Twyla Dell discusses the rapid rise of Kansas City in its first 100 years and the role that energy played in its development on Sunday, January 17, at 2 p.m. at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.

The site that would become Kansas City was founded in the Wood Age as the steamboat era began, grew to a major railroad junction 50 years later in the Coal Age and expanded into the Oil Age in the early 1900s.

Dell received her Ph.D. in environmental studies in 2009 from Antioch University New England in Keene, New Hampshire. She is a former employee of the Environmental Protection Agency and organized environmental leadership programs in Kansas City through her organization, the Foresight Institute, in the 1990s. She lives in Overland Park, Kansas.