Team

Bruce Fulford
Principal
Bruce Fulford

Throughout his thirty year career, Bruce Fulford has worked extensively with federal and state agencies on research, development and regulation of technologies and best practices for composting, bioenergy, sustainable agriculture, and stormwater management. He has been a leading proponent of integrating commercial scale composting and anaerobic digestion with greenhouse facilities and other on-site horticultural applications.

Fulford has helped establish a regional composting infrastructure that now diverts hundreds of thousands of tons of organic wastes from landfills and incineration. His clients include local governments, farmers, community gardens, food processors, haulers, universities and recreational resorts. He has manufactured, delivered and applied locally-produced composts, mulches and blended soils to farmers, urban growers, schools, and private and public landscapes in the Boston metropolitan area.

Fulford's publications, educational work, and professional presentations contribute to the development of more efficient and equitable resource management. He works closely with community-based organizations in land remediation, agricultural business development, fund raising, and job training. He chairs the Massachusetts Audubon Society's (MAS) Boston Nature Center the Environment Committee, and is a member of the MAS Council and its Climate Change committee, the Ecological Landscape Association, and the US Composting Council.

Lisa Yane
Business Manager

Ms. Yane is a co-founder and principal of Blue Hills Business Solutions, a consulting firm that works with small businesses to provide financial management services, raise capital and restructure commercial loans and other debts. She began her business career at Nature's Backyard, a compost bin manufacturing company where she was primarily responsible for marketing and public outreach. Nature's Backyard produces a recycled plastic composter that has been widely distributed through the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection organics diversion programs with numerous municipalities.

For the past 15 years, Ms. Yane has worked in the commercial lending arena as an employee and consultant at large and small banks in Massachusetts, and Bank of Boston, where she received her credit training in 1997. She has experience in commercial loan portfolio management, new loan origination and troubled loan workout with other locally-based and national banks. Lisa has also held financial management roles with several small businesses. Prior to obtaining her MBA in 1997, Ms. Yane worked for 10 years in the publishing and recycling industries. She holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, a Graduate Certificate in Dispute Resolution from UMass/Boston, and an MBA from Simmons School of Management.

Dr. Peter Woodbury
Environmental Toxicologist

Peter B. Woodbury is a Senior Research fellow at Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in Environmental Toxicology, his M.S. in Plant Pathology and BS in Plant Science. He coordinates the Bioenergy and Greenhouse Gas Initiative of the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell. Woodbury has served as an expert consultant to the US Environmental Protection Agency since 2008 and is a Certified Senior Ecologist with the Ecological Society of America. He specialized in developing models to better understand natural and managed ecosystems and how changing land use affects agricultural productivity, air, soil, and water pollution.

Dr. Woodbury is City Soil's liason to the academic community. He contributes his experience and research skills in ecological systems and sustainable bioenergy management and quantification on a regional to global scale to our projects.

Over his 25-year career, Woodbury has worked on a wide variety of multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional teams on ecological studies, such as assessing potential bioenergy feedstock production and sustainability in the Northeast and quantifying the carbon cycling and sequestration of national forests for the USDA. Dr. Woodbury's publications in bioenergy, nutrient systems and greenhouse gases are found in peer reviewed scientific journals and he is a frequent speaker and participant in international symposia.

Nora Goldstein
Senior Associate

Nora Goldstein is an internationally renowned author, publisher, and trusted spokesperson for the organic waste recycling and bioenergy industries. She is the Editor of the JG Press, Inc., publisher of BioCycle: Composting•Renewable Energy•Sustainability and a board member of the American Biogas Council. Ms. Goldstein brings her experience, knowledge and network to City Soil's projects.

Ms. Goldstein's commitment and skills help City Soil expand organics recycling through better understanding of the scientific, economic, technical and social factors influencing the industry. BioCycle has led and informed the composting and bioenergy industry since 1960. She is responsible for all editorial facets of magazine publishing, development and management of national and regional conferences related to renewable energy from organics recycling, residuals management via composting and land application, sustainable community infrastructure, stormwater management using compost-based BMPs, and other related topics.

Ms. Goldstein has been instrumental in writing grant proposals and contributing technical skills in many projects that have built and protected the organic waste management infrastructure. These include the $430,000 USEPA-MDEP funded Boston project in collaboration with Patriot RC&D and City Soil.

David Fulford
Industrial Process and Equipment Systems

David Fulford has more than 35 years industrial experience in the manufacturing, maintenance and operation of high performance mechanical and electrical equipment and facilities. From 1984-2009, David worked for Johnson & Johnson conducting systems design and testing, employee supervision, and subcontractor management. He also represented the company in federal regulatory meetings. Prior to his time at J&J, David worked in custom machine shops that specialized in fabricating and repairing composting equipment for mushroom growers and as a drill hand in the Wyoming oil fields.

David's expertise includes troubleshooting and process optimization, commissioning, construction and startup of facilities demanding precision control of high temperature and pressure, power generation, energy efficiency, odor and particulate emissions controls and wastewater reclamation. He is an experienced diesel, gas, hydraulic and HVAC systems mechanic and has operated and maintained a wide range of stationary, mobile and marine power equipment. He has redesigned and built numerous electrical and mechanical control systems. He has designed, constructed and maintained stormwater drainage, retention and filtration systems, and groundwater heat pumps.

Ralph DeGregorio
Integrated Pest Management, Soils and Plant Specialist

Ralph DeGregorio is field biologist and agronomist with nearly thirty years of experience with state and federal government and the private sector. DeGregorio was the lead Soil and Plant technical consultant during fifteen years of Boston's Central Artery Project, ensuring environmental quality controls for water, soil and air quality and developing a critical rodent control program. He is currently working for the USDA with Department of Conservation and Recreation's Asian Longhorn Beetle control project. He received his MS in Plant Science from UMass Amherst in 1978 and has authored over 80 publications. He was Research Director at the New Alchemy Institute, and served on the Board of Editors for the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture. DeGregorio advises City Soil on best practices for pest and weed management at compost sites, designs quality assessments and growth trials for our compost and soil products, and reviews research and environmental quality management measures for composting sites and other City Soil projects.

Brian Jerose
Agricultural Composting and Biothermal Energy Systems Associate

Brian is a composting specialist and managing partner of Agrilab Technologies LLP, US liscensee for the Agrilab Technologies Isobar® System, a high efficiency compost heat exchange process. Brian has 18 years experience in composting a wide range of agricultural, municipal and institutional feedstocks, and has focused for the past 8 years on bringing the technology for biothermal heat recovery to commercial applications. He has authored and managed a series of successful grants in Vermont and New York State linking compost heat recovery with agricultural nutrient management and improved sustainability of the dairy industry.

Brian received his BA from Geneseo State University in Political Science, and Environmetal Studies, and received his MS in Environmental and Resource Engineering in 2001 from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Brian is a certified Compost Site Operator from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, He is the Treasurer of the Compost Association of Vermont and Chairs of its Technical Advisory Committee. He serves on Highfields Center for Composting Research and Education Advisory Board in Hardwick, VT, and is a member of the Vermont Farm Bureau.

Brian is the founding and managing partner of WASTE NOT Resource Solutions, providing a range of composting, soil conservation and watershed protection services. He is also the part-time Technical Advisor to the Vermont�based watershed group, the Missisquoi River Basin Association. Brian is a founding member of New York State Association of Reduction, Reuse and Recycling, Organics Recycling and Composting Council, the Soil & Water Conservation Society, NOFA-VT, Friends of Northern Lake Champlain, The Nature Conservancy, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the National Professional Heifer Growers Association.

Everett Hoffman
Operations and Development Associate

Everett Hoffman received his BA in History from Skidmore College in 2011, where he designed, promoted and implemented an on-campus residential composting program that now fertilizes the school's organic garden. He attended the US Composting Council Compost Operator Training Course in September 2012. Hoffman is in the process of founding the Urban Composters Alliance.

An advocate for compost mission, Hoffman speaks about the benefits of composting at community trainings and schools. He is the compost specialist at Bootstrap Compost, Boston's residential food scrap collection service, where he develops organizational partnerships and operational practices. He staffs special events for Save That Stuff, a local recycling and compost hauler.

Joel Dashnaw
Education and Administration Associate

Joel Dashnaw, a teacher by training, uses his education and leadership skills to address issues of organic waste. Dashnaw is a graduate from Vassar College with a B.A. in Geology and earned his M.A. in Secondary Education from SUNY Albany. He develops and coordinates City Soil's educational programs and administrative systems. He is currently the Graduate Student Coordinator at MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering where he is responsible for daily operations including communication, scheduling, programming and information management.

Previously, he taught Earth Science at Saratoga Springs High School and was a program coordinator at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he developed and instructed a week-long, hands-on, interdisciplinary, problem-based curriculum on green building and sustainable design for middle-school aged urban students.