North Bethesda Rotary Club | North Bethesda Rotary Club

Feb 26: America’s Drastic Shift: What are the Paths for Energy and Climate – Scott Sklar, President, The Stella Group

February 18th

Scott Sklar is President of The Stella Group, Ltd. a strategic policy and clean technology optimization firm facilitating clean distributed energy utilization, which includes advanced batteries and controls, energy efficiency, fuel cells, geoexchange, heat engines, minigeneration (natural gas), microhydropower (and freeflow, tidal, wave), modular biomass, photovoltaics, small wind, and solar thermal (including daylighting, waste-toenergy, water heating, industrial preheat, building air-conditioning, and electric power generation). The Stella Group, Ltd. Is one of the very few companies that blends distributed energy technologies (microgrids, hybrid systems), aggregates financing (including leasing), with a focus on system standardization. Sklar founded the company in 1995 and joined it full time as its President in 2000.

Sklar is an Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University teaching three unique interdisciplinary courses on sustainable energy, and an Affiliated Professor with CATIE, an international graduate university located in Costa Rica focused on sustainability for Latin America. His 2018 GWU summer course, “Renewable
Energy for Critical Infrastructure”, is the first such course in the United States. He is Energy Director of GWU’s Environment & Energy Management Institute (EEMI). He was also an Adjunct coteaching a Renewable Energy in Latin America course at American University’s School of International Studies (SIS) in 2014.

Prior, Scott Sklar served for 15 years (1985-2000) simultaneously running two Washington, DC-based trade associations, as Executive Director of both the Solar Energy Industries Association and the National BioEnergy Industries Association. Before his move to SEIA and NBIA, he was Political Director of The Solar Lobby (1983-1984), a renewable energy advocacy organization founded by the nine major national environmental organizations. Before joining “the Lobby”,(1980-1983) he was Washington Director and Acting Research Director of the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), founded by Senate Majority Leader Mike
Mansfield and technologist EF Shumacher. This federally-funded applied technology organization assisted low income communities in system design, integration, and utilization of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Sklar began his energy career as an aide to Senator Jacob K. Javits (NY) (1970-79) where he focused on energy and military matters for nine years. During his Senate tenure, he cofounded the Congressional Solar Caucus that lead many of the innovative legislation promoting renewable energy in the 1970’s.

Billie-Jean Bensen – Managing a MoCo High School During the Pandemic

February 12th

Teacher of the Year Award Presented by Kent Mason
Managing a MoCo High School During the Pandemic

Ms. Billie-Jean Bensen is a career educator in Montgomery County Public Schools. She began her career as a social studies teacher in several schools including a department head position before becoming a school-based administrator. For two years, Ms. Bensen was in central office as the Executive Director to the Community Superintendents. She spent 10 years as a middle school principal and she is currently in her eighth year as the principal of Rockville High School. Billie-Jean has had the opportunity to teach and lead in up-county, down-county and mid-county schools. She has held leadership positions in the system’s local leadership chapters and she is currently the lead of the high school principals’ organization. Originally from Connecticut, Billie-Jean and her husband have lived in Montgomery County for her entire working career. She is the proud mom of two MCPS graduates and grandma to one, with one on the way.

Kent Mason – Conservation Work Along the Eastern Continental Divide in West Virginia

February 5th

Kent Mason, one of our club’s Charter Members, is a landscape and nature photographer and conservationist who has been creating a photographic environmental study of extraordinary wild places in the highlands of West Virginia for the past sixteen years. This collaborative effort with The Nature Conservancy resulted in a book titled West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains: A Photographic Journey, published in 2018. Kent has been involved in photography for over 40 years and has been teaching visual design classes for the past eighteen years. He sells fine art landscape and nature photography in two galleries, has displayed his work in The Nature Conservancy National Headquarters and the National Wildlife Federation headquarters. His images have been published in calendars, books, Nature’s Best magazine, Wonderful West Virginia magazine, etc. and are often displayed on the websites of The Nature Conservancy, the WV Land Trust and many other conservation organizations and in literature. Kent also leads photo tours in the West Virginia highlands, where he lives six months of the year. A large collection of his images can be seen and prints ordered at WVphotographs.com.

My Beliefs on our Natural World, Mankind, and Photography

All plant and wildlife species have the right to live and survive. For thousands of species the preservation of their habitat, wild places, is essential for their survival.

For mankind the value of wilderness preservation is extensive. To name a few: cleaner air and water, opportunities to hike, camp, fish, hunt, kayak, bird watch, or to enjoy the flora, the woods, the quiet open spaces to connect with the natural world. It is our natural heritage.

The spectacular beauty of our natural world inspires people into action to preserve and conserve wilderness for future generations. Great photography of our natural world is a powerful, compelling preservation and conservation tool.

For me, exploring and photographing our natural world is an inspirational journey of renewal where I create compelling images from the heart that can connect with the emotions of others and hopefully engage them in the preservation/conservation movement.