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Los Alamos Study Group |
 Suzie Schwartz, Director, has lived in Taos County, New Mexico for over 40 years. She has been a very active anti-nuclear, anti-war, environmental and social justice activist. Her grassroots association, Taoseños for Peaceful and Livable Futures (TPLF) seeks to transform our growth based economies, locally and regionally, to ones in which all of life can thrive within the means of the living planet. Suzie is a classical musician and has taught violin and viola for many years, as well as performing with her two sisters in their string trio, and playing in several orchestras and ensembles. Her wide variety of talents and experience also includes teaching skiing for 30 winters, working in construction, restaurants, and retail. Her work with TPLF is directly aligned with the Study Group and its work to halt industrial-scale nuclear warhead core production at Los Alamos National Laboratory and elsewhere, as well as combating the deadly epidemic of Russophobia.
Trish Williams-Mello, Operations Director, has been on the staff of the Los Alamos Study Group since 2003, in charge of web design and maintenance, communications, administration, and bookkeeping. She moved to New Mexico in the summer of 2000 after taking a job as Director of Admissions and Horsemanship Instructor with Brush Ranch School, a small private boarding school in the mountains north of Pecos, NM. Before her move, Trish worked as the Operations and Development Director for Serious Texans Against Nuclear Dumping (STAND) of Amarillo from 1990-2000. She also co-founded the Panhandle Area Neighbors And Landowners (PANAL), as well as the Pantex Plant Citizens Advisory Board. Trish served as a director on other boards while in Texas -- the Panhandle Water Planning Group, Potter County Farm Bureau as President, and the Texas Feed Grains Advisory Board, while farming and raising her four children on their family farm across the road from the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Facility.
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Michael Waldron, Director, is a founder of Mt. Tam Capital, LLC located in Mill Valley, CA. Michael was previously at Cadogan Management from 1997 to 2009. He joined Cadogan during the firm’s infancy and was involved in most aspects of the firm’s operations and investment management, including sourcing and monitoring investments in hedge funds and securities. He was a member of the board of directors and of many investment committees responsible for portfolio management. He also focused on portfolio construction and risk management, and was responsible for developing Cadogan’s risk models and performance analytics. Before joining Cadogan, he was a Portfolio Manager at the asset management firm L.J. Altfest & Co. in NYC. He attended UC Santa Cruz, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with B.A.s in Chemistry and Art History, each with honors. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. He has served on the board of the Northern New Mexico Radio Foundation (KSFR), the Santa Fe ProMusica Endowment Foundation, and is currently on the board of the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association.
Kathleen Burke, Director, is an independent consultant, lobbyist, and organizer based in New Mexico. She serves as project coordinator for Fair Districts for New Mexico, a project of the League of Women Voters of New Mexico since 2019. She has been a leader in human trafficking prevention and advocacy for sex trafficking survivors in New Mexico as a member of the New Mexico Attorney General's Human Trafficking Task Force and formerly Albuquerque’s Southeast Area Community Policing Council. Kathleen’s advocacy of late is primarily at the New Mexico Legislature, for environmental and good government reforms, as well as in the streets of Albuquerque and beyond in opposition to U.S. funded wars. She cut her activist’s teeth in Central America in the 1990s.
Kathleen was a National Delegate for Bernie Sanders at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, an official observer to the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 27) in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, and guest presenter at the World Council for Health 2023 Better Way Conference with Dr. Tess Lawrie in Bath, U.K. A dynamic and high-profile organizer in New Mexico, Kathleen places high priority upon issues of the environment, public health and safety, and fairness in elections for independent and minor party participants especially.
Kathleen is an avid hiker, gardener and plant enthusiast.
Greg Mello, Executive Director, was a founder of the Los Alamos Study Group and has led its varied activities since its inception, including policy research, environmental analysis, congressional education and lobbying, community organizing, litigation (FOIA, civil rights, NEPA), advertising, and the nuts and bolts of funding and running a small nonprofit. From time to time he has served as a consulting analyst, writer, and spokesperson for other nuclear policy organizations. Greg was educated as a systems engineer with an intensive background in the physical sciences and mathematics (Harvey Mudd College 1971, with distinction) and as a regional planner with emphases in environmental planning and regional economics (Harvard 1975, with distinction, HUD Fellowship in Urban Studies). In 1972, Greg led an environmental studies program for Pitzer College in Santa Fe. During the early 1980s Greg was a high school science and math teacher, then a hazardous waste inspector and statewide hazardous materials incident commander, and in the late 1980s a supervising hydrogeologist for the New Mexico Environment Department. In 1984 Greg led the first regulatory enforcement at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). In the early 1990s Greg was a consulting hydrologist in parallel with the early Study Group, with cleanup projects in New Mexico and California. In 2002, Greg was a Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and a later consultant to that program. Greg’s research, analysis, and opinions have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Issues in Science and Technology, in the New Mexico press, and elsewhere. He has been interviewed thousands of times by U.S. and international news media (print, radio, and television). Greg’s research has been the source or impetus of many of these media articles and programs. In addition to speaking at hundreds of public meetings and events in New Mexico, Greg has been a guest speaker at several international disarmament events here and abroad.
Steven Starr, Director, has been the Director of Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri in Columbia for 11 years. He obtained his degrees at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and he has also worked in clinical labs during the last 35 years as a Medical Technologist. Starr is an Associate of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and has been a Board Member and Senior Scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility. Starr also teaches a class for the MU Peace Studies Program entitled Nuclear Weapons: Environmental, Health, and Social Effects.
Joseph J. Garcia, PhD, Director, is an interdisciplinary environmental justice teacher-scholar. Dr. García's research is focused on the historical sociology of natural resource policy development through the Cuban and Mexican Revolutions and the impact on global energy policy. With over twenty years of community organizing and activism he has conducted research related to civil rights, voting rights and environmental/social Justice throughout the Americas. He served with the Peace Corps in Paraguay (1997-1999), speaks fluent Spanish, and near fluent Brazilian Portuguese and Paraguayan Guarani. He has traveled extensively throughout Latin America and is also a proficient guitarist and vocalist in a variety of styles and genres of music from throughout the Americas. He is currently a grant writer, adjunct and part-time faculty at Central New Mexico Community College and the University of New Mexico.
Los Alamos Study Group • 2901 Summit Place NE • Albuquerque, NM 87106 • ph 505-265-1200