Fellow at the Bonn office of the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP).

R. Andreas Kraemer was born in Dortmund, Germany, and worked in the petrochemical industry before studying environmental engineering and sciences at Institute fuer Technischen Umweltschutz of the Technische Universität Berlin and the Université de Paris Diderot. He lives in Berlin with his wife and two daughters.

John Dutton

John originally qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant. After working as a consultant/lecturer at the University of Aston Business School, he developed his career in Finance in the electronics and automotive industries. During this period he also held two internal Organisational Development /Training Management roles where he led several major Organisation Development assignments in several countries, including UK, Italy, Germany and India. His final position before becoming an independent consultant was Finance and Commercial Director for a multinational automobile manufacturer, responsible for extensive subsidiaries and joint ventures throughout Africa.

John’s particular area of consulting expertise is the improvement of individual and group effectiveness via more systematic problem solving, decision making, business planning, quality management processes and Six Sigma. He also worked very closely with Peter Ward (co-founder of WDP Consulting) in pioneering the development and use of 360 degree feedback methods for personal development. His background enables him to offer clients an unusual combination of commercial management skills and insights into people/organisation development issues.

John was retained by Ford of Europe during the 1990’s as the subject expert on special cause problem solving helping develop their world class G8D process and training the in-company instructor/consultant team.

Ambassador K. S. Yalowitz (2010 -2013)

Ambassador Yalowitz was Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, Hanover NH, July 1, 2003 through 2011. Currently living in Virginia and teaching courses at Georgetown University and diplomat in residence at George Mason University.

Ken completed his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin and holds a Russian Institute Certificate, MA and Master of Philosophy degree from Columbia University. He speaks Russian. He retired from the US Department of State on September 30, 2001 after 36 years as career diplomat and member of the Senior Foreign Service. He served twice as a U.S. Ambassador:  to the Republic of Belarus from 1994-1997; and to Georgia from 1998-2001. His other foreign assignments included two tours of duty in Moscow, The Hague and the US Mission to NATO in Brussels.

His domestic assignments have included country director for Australia-New Zealand Affairs, deputy director for economics of the Office of Soviet Union Affairs, and Congressional Foreign Affairs Fellow. Ambassador Yalowitz previously taught political science at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He also served as the Area Studies Chair on the former Soviet Union (1993-94) and Dean of the Senior Seminar (1997-98) at the Foreign Service Institute, the U.S. government’s training institution for preparing American diplomats and other professionals for foreign service.
He has won a variety of awards for conflict prevention and for overall diplomatic performance. He was chosen for the Ambassador Robert Frasure award for peacemaking and conflict prevention in 2000 for his work to prevent the spillover of the Chechen war into Georgia.

He has been adjunct professor of government at Georgetown University, visiting fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and a diplomat-in-residence at American University.  He is also a member of the Institutional Review Board of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the Board of Directors of the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, the Advisory Board for the Vermont Law School International and Comparative Law Program, and the Board of Directors of the Open Spaces Foundation.  In 2009, he was invited to join the American Academy of Diplomacy, which is a private, non-profit, non-partisan, elected organization whose active membership is limited to men and women who have held positions of high responsibility in crafting and implementing American foreign policy.
He is married to Judith Gold Yalowitz and has one son, Andrew.

David Cope (2010 – 2012)

David Cope is currently Visiting Professor at Institute for Technology, Enterprise and Competitiveness, Doshisha University. Formerly he was Director of the Office of Science and Technology, UK Parliament where he served for 14 years. He is a graduate of Cambridge University and the London School of Economics.  He is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University’s international postgraduate college. His fascination with the environment developed at an early age and while an undergraduate at Cambridge he was an avid attender at lectures at the Scott Polar Research Institute and took part in expeditions to measure glacier ice flows in Iceland and Norway.
Originally specialising in population economics, his career began when he was appointed to an innovative ‘interdisciplinary’ lectureship at Nottingham University, teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate courses ranging from Engineering to Theology, in particular, the first university courses in ‘Futures Studies’ in the UK.

At Nottingham, he developed an interest in energy and environmental economics and, with colleagues, built up a research programme with projects that ranged from the problems of radioactive waste disposal to the energy consumption of alternative urban structures.  A scholarship from the US Embassy in London enabled him to develop his thinking on the provision of scientific and technological analysis to non-specialists, particularly legislatures, through a period of time with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment in Washington DC.

In 1981, he joined the International Energy Agency, the energy ‘club’ of the industrialised countries, based in Paris, as environmental team leader, providing advice to member governments, private companies and voluntary sector organisations, especially on pollution control from fossil fuels and on nuclear power.

By 1986, a surfeit of international business missions encouraged him to return to the UK and to Cambridge as the Executive Director of the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development, a charitable research institute, where he remained for 11 years.  Here he worked on subjects as varied as the implications of the 1986 Chernobyl incident for the UK, the organisation of the largest ‘environmental audit’ ever conducted of a UK private enterprise, aspects of the UK’s ‘greenhouse gas’ reduction strategy and packaging and the environment.

This period of his career found David increasingly involved in research studies in the USA, Canada and East Asia, with fellowships at the University of Hong Kong and the East-West Center in Hawaii.  In particular, he participated in several projects that involved extensive research in Japan. The attractions of that country meant that, in 1997, he readily accepted an invitation to become Professor of Energy and Resource Economics at Doshisha University in Kyoto; Japan’s  second oldest private university.

Plans for an extended stay in Japan were however, revised when he was offered his current position as Director of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) at the Houses of Parliament.  This is a joint office of both Houses, created in 1989. In April 2001, it became the first new permanent institution of the UK Parliament for nearly 40 years.  POST’s role is to ensure that individual members and committees of both Houses are sufficiently well informed to enable them to

conduct effective scrutiny of government policy and to anticipate the full effects of prospective legislation and general developments in science and technology.

David is a trustee of the Canada-UK Colloquia, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the International Polar Foundation, UK.  He is an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Energy Institute and the Royal Geographical Society.

His main recreations are listening to Handel, Purcell and Wagner, hill walking, especially in the Peak District, travelling throughout East Asia, particularly the more remote parts of Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and astronomy.

Jerry Cope

Following an early career in HR and then a move into Strategy and International, Jerry became Group MD of Royal Mail and started the recovery of the company. He succeeded in turning it into a profitable business, delivering record levels of service quality. Jerry is now a successful executive coach, a facilitator for a number of Leadership Development and Culture Change Programmes, and a specialist consultant in Organisational Development and HR. Jerry is also former Chair of Kingston University and current Chair of the National Health Service Pay Review Body. He also worked for a number of years with the Pilotlight Organisation, helping charities to develop their strategies.