Dave Ceppos is principal of DMC: Public Policy Mediation and Facilitation. He is also a board director for the Groundwater Resources Association (GRA) and serves on GRA’s Contemporary Groundwater Issues Council. Prior to founding DMC, he was director of Sacramento State’s Consensus and Collaboration Program. He is a recognized water policy specialist with a focus on groundwater management and governance, water quality, and land planning. He is mediator of record for several Sustainable Groundwater Management Act adjudications and has an extensive history as an advisor and facilitator to dozens of groundwater sustainability agencies and associated member organizations. He has served as lead facilitator for numerous stakeholder-based water policy initiatives throughout the western US. He holds a BA in landscape architecture with an emphasis in environmental planning from the University of Florida. He has completed post-baccalaureate work on risk communication and conflict resolution through Emory, Columbia, and Pepperdine universities.

Bradley Franklin is a research fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center. He is an agricultural and environmental economist who focuses on ways to inform the design and implementation of public policy in natural resource management. His research covers a range of topics, including the use of market instruments to secure water for environmental use, sustainable groundwater management, irrigated agricultural production, water recycling and urban water markets, urban heat islands, and climate change adaptation in fisheries. He has worked on water resource issues in a number of places, including California, Australia, and India. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Riverside.

Letitia Grenier is director of the PPIC Water Policy Center, where she is also a senior fellow and holds the Ellen Hanak Chair in Water Policy. She previously directed the Resilient Landscapes Program of the San Francisco Estuary Institute. Throughout her career, she has worked with partners to conserve California’s resources by developing landscape-scale, collaborative visions and solutions. She’s been a leader in science-based management, served as a resource for local and national media, and advised government and agency staff. In 2020, Letitia was the PPIC CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow, for which she completed a report on smarter permitting for restoration of freshwater ecosystems, and she was also an adjunct fellow with the PPIC Water Policy Center. In 2015 and 2019, she served as the science lead for the State of Our Estuary report, and she was also the science lead for the 2015 update to the Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals, heading a team of over 200 environmental scientists, managers, and regulators to develop recommendations for managing San Francisco Bay’s wetlands in the face of rising sea levels. She completed her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.

Geoffrey Vanden Heuvel is the director of regulatory and economic affairs for the Milk Producers Council, a California dairy farmer trade association. Prior to his current position, he spent 39 years as an active dairy farmer in Chino in Southern California, where he was involved as a board member and consultant for the Milk Producers Council, focusing on milk price regulation and policy. He also represented agriculture for 20 years on the board of the Chino Basin Watermaster as well as representing agriculture on the executive committee of the Southern California Water Coalition, where he still serves. In 2018, he retired from dairying and moved to Tulare, California. Since moving to the Central Valley, he has focused on water supply issues, including the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act for the dairy industry and milk economics issues. He is currently the vice-chairman of the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley board.

Dr. Josette Lewis is the CEO of Sustainable Conservation, an organization that advances collaborative stewardship of California’s natural resources for the benefit of the environment and people. Previously, she was vice president and chief scientific officer of the Almond Board of California, overseeing grower-funded research on all aspects of growing almonds, innovative new uses of almond co-products, and the health benefits of almond consumption. She has worked in agriculture for more than 30 years, spanning government, industry, university, and non-governmental organizations. She also serves on the board of the Global Crop Trust.

Caitlin Peterson is associate director and a research fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center. She is an agroecologist whose research spans groundwater sustainability, soil health, diversified cropping systems, agroecosystem resilience, and the intersections between agriculture and water policy. In her previous work, she explored irrigation and soil ecosystem functions in California almond and tomato systems, crop-livestock integration in Brazilian soybean-beef systems, and small farmer adaptation to climate change in Colombia, Tanzania, and Ghana. As a consulting agroecologist, she led programs linking farmers across the US to emerging soil carbon marketplaces. She holds a PhD in ecology and an MS in international agricultural development from the University of California, Davis.