Meet the IGEL Program Team

Beth Allgood Blalock is an attorney with a wide range of experience working on environmental and land use issues. Her primary practice areas include the acquisition and the redevelopment of properties with environmental impacts and environmental regulatory, compliance and permitting issues. She has served as the Assistant Branch Chief for the Land Branch of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, and in that capacity was responsible for the regulation of hazardous waste sites, Underground Storage Tanks, and brownfields. She has also held roles as General Counsel for the Georgia Conservancy and as an environmental attorney with King and Spalding and the Southern Environmental Law Center. She graduated with a degree in ecology and political science from the University of Georgia and also received her law degree from the University of Georgia.

Ms. Blalock serves as a lecturer on Brownfields and regulatory issues in Georgia and is currently an adjunct professor at the Georgia State University College of Law. She is the co-facilitator for the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership.

She is an active member of All Saints’ Episcopal Church, where she served as the Junior Warden from 2016-2018. She is a 2016 graduate of the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership. She and her husband reside in Atlanta with their two children.

In 2017, Val Porter Cook created Blaze, a leadership development and change management operation focused on equipping people with the tools, coaching, and counsel to bring big ideas to life. The firm has worked with organizations like the Center for Civic Innovation, Literacy Action and Ferst Readers, the Schusterman Foundation, the Atlanta Regional Coalition (ARC), as well as social entrepreneurs funded by the Roddenberry Foundation ( Los Angeles, California) and the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.  Her career began at  the Woodruff Arts Center in 1994 with a twelve-year run in arts administration, culminating in an appointment to Deputy Director of Fulton County Arts Council. Her next career stretch was with Foundation Center (now Candid), beginning as the regional director for the Southeast and later (simultaneously) led the New York-based Education Department, and ultimately landing the role of Head of Domestic Strategy and Innovation.

Val holds a B.S. in management/economics from Georgia Tech, as well as an M.S. in marketing from Georgia State. She later studied governance at Harvard and was certified in conflict resolution at Cornell. Val received a fellowship at Coca Cola’s Diversity Leadership Academy, a 2014 Leadership Character Award from the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, and recognition by Business of Giving as one of the top 25 Philanthropy Speakers in 2017.

Residing in Smyrna, Val shares her life with her husband, two daughters and five stepchildren.