Chris Espinosa brings over 15 years of policy and legislative advocacy experience to his role as Legislative Director, Climate & Energy for Earthjustice. He returned to the organization’s Policy and Legislation team after serving for over five years as the Director of Outreach & Engagement at the House Committee on Natural Resources. In that capacity he spearheaded the committee’s outreach and engagement efforts to a broad and diverse array of stakeholder constituencies in advancement of the committee’s legislative priorities on a wide range of issues. Among his many accomplishments in that role was leading the development of the unprecedented and inclusive community-led stakeholder process to create Chair Grijalva’s (D-AZ) and the late-Rep. McEachin’s (D-VA) landmark Environmental Justice for All Act. Chris also organized Grijalva and McEachin’s historic Congressional Convening on Environmental Justice at the U.S. Capitol that included hundreds of environmental justice participants from across the country in the Congress’s first-of-its-kind event.
Prior to serving on the Hill, Chris served as Executive Vice President & COO of GreenLatinos and spent three years as a Legislative Representative for Earthjustice covering Clean Water Act jurisdictional issues and working extensively with organizations throughout Appalachia fighting mountaintop removal coal mining. Chris has also held previous roles with Representative Julia Brownley (D-CA), Hispanic Federation, League of United Latin American Citizens, and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.