People on the Move

Kimberly Bick is co-chair of the California Lawyers Association’s 2023 Annual Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite. She is the 2022–2023 chair of the Environmental Law Section of the California Lawyers Association. Bick is the founder of Bick Law LLP, and has practiced environmental law for over three decades, combining her professional degrees in law, engineering, and science for a firm that is “exclusively environmental.” She represents companies with federal and state cost recoveries in Superfund, hazardous waste control, and the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, for costs recoveries, and defending agency enforcement actions and toxic tort defense. Bick counsels clients on Global Reporting Initiative programs, Green Chemistry and E-waste compliance nationally, as well as environmental and social responsibility (ESR) issues as to shareholder proposals and litigation. She is the immediate past chair of the Newport Bay Conservancy and continues to serve on that board of directors. Her firm works with the California Lawyers Association Racial Justice Committee, the California State Bar Eco-Pledge, and other local and state and the American Bar Association’s Sections of Environment, Energy, and Resources and Litigation. 

Kyle Landis-Marinello has joined Vermont Electric Power Company as senior legal counsel. He was previously the general counsel of the Vermont Public Utility Commission. Landis-Marinello has spent over 15 years in public service with the State of Vermont. In 2010, he joined the Environmental Protection Division of the Vermont Attorney General’s office, and in 2018 he joined the state’s public utility commission as its general counsel. Landis-Marinello has specialized in environmental and energy law, and in addition to practice in Vermont and federal courts, has appeared before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other federal and state agencies. He is currently the secretary of the Section. 

Kealapono Richardson is now the co-manager of the Clean Water and Natural Lands Program of the City and County of Honolulu. He recently graduated from the William S. Richardson School of Law University of Hawai’i at Mānoa with certificates in Environmental and Native Hawaiian Law. He has been accepted into the SEER Leadership Development Program for 2023–2024, and currently serves the Section as the at-large vice chair (Communications and Program Planning) of the Biodiversity Committee.

Prianka Sharma has joined the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) as vice president and counsel for regulatory affairs. She was formerly the assistant chief counsel for agriculture, energy, and natural resources policy in the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Sharma has served as co-chair of the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force of the Women in Government Relations professional society (which in 2019 honored her as the Outstanding Public Section Member of the Year). She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington Council of Lawyers. For the Section, Sharma currently serves as a member of the Section’s Council, and as co-chair of the Special Committee on Marketing and Communications, and as the at-large vice chair of the Biodiversity Committee. 

Alison Torbitt is co-chair of the California Lawyers Association’s 2023 Annual Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite. She is a partner at Nixon Peabody LLP in the firm’s San Francisco office. A recent chair of the Environmental Law Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco, Torbitt is the co-leader of her firm’s Environmental Law Team and the firm’s co-leader of the Food, Beverage & Agribusiness practice. She focuses her environmental and transactional practice on environmental counseling, risk assessment, remediation, and compliance issues, with industry expertise in maritime, renewable energy, and food and beverage. Torbitt combines her degrees in law and aquatic biology, with experience in science as an ecotoxicologist, and a passion to reduce climate change and encourage sustainability. She represents multiple clients before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board and various Air Districts, and multiple Regional Water Quality Control Boards, and she has had success with oversight agencies closing voluntary and mandatory contaminated sites. Her regulatory compliance counseling and representation includes food and beverage and other manufacturers, tax credit financing parties, container ship owners and operators, and real estate developers, including in the green building sector (as a non-active LEED Accredited Professional).