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The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University is proud to announce that Barbara Ballan has been named the inaugural LLM Sustainable Business Law Fellow of Haub Law’s newly launched Sustainable Business Law Hub. Additionally, Professor Jason Czarnezki was named as the inaugural Faculty Director of the Sustainable Business Law Hub.

The Sustainable Business Law Hub serves as an incubator space, student-training program, research endeavor, and think tank devoted to addressing global sustainability challenges through policy and research projects, relationships with the business community, and capacity building in private environmental governance.

“I am thrilled at the opportunity to be involved with the Sustainable Business Law Hub,” said Ballan. "My research will focus on the need for coordination and coherence in environmental policies at international, national and local scales and their intersection with private environmental governance.” Ballan received her LLB and Post-Graduate Diploma in Environmental Studies from the University of Buenos Aires. She began her legal career specializing in criminal law and worked as an administrative assistant at the Attorney’s General Office in Buenos Aires and also served as a government legal advisor at the Argentinean Ministry of Culture. Ballan’s postgraduate studies focused on sustainable development, while she simultaneously gained experience in the financial technology industry, resulting in a focus on and interest in Sustainable Business Law.

Securing an LLM Graduate Research fellow who will work on scholarly research in the field of sustainability has been an integral component of the Sustainable Business Law Hub and made possible through the support of a grant from Haub Law’s Innovation Fund. The Haub Innovation Fund is part of the generous naming gift to the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, which was made by the Haub Family, tireless environmental advocates and philanthropists. “We are so grateful that with the resources of the Innovation Fund we were able to retain Barbara Ballan’s innovative thinking in sustainability. Barbara will be an integral part of the Sustainable Business Law Hub,” said Hub Advisory Board Member and Associate Director of Environmental Law Programs, Professor Achinthi Vithanage.

The support of the Innovation Fund has assisted with a number of additional important components of the Hub, such as staffing the Hub with an accomplished faculty director focused on sustainability activities and hosting a kick-off event. The continued funding will support other impactful events, including workshops and an annual conference, which is open to members of the academic, business and legal community in the sustainability space. “We now have the support necessary to build the infrastructure needed to create a lasting impact, training future sustainability leaders and amplifying and disseminating best sustainability practices in the business community and the larger world,” said Kerlin Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law, Associate Dean for Environmental Law Programs and Strategic Initiatives, Professor Jason Czarnezki.

An expert in sustainable business law, Professor Czarnezki was named as the inaugural Faculty Director of the Sustainable Business Law Hub. Czarnezki joined the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University faculty in 2013. He specializes in environmental and natural resources law and policy, and sustainable business strategies, with a particular expertise in sustainable procurement, ESG criteria, eco-labeling, and life cycle assessment and costing. He has written extensively in the field, including his recent article, Sustainable Business Law? The Key Role of Corporate Governance and Finance. “Haub Law’s Sustainable Business Law Hub is already creating the first generation of ESG lawyers,” said Professor Czarnezki. “As the top ranked environmental law program in the nation, we are consistently at the forefront of innovation in the field, and the Hub is another example of that. I am honored to be the inaugural faculty director of such an important and timely program.”

As faculty director of the Hub, Professor Czarnezki’s expertise was integral in the successful launch of the Hub and he continues to focus on its continued and future success. “Program staff now have the time and resources to get the program running and build philanthropic partnerships to ensure the long-term continuation of the Hub long into the future as a comprehensive, impactful, and enduring center of excellence, which is made possible with support from the Innovation Fund.”

The Sustainable Business Law Hub is implementing a rigorous curriculum for students in the program with courses related to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) and sustainable development, and opportunities for practical experience through internships and externships. Within these settings, the students will work in in-house sustainability and legal departments handling environmental compliance issues, ESG, and assisting with sustainability strategies and policies. Students will then have the opportunity to take the best practices learned through their work with highly developed corporations and sustainability law practices and share that learning with partners in the small business and the nonprofit community, facilitating knowledge transfer and capacity-building in organizations that would otherwise lack the resources to take a sophisticated approach to sustainability efforts.

Pace gets internships. At the New York Botanical Garden, BA in American Studies student Thomas Costella is exploring food justice through the Edible Academy and how the power of community can support food systems in New York City and beyond.

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“I felt I was becoming someone that I didn’t want to be, and I wanted to be more independent.”

By his junior year of high school, Nicholas Lotto ’25 decided to join the less the one percent of Americans serving in the military. By his senior year, he decided on an even more unique position and enlisted as a Marine. “At that point, I had something to prove to myself and to the people that were doubting me, so I chose the toughest branch,” he says.

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Now, Nicholas is in his second semester at Pace, majoring in accounting. He knew he wanted to go into business, and many of the connections he had made in the military were in accounting. He had jobs lined up, he just needed the qualifications. As he began to transition out of active duty and began researching colleges, Pace quickly became a standout.

“Pace University has an unlimited Yellow Ribbon program,” Nicholas explains. “Which means whatever our benefits through the GI Bill doesn’t cover, Pace covers the rest. Pace has a phenomenal veteran program.”

“At that point, I had something to prove to myself and to the people that were doubting me."

Accounting is a bit different from what Nicholas did in the Marine Corps, where he worked as an aviation operation specialist on one of the busiest airfields in the country, located in Yuma, Arizona. “I was in communication with the air traffic control tower and base command, wrote up flight plans for training aircraft, and basically managed the entire ground operations on the airfield,” he explains.

But when Nicholas wasn’t maneuvering a busy airfield, he was cautiously maneuvering the tricky minefield of improving the mental health of his fellow Marines, which was further exacerbated by a psychologically-taxing global pandemic.

Nicholas became involved with the Single Marine Program which is geared towards suicide prevention among Marines. “We work on getting Marines out of the barracks and to events to meet each other, to increase comradery and morale,” he says. “We also wanted to have an active presence in the community and that involved a lot of volunteer events. In addition to my actual job, I was responsible for the quality of life for about 1,600 marines through the Single Marine Program.”

“I’m happy to say I definitely made a difference in the Marine Corps when it came to mental health."

Nicholas was soon fully dedicated to improving the mental health of fellow Marines. Though his job on the airfield took up to 50 hours of work a week, his other billets (or roles), including his work with the Single Marine Program, easily extended his workload up to 100 hours.

“I’m happy to say I definitely made a difference in the Marine Corps when it came to mental health,” he says. “Analyzing it, being aware of it, how to deal with it. That’s something I was very focused on because it’s prevalent in the military. If you ask any other veteran, I guarantee you they know someone who lost their life to suicide.”

When he came to Pace, Nicholas immediately filled up his schedule and threw himself into his studies and soon took up a new billet—president of the Pace University Chapter of the Student Veterans of America. He now represents around 300 veterans and dependents across all three Pace campuses and is finding that the new mission is still the old mission—improving the mental health of veterans.

The first step is getting the veteran community on campus connected. According to Nicholas, “We want to restructure the entire program to make it easier for us all to communicate. My main focus, by the end of this year, is connecting each veteran and dependent through some form of communication.” Just this semester they launched a Discord server that has already brought new faces into the Veteran’s Center.

“At the end of the day I see us as one Pace, one community."

But just like in the Single Marine Program, Nicholas wants an active presence in the community at large, knowing the importance of connecting veterans to their wider community. “We lose 22 veterans a day to suicide,” Nicholas explains. “My mission carried over from the military into veteran-civilian life because I want to make sure the veteran community is well taken care of, and a lot of times they can be neglected because of their service or how people view them.”

Nicholas does not just want to open the lines of communication between veterans, but also with the entire Pace Community. Nicholas says, “There are a lot of people who have a bad perception of the military, and we want to change their minds. We’re not just here to help our fellow veterans, we want to help our fellow students.”

Though Nicholas is now a student, it seems once a Marine, always a Marine, and those ideals of dedication and service to his community persist. He says, “At the end of the day I see us as one Pace, one community. I want to do everything in my power to make sure everybody is taken care of. That’s my biggest goal here and that’s what I plan on doing for the next couple years.”

If you want to learn more about the Student Veterans of America chapter at Pace, email Nicholas at svanyc@pace.edu or join their Discord server. For information on Veteran’s services at Pace, visit the Veteran’s Office website.

Veteran Appreciation Week is November 7–11, 2022

Pace University salutes you for your bravery and service—on Veterans Day and every day. We recognize the commitment you have demonstrated to our country and are firmly committed to assisting you in advancing your career through higher education.

As we come out of yet another bruising election cycle—this time, for better or for worse, one in which not much ultimately seems to have changed—I find myself impressed anew by the civic commitment and involvement of so many in our Pace Community.

Two weeks ago, we hosted the only debate between Gov. Kathy Hochul and her challenger, Rep. Lee Zeldin, in the Schimmel Center on our New York City Campus. It was a great opportunity for Pace, which landed our name and logo in articles and photos around the state and across the country. It also showed our political leaders — and our partners at Spectrum News NY1—what the people of Pace are capable of accomplishing. Our team of student volunteers, under the expert leadership of our Public Affairs team, were perfect hosts and ideal ambassadors for us, and Dyson student Mandi Karpo, editor-in-chief of The Pace Press, was lucky to be the sole student journalist in attendance. (You can read about her experience here.)

Elsewhere in this issue of Pace Now, you’ll read about many other kinds of civic engagement at Pace. You’ll learn about Lubin student Nicholas Lotto, a former Marine and president of Pace’s chapter of the Student Veterans of America, who is working to support the mental health of all our student veterans. Our environmental commitment has once again earned Pace recognition on the Princeton Review list of green colleges. You’ll read about the impressive accomplishments of the budding diplomats on our United Nations team. And as the Thanksgiving season approaches, CCAR, which did so much to help make sure our students voted in yesterday’s elections, offers a guide to giving back.

In the spirit of the season, I’m grateful to see that it’s finally turning properly autumnal here in the New York region. The weather is brisk and the leaves are vibrantly colored, but of course it’s also getting dark earlier and earlier. As we move into the winter months, I want us all to remain aware of our mental health and wellbeing. We’ve all been through a very challenging few years, and now we’re entering what is often a tough season. Please take care of yourselves, be kind to yourselves, and reach out for any help you need.

At Pace, we’re all committed to supporting one another. And together we will accomplish great things.

Have a great fall and a happy Thanksgiving—and keep your eye out for Pace’s Giving Tuesday campaign right after the holiday!

For more than a decade, Pace’s Model UN teams have been competing on the national stage. This year was no different! Back again with some more wins under their belts, Pace’s Model UN team shares their winning experience at this year’s national conference in Washington, DC.

The national conference is one of the largest in the country and brings together a multitude of universities for a weekend of intense negotiation and deliberation about a variety of topics of international concern.

“Without downplaying the significance of the student's academic achievement this weekend, I think the thing students will take away from the experience that has the most indelible impact will be the connections and friendships that they have made,” says faculty advisor and Pace assistant professor of Political Science Paul Londrigan. “Participation in Model United Nations had a way of stitching disparate individuals together who may not have otherwise found the occasion to get to know one another. I think that a huge benefit of the program is the way in which it lends itself to the creation of a richer and more textured social fabric for our students.”

“We are very fortunate at Pace to have a tremendously engaged body of students in the political science department. As a result, we have a long history of success and achievement at Model UN conferences,” says Londrigan.

Pace’s team from New York City represented Montenegro and Bolivia, while the Westchester students represented Guatemala. The Pace team won an award for Honorable Delegation for their representation of Bolivia. Several Pace students were also recognized individually at this year’s conference. Jordan O’Connell and Marsela Vucaj won the award for best position paper in their committee and students Jeremiah Williams and Noah Saskowski were recognized by their peers in the committee and were awarded the outstanding delegates in a committee award.

“We are very fortunate at Pace to have a tremendously engaged body of students in the political science department. As a result, we have a long history of success and achievement at Model UN conferences,” says Londrigan. “Despite this winning track record, it never gets old to see the delight on student's faces when they hear that they have won.”

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At the Pace Environmental Law Review (PELR) Symposium held on October 28, PELR announced Haub Law 3L Christen Maccone as the winner of the John R. Nolon Student Writing Competition, held for the first time this year. Christen’s article entitled, Should Environmental Protection be Through Anthropocentric Rights?, addresses the issues with human-centered, instead of eco-centered, environmental rights, in keeping with the Symposium’s theme of “Environmental Constitutionalism.” Christen’s article will be published in the Pace Environmental Law Review next year.

“The law’s protection of the environment is historically tied to humanity’s use of the environment,” said student competition winner, 3L Christen Maccone. “Constitutional environmental rights, while creating a possibility to afford further protection, inevitably fall short in this same way because of the way constitutions work. Through a biocentric approach, better protections can be afforded to the environment, beyond its known worth to humanity. The Professor John R. Nolon Student Writing Competition gives a spotlight for students amongst scholars, advocates, regulators, policymakers, and other practicing professionals, to share their ideas on a growing area of law. This competition serves as proof that students, though still in school and not yet practicing, can be at the forefront of emerging areas of law.”

This annual competition is open to students at law schools throughout the country. The first place award carries the promise of publication in PELR and a $500 scholarship. The competition, named after Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus John Nolon, honors Professor Nolon’s dedication to student scholarship. Professor Nolon supervises student research and publications regarding land use, sustainable development, climate change, housing insecurity, racial inequity, and the coronavirus pandemic at Haub Law. He is also co-counsel to the Law School's Land Use Law Center, which he founded in 1993. He served as Adjunct Professor of land use law and policy at the Yale School of the Environment from 2001-2016. Before he joined the law school faculty, he founded and directed the Housing Action Counsel to foster the development of affordable housing.