Greg Avis

Palo Alto, CA – Greg is the managing partner of Bangtail Partners, a private investment firm with a focus on impact investing and is a cofounder and former managing director of Summit Partners, a growth equity firm. His non-profit work has included service on the boards of Williams College, Accion Opportunity Fund, Cleveland Clinic, the James Irvine Foundation, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Schwab Charitable Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, The Sobrato Organization/Sobrato Philanthropies and The Wilderness Society (Action Fund). Greg has taught mathematics at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto for over 20 years. He is a graduate of Williams College and Harvard Business School.

Dotty Ballantyne

Secretary

Bozeman, MT – Dotty Ballantyne lives in Bozeman, Montana, and spends winters in Key West, Florida. She has been involved in local, regional, and national conservation organizations as well as education (the University of Wisconsin School of Business Advisory Board and the Montana State University College of Business Board) and social service organizations. Most recently she served on the board of American Rivers and the Gallatin Valley Land Trust in Bozeman. She had a career in the financial services sector and, after retirement, did some international consulting in England, Australia, and Lithuania. She has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin.

Peter Carson

Oakland, CA – Peter Carson is a retired San Francisco-based partner of the Sheppard, Mullin, Hampton & Richter, LLP law firm. He is a life member of the American Law Institute and past president of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, and has served the American Bar Association and the State Bar of California in various leadership capacities. He has also served on the boards of a number of legal aid programs and well as other community and environmental organizations, and continues to serve on the board of California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA). Having first had the opportunity to represent Earthjustice as pro bono counsel on several occasions, Peter has now served on the Earthjustice board for over 20 years. He received his A.B. and J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Stuart Clarke

Chair

Easton, MD – Stuart Clarke is a seasoned, collaborative leader with many years of experience developing and managing relationships of trust and mutuality with diverse partners and stakeholders. His most important — and rewarding — professional experiences have involved supporting the work and encouraging the ambition of young environmental leaders.

Adam Cohen

New York, NY – Adam Cohen is cofounder and CEO of Ranger Power. Adam has more than 14 years of experience in the renewable energy sector concentrated on the development, construction, and operation of clean energy projects. During his career he has successfully developed more than 3,000 MW of energy projects. Adam leads all high-level project development, corporate management, and company strategy. Previously, Adam served as president and founder of Ranger Solar and Ranger Energy (part of the Ranger Group), which developed and sold more than 1,400 MWs of utility scale solar projects in the New England and Mid-Atlantic energy markets. These projects are now owned by a leading energy company and represent some of the first long-term contracted solar assets in their region that offer on-peak, cost-effective energy to local utilities while providing new economic development to businesses and customers. Prior to forming Ranger, Adam was a founding team member and vice president of Pioneer Green Energy, which brought to construction and into operation more than 1,000 MW of new wind and solar projects across the U.S. Adam has also led wind development projects into commercial operation while at E.ON Climate and Renewables and Airtricity. Adam is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

Abre’ Conner, Esq.

Sacramento, CA – Abre’ Conner, Esq. oversees the strategy and collaboration across the NAACP to dismantle environmental racism. She has taught Education Law and is currently faculty in the Environmental Policy and Management Program at the University of California-Davis.

A native of Lakeland, FL, Abre' served as the Directing Attorney of Health at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley where she led the litigation, direct legal services work, and advocacy regarding health equity and the social determinants of health that impact historically excluded communities across the Silicon Valley. Prior to joining the Law Foundation, Abre' was a staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, where she advocated for the civil rights and liberties of Central Valley and Northern California residents, including an emphasis on issues that impact people of color in rural communities such as environmental justice. As a staff attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment in Delano, CA, Abre' primarily worked with migrant farmworkers and in unincorporated communities.

A graduate of American University, Washington College of Law, and the University of Florida, Abre’ currently sits on the American Bar Association’s Board of Governors, and has been named a top 40 under 40 Nation’s Best Advocate by the National Bar Association, top 100 leader by Fresno Black Chamber of Commerce, top 40 On the Rise Attorneys by the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division, Community Champion by Fresno Building Healthy Communities, 40 under 40 alumni by the University of Florida, 40 under 40 Young, Gifted, and Green recipient, and has been featured in the New York Times’ The Daily, Forbes Magazine, American Bar Association Journal, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Incorporated’s National Magazine, The Archon, and Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Daniel Cordalis

Boulder, CO – Daniel Cordalis is a Staff Attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, where he leads NARF’s new initiative, the Tribal Water Institute. Daniel has extensive experience working with Tribes to protect their water, natural, and cultural resources, primarily in the Colorado and Klamath River Basins. Before joining NARF, Daniel worked in an appointed role within the Department of Interior’s Office of the Solicitor, as tribal in-house counsel, in private practice, as an associate attorney with Earthjustice, and as a legislative associate with the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). He is lucky to have had the opportunity to clerk for the late Colorado Supreme Court Justice Greg Hobbs, and he was a close friend and research assistant of University of Colorado Law Professor Charles Wilkinson. Daniel has a Yurok wife and young boys he is proud of.

Aja DeCoteau

Portland, OR – Aja K. DeCoteau is the Executive Director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, the technical support and coordinating agency for fishery management policies of the Columbia River Basin’s four treaty tribes: the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, and the Nez Perce Tribe. She leads over 180 staff in five locations who are working together to put fish back in the rivers, protect tribal treaty fishing rights, share salmon culture, and provide services to tribal fishers.

Aja is a citizen of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and also has tribal lineage with the Cayuse, Nez Perce, and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. She grew up in Wapato, WA on the Yakama Reservation. For more than two decades, Aja has worked on Columbia River Basin natural resource management and policy issues, working previously as CRITFC’s Watershed Department Manager and for the Yakama Nation in various capacities.

Aja sits on the National Park System Board of Advisors, Board of Trustees for Earthjustice, the Board of Directors for American Rivers, Columbia Land Trust, Portland Energy Conservation, Inc. (PECI), the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), and the Advisory Council for the Yale Center for Environmental Justice, Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) Executive Committee, and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s (NPCC) Independent Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB) Administrative Oversight Panel.

Aja received her Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and Native American Studies from Dartmouth College and holds a Master of Environmental Management from Yale University, School of the Environment.

Erika George

Boston, MA – Erika George is the director of the Tanner Humanities Center and the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. George earned a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served as articles editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. She also holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the S.J. Quinney College of Law, George served as a law clerk for Judge William T. Hart on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, as a litigation associate for the law firms of Jenner & Block in Chicago and Coudert Brothers LLP in New York City, and as a fellow and later consultant to Human Rights Watch. Her research focuses on human rights and international law. Her book Incorporating Rights, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, examines strategies to advance corporate accountability. George has testified before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and is a leading voice on conversations about equity, diversity, and inclusion on the University of Utah campus and in our community. She is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and is a member of the Executive Board of the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights. She served as the 2019-2020 Presidential Leadership Fellow under University of Utah President Ruth Watkins and previously served as interim director of its Barbra and Norman Tanner Center for Human Rights.

Chris Hensman

Houston, TX – Chris works to address some of the most pressing social problems in the United States by taking a systems level approach to solving problems while balancing this with time in communities to understand the lived experience of those impacted. Chris previously served as a diplomat and an advisor throughout the Middle East. He has worked within the White House, as the Director of the Office of Strategic Planning in the Bureau of Public Affairs, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, and most recently, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, overseeing the Rebuild Texas Fund programming for Hurricane Harvey-impacted counties in Southeast Texas. A graduate of Connecticut College with a BA in Government, Chris also holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, with a focus on Marketing and Operations. An avid volunteer, he resides in Houston, Texas with his wife and their three children.

Roberta Reiff Katz

Palo Alto, CA – Roberta Katz, lawyer and cultural anthropologist, has had a career as an attorney in private practice, as the general counsel of McCaw Cellular Corp. (now AT&T Wireless) and then Netscape Communications Corporation, as special advisor to the assistant attorney general for Antitrust, and as a member of the president’s senior staff at Stanford University, focused on strategy. She is a co-author of Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age (University of Chicago Press, 2021). In addition to Earthjustice, she currently serves on various advisory and nonprofit boards.

Sergio Knaebel

Vice Chair at Large

Hayward, CA – Sergio is vice president at the Sandler Foundation in San Francisco. There, he works with a small group of colleagues to identify leaders and organizations with promise to have the greatest impact on pressing societal challenges, from inequality to human rights, corruption, and the environment. In the environmental area, he has focused on climate change and coal, clean energy, marine conservation, and the conservation of coastal land in Baja California. Prior to the Sandler Foundation, Sergio was at the Packard Foundation, where he was a program officer leading a conservation program focused on Mexico. Sergio earned a Masters in Conservation Biology and Ecosystem Management from the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University. He currently serves as vice president of the board of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and has previously served on the boards of the Biodiversity Funders Group, the Golden Oak Montessori School (a public charter school he co-founded with a group of parents in Hayward, California), and Island Conservation. Sergio was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico.

Diane Lewis

Katonah, NY – Diane Lewis, MD, is founder of the nonprofit organization The Great Healthy Yard Project.
Her book, The Great Healthy Yard Project, won the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Awards silver medal for Home and Garden Books. Lewis also received the 2015 Advocate Award from Environmental Advocates of New York, the 2016 Environmental Champion Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for The Great Healthy Yard Project, and the 2021 Margaret Douglas Medal from the Garden Club of America. Lewis has written opinion pieces about health and the environment for major newspapers. In 2018 The Great Healthy Yard Project partnered with The Garden Club of America to decrease pesticide usage on yards and gardens across the United States.
Lewis is a member of Bedford Garden Club and served on the National Affairs and Legislation Committee for Garden Club of America from 2019 to 2023. Lewis is vice chair of the Town of Bedford Planning Board, and is a member of the Town of Bedford Open Space Acquisition Committee. She was a member of the board of Audubon New York for six years.

Ed Lewis

Bozeman, MT – Ed Lewis has been a consultant for the conservation community and environmental grantmakers since 1994. Prior to that he served as Executive Director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (1986-1994), and practiced law in Arizona with the Phoenix firm of Lewis and Roca (1969-1986). He has also served on the boards of National Parks Conservation Association, Training Resources for the Environmental Community, Arizona Nature Conservancy, and LaSalle Adams Fund.

George Martin

Philadelphia, PA – George Martin retired from active practice of law in 2023 after 51 years. He is the founding partner of Martin Law LLC and was the first workers’ comp attorney to be president of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association. He was appointed by the NFLPA and PHPA as a workers’ compensation panel attorney and is among the first attorneys to become certified specialists in PA Workers’ Comp by the PA Bar Association’s Section on Workers’ Comp Law as authorized by the PA Supreme Court. He’s the Chair of the Planning Commission of West Vincent Township and the founder of the George and Miriam Martin Foundation which focuses on river and watershed conservation.

Janet Maughan

Lancaster, VA – Janet Maughan is emeritus executive director of Passport Foundation, a philanthropy associated with Passport Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. Prior to joining Passport, Janet was managing director at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she directed the foundation’s work on global policy issues. She has worked as a consultant to a wide range of foundations, nonprofits and corporations on environmental, sustainability and development issues. She was also a program officer in the Ford Foundation’s Rural Poverty and Resources program, and initiated the foundation’s work on climate change, and global environment issues. Janet lives with her husband and dog on the Rappahannock River in Virginia.

Winsome McIntosh

Washington, D.C. – Winsome Dunn McIntosh is Trustee and President of the McIntosh Foundation. She was the founder of ClientEarth UK, the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties, Exponent Philanthropy, and Rachel’s Network. Presently, Winsome serves on the board of Mo-DV, Inc (a California software company), The Boat Company (Eco cruise business in Alaska), and ClientEarth. Previously, she was a long-serving board member of the League of Conservation Voters and Defenders of Wildlife. Her most recent honors include Lifetime Achievement Honoree (2023), Urban League of Palm Beach County; Outstanding Philanthropist (2017), Association of Fundraising Professionals; and 21 leaders for the 21st Century (2015), Women eNews.

Kimberley Milligan

Durango, CO –  With over 30 years of nonprofit leadership experience, Kimberley Milligan brings extensive governance expertise and is an advocate at the intersection of racial justice and the environmental movement. She has served as Board Chair of American Rivers, the South Yuba River Citizens League, and the Center for Domestic Violence Prevention. Kim currently serves on the boards of Rachel’s Network and River Network, as well as the national councils of American Rivers and Keep Tahoe Blue.

Rashad Morris

Seattle, WA – Over the past 20 years, Rashad has developed a broad base of experience in politics, policy development, advocacy, and nonprofit governance. As principal and founder of the advisory firm Impact Donor Strategies, Rashad provides support to philanthropic foundations, individual major donors, nonprofits, and government agencies on organizational effectiveness, program design, strategy, and grantmaking.

Paul Newhagen

Los Altos Hills, CA – Paul Newhagen is a co-founder, former CFO, and board member of Altera Corporation, a formerly publicly traded semiconductor manufacturing company, which was acquired by Intel in 2015. He has served as a board member for the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), GeoHazards International, and currently serves on the board and as a Treasurer of the Northern Sierra Partnership, and as a board committee member for the Pacific Crest Trail Association. He has a B.S. in engineering from the University of Illinois, and an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University.

Melanie Roussell Newman

Washington, D.C. – Melanie Roussell Newman is a communications and brand executive with over 20 years of experience advising clients on message strategy, brand positioning, marketing, policy development and strategic planning in nonprofit organizations, local and federal government, as well as political campaigns.

Melanie is currently senior vice president of communications and culture at Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She oversees the communications, research and insights, content, brand, and culture teams. Together, these teams help shape public awareness of the organizations’ programs, services, activities, and brand.

Melanie was formerly the chief communications officer at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She also led communications at the U.S. Department of Justice, the White House Office of Budget and Management, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration. She has also been a national spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, Obama for America 2008, and the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

Melanie has a BA in broadcast journalism from Florida A&M University and an MA in public communication from American University. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and two children.

Buck Parker

Hood River, OR – Over a period of 34 years beginning in 1980, Buck Parker served on the staff of Earthjustice as litigation coordinator, general vice president, president (1997–2007) and advisor (2008–2015). He received his B.A. in history from Stanford University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Lori Potter

Denver, CO and New York, NY – Lori Potter is a public lands lawyer who represents conservation landowners and local governments with a conservation agenda. She has been a public lands advocate for more than 30 years, including a decade as the managing attorney of Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office. Lori has served on the boards of Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Conservation Colorado. She has a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Illinois, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Rich Rainaldi

Denver, CO – Rich Rainaldi is a partner in Green Spark Ventures, an impact investment firm dedicated to deploying capital into the clean energy, conservation, and regenerative agriculture sectors to help accelerate the adoption of strategies that directly address the impact of climate change. Rich has served on the board of over a dozen nonprofit organizations in Colorado and across the country including Rebuilding Together USA and Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. Rich is a recipient of the Minoru Yasui Award for Community Service and in 2008 received the William Funk Community Builder Award from the Colorado Nonprofit Association in recognition for his work in starting several nonprofits and his board contributions. Rich holds a degree in Economics from Harvard University and a Master’s in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Rekha Rao

San Francisco Bay Area, CA – Rekha Rao is the U.S. Electricity Initiative Director for Climate Imperative. Rekha is a clean energy policy expert with over 15 years of experience in state and federal regulatory and legislative policy. Most recently at PG&E, she led a policy team responsible for developing and coordinating state and federal renewable and climate policy and strategy across the organization and collaborating with key stakeholders, such as other investor-owned utilities, environmental organizations, and labor unions. Rekha has led legislative and regulatory policy development for a number of different organizations in the private and non-profit sector, including at Grid Alternatives. She spent a number of years doing policy and legal work for two energy law firms in Washington, D.C., where she advised clients on energy project development, facilitated interactions between clients and relevant federal regulatory agencies, and assisted clients with federal legislative communications and advocacy. Rekha has a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in political science and Spanish, and graduated with a law degree from American University, Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.

Héctor Sánchez Barba

Washington, D.C. – Héctor Sánchez Barba is the Executive Director and CEO of Mi Familia Vota (MFV), a Senior Fellow at GW Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute, and the Chair Emeritus of National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA). Throughout his career, Hector has worked in non-profit organizations and has vast experience in policy advocacy, civic participation, community organizing, nonprofit management, fundraising, and media relations. He is a strong campaigner having undertaken vigorous civic participation campaigns, organized and participated in national initiatives to empower the Latino community via voter registration drives, GOTV, voter education, citizenship, census, and efforts to combat voter suppression. Sanchez plays a central role in the national advocacy leadership: in 2012 he was elected Chair of NHLA, a coalition of the 46 leading national Latino organizations, he was re-elected in 2015 and then named the first chair emeritus in 2018. In 2019 he joined the national Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the first Latino in the history of the organization. Hector is also a member of the Kennedy Center’s Latino Advisory Council, Univision’s External Advisory Board, El Rey Network Hispanic Advisory Council and PVBLIC Foundation LATAM Board of Directors. From 2012 to 2018 the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director appointed Hector as co-chair of the Hispanic Council on Federal Employment in an effort to remove barriers to recruiting, hiring, retaining, and advancing Hispanics in the Federal workforce. In 2015, he was appointed by the AFL-CIO’s President Richard Trumka to the Executive Council Committee on Immigration and to the AFL-CIO Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice as well as a member of the Criminal Justice Reform advisory council. Prior to joining MFV, Hector was the Executive Director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA). He holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Political Science from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Ruth Santiago

Salinas, PR – Ruth Santiago is a resident of the municipality of Salinas in southeastern Puerto Rico where she has worked with community and environmental groups, fisher’s associations and other organizations for over thirty years on projects ranging from a community newspaper, children’s services, a community school, ecotourism projects to a rooftop solar energy pilot project. Ruth has been involved in the establishment of broad alliances to prevent water pollution from landfills, power plant emissions and discharges and coal combustion residual waste and promote solar communities and energy democracy. In addition to litigation in courts and administrative agencies, Ruth has organized and promoted environmental education projects, advised community groups and the Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve on watershed protection and land use issues. Most recently, Ruth has worked on cases related to energy projects and integrated resource plans. Ms. Santiago earned degrees from Lehigh University and Columbia Law School and has published articles on energy issues in Puerto Rico and serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Greg Serrurier

Treasurer

Woodside, CA – Greg Serrurier is a general partner at Redwood Grove Capital. He is on the board of NextGen America. He worked for 32 years at Dodge & Cox. Serrurier graduated from Oregon State University and Stanford's Graduate School of Business. In between, he worked at Friends of the Earth.

Allison Silverman

New York, NY – Allison is currently the vice president of the SC Group, a nonprofit philanthropic collective responsible for environmental, immigration, civic engagement, and other social and economic justice issues. Previously, she worked in government as a solar ombudsman for New York, where she led project-based change strategies to advance equitable access to solar energy and to encourage urban resiliency. She practiced international environmental law at the Center for International Environmental Law, where she advocated a rights-based approach to international climate change policies that safeguard communities and ecosystems. She has been working on climate and energy justice issues her entire career, including implementing a solar rural electrification and sustainable development project in Panama as a Fulbright Scholar, and coordinating a campaign with the Natural Resources Defense Council to promote energy alternatives to an ill-conceived massive hydroelectric scheme in Chile.

Dianne Stern

Scarsdale, NY – Dianne Stern is a teacher, writer, and lifelong conservationist. She has served on the Earthjustice Board for over 20 years.

Steve Unfried

Wilson, WY – Steve Unfried was an investment banker with Credit Suisse First Boston from 1969 to 1999, mostly based in New York but including 6 years in London. He is actively involved in conservation issues in the Northern Rockies, having served from 1998 to 2006 on the board of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, including two years as chair, and also from 2005 to 2010 on the board of the William D. Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming. He has a B.A. in economics from Princeton and an M.A. in economics and an LL.B. from Yale.

Stephen Vladeck

Washington, D.C. – Stephen Vladeck is a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts, constitutional law, and civil procedure. Stephe is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic (2023) and writes and edits the popular “One First” Substack newsletter.

David Yeh

San Diego, CA – David Yeh is a veteran investor, White House official, and climate OG working on scaling FOAK financing for gigaton-scale climate solutions.

He helped lead sustainable infrastructure and investments under Obama including DOE's LPO. His portfolio of 40+ impact investments include Tesla, Procore ($10B+ IPO), Climate Exchange ($600M+ carbon exit), Opus One (exit to GE), Fervo, and many of the largest renewable energy projects of their time. 7GT CO₂ and $2T+ of catalytic impact. He has a 20-year track record in VC and infrastructure, making the government a strategic ally, and building global partnerships including CHUEE ($170B+ Chinese energy partnership) and $7T sovereign wealth fund convening.

He is an advisor and Board Member at Dartmouth’s Irving Institute for Energy and Society, Confluence Philanthropy, The Climate Trust, Terra Alpha Investments, and several climate startups. David is a lecturer/speaker/writer at Wall Street Journal, Council of Foreign Relations, Ceraweek, CTVC, Dartmouth, Stanford, SXSW, and World Economic Forum.