SOUTH ROYALTON, Vt. — Vermont Law and Graduate School has named a new associate dean to lead the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment and appointed new and longtime faculty to lead the institution’s renowned environmental programs that help prepare the next generation of changemakers.
Diana Winters has been appointed as associate dean for environmental programs in the graduate school and director of the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment.
Winters will shape the future of the Maverick Lloyd School’s policy impact and its diverse graduate programs, which educate students on environmental and climate policy, environmental justice, biodiversity, food and agricultural systems, animal advocacy, energy policy, international environmental issues and related fields. She was previously the deputy director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA School of Law and led its academic programming, partnerships and public engagement.
She teaches and writes in the field of food law and policy, focusing on the interaction between federal and local regulation, the judicial review of agency action and the emerging law around highly processed foods and the environment. Winters is regularly featured in publications like Health Affairs, and she is currently creating a graphic novel about how people experience the regulation of what they eat. She holds a JD from New York University, as well as a PhD in American studies and an MA in history from Harvard University.
Kevin Cassidy, co-director of the Environmental Advocacy Clinic, joins Christophe Courchesne in leading the school’s public-interest environmental litigation clinic.
Cassidy brings 24 years of expertise in civil and criminal environmental litigation experience. He previously spent 15 years as a senior staff attorney for Lewis & Clark Law School’s environmental litigation clinic, founding the clinic’s East Coast office in Massachusetts and working with law students on public interest environmental cases throughout the country.
Prior to that, Cassidy was a senior trial attorney with the Environmental Crimes Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. He received his JD and a Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Lewis & Clark Law School.
Conley Wouters has been named director of the Farmed Animal Advocacy Clinic, which is dedicated to advancing legal protections for animals.
Wouters’ experience includes teaching animal law, legal writing and contracts at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, where he served as the faculty advisor of UIC’s Student Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter and developed its series of public lectures in animal law.
An inaugural recipient of the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s Compassionate Counsel Award, Wouters has provided pro bono representation to national farmed animal protection organizations on various matters, including multiple lawsuits targeting the abuse of steers in rodeo events.
He received his MA and PhD in English from Brandeis University and a JD from Cornell Law School. Wouters also holds an LLM in animal law from the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School.
In addition to welcoming these leaders, the following Vermont Law and Graduate School environmental faculty members have been named to new or expanded roles.
Mark James, who joined the VLGS faculty in 2016 after earning his LLM, is now director of the Institute for Energy and the Environment. Prior to this appointment, he was serving as the IEE’s interim director.
Genevieve Byrne was recently named director of the Energy Clinic, where she had been the interim director since 2024. Byrne, who first joined the faculty in 2018, earned her LLM in energy law from VLGS in 2025.
After serving as a visiting professor in the Environmental Justice Clinic for the 2025-26 academic year, Lindi Mutius Widell has been appointed EJC director.
Yanmei Lin, longtime deputy director of the U.S.-Asia Partnerships for Environmental Law, has been named director of the program. Lin joined VLGS in 2010.
For more information, please visit vermontlaw.edu/faculty.
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Vermont Law and Graduate School, a private, independent institution, is home to a law school that offers ABA-accredited residential and online hybrid JD programs and a graduate school that offers master’s degrees and certificates in multiple disciplines, including programs offered by the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment, the Center for Justice Reform and other graduate-level programs emphasizing the intersection of environmental justice, social justice and public policy. Both the law and graduate schools strongly feature experiential clinical and field work learning. For more information, visit vermontlaw.edu, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.