Susan Soleil, Chair, To back up for a moment, my name is Susan Soleil, and I am thrilled to be UPEC’s new Board Chair. I served on the Board in the past but then got busy and needed to take a break. Now I am back and excited to re-engage, as I have always supported UPEC. I like all of the people who serve on the Board. I love the mission of UPEC. And I love this beautiful state. All of those passions prompted me to be involved in an organization that, for 25 years, has been looking at the complicated relationship between growing populations (locally and globally) and our dwindling resources – water, food, land, animals, forests, oceans, etc. If you share a passion for these issues and want to be involved, please reach out to us. 

Wayne Martinson, Vice Chair, is a UPEC co-founder and involved since it began in 1997. His concern regarding human population increases impacting the Great Salt Lake has fueled his activism and leadership.

Doug Stark, Secretary, has been interested in population issues since the early 1960’s. A co-founder of UPEC in 1997, he retired from being a computer programmer at Hill Air Force Base. He has been involved in community gardening projects for eight years.

Gray Griffin, Treasurer, Joined UPEC in 2013. He has a background in biotechnology and environmental health and safety. He is passionate about preserving the earth’s natural systems. He believes that the rapidly expanding human population is the root cause of most, if not all, environmental and social problems and that educating society and bringing it to an awareness and a consciousness concerning the  unsustainable population and economic growth  challenges are key strategies to sustaining a healthy planet with an acceptable quality of life for ALL.

Ann O’Connell, Retired Biology teacher, longtime activist with the League of Women Voters, founding member of UPEC in 1997. Motivation for making population my priority: degrees in History and Biology, observation of explosive growth in the Pacific Northwest and the Wasatch Front, the overwhelming evidence that humans have outstripped the earth’s carrying capacity.

Steve Bannister, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Utah joined UPEC in 2018. Bannister is an economist specializing in the role of energy revolutions in causing industrial revolutions and the impact on economic and financial systems. He builds long range models of economic activity, energy consumption, and consequent financial and environmental impacts.

Gary Hanneman joined UPEC in 2019.  He has a background in natural resources and education.  He has been a member of Population Connection most of his adult life.  Everyday day human population soars by more than 250,000 people.  We are adding a billion people every dozen years, and a population the size of Phoenix every week.  Obviously, this is not sustainable. Rapid population growth represents a dire emergency for the Earth’s precious biodiversity as well as for people. A final thought:  Nine decades ago, Anne Frank gave us this wisdom: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”