Laura is a sustainability scientist with a background in social ecology and sustainable development. Inspired by her work in community environmental development, she returned to her native Kentucky in 2009 to join the CSC. She is currently co-authoring a book with Richard S. Levine: Cities and Sustainability: Integration for the 21st Century, to be published in 2010. Cities and Sustainability examines regional scale synergies between ecological stewardship and city design. Working from decades of research in urban sustainability at the CSC, the book offers proposal for a new urban design process at the ecological scale of the city-region. Laura Alex holds degrees from Smith College and Yale University, where she completed a Masters of Sustainability Science in 2008. At Yale, she worked with Gus Speth in sustainable economics and wrote a thesis in international community development. Laura Alex has a keen interest in bringing an awareness of complex environmental issues to a wide audience. Her 2008 film, Export, has screened at international environmental conferences in Boston, Beijing, and Nairobi. Export chronicles the struggles for survival faced by a Honduran mountain community in the face of an increasingly commodified landscape. The film is supported by academic and environmental media grants and is searching for a distributor.