Jon Barrows
Trainings Director - Washington, dc
Trainings [at] ssc.org / 202.548.4592
Jon started organizing as a high school student in the beautiful state of Maine. He first joined the SSC in 1998 while interning with the NH Chapter of the Club. He was a founding member of the Trainings Department, helping to create the current model of SPROGs, staffing a near record number of programs over the next 4 years.
Jon coordinated the Vote Environment campaign during the 2000 election for the SSC, worked as a Conservation Organizer with the NH Chapter on sprawl and forestry issues, served as the NH Chapter Chair during his two year stint at Antioch New England Graduate School (home of the nation's first Master's level degree for Advocacy & Organizing), made a foray into the world of high school biology teaching, and coordinated the Greenpeace Organizing Term in the Fall of '06.
He is grateful to be back home at the SSC, helping expand and shape our training programs. Jon is also the Co-Chair of the Power Shift '09 Steering Committee of the Energy Action Coalition.
When not training students to be more effective organizers, Jon enjoys contra dancing, ultimate frisbee, and writing poetry.
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Jenny Bedell-Stiles
Northwest Regional Organizer - Portland, OR
Jenny [at] ssc.org
Jenny began organizing as a college student at the
After graduating in 2006 with an Honors degree in Environmental Studies and Political Science, she accepted a position with the environmental leadership training program, Green Corps. In the following year she traveled across the country, organizing for Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters, Minnesota Environmental Partnership, and Vermont Public Interest Research Group. Her experiences further solidified her commitment to student organizing, addressing the climate crisis, and love for her
When not working with fantastic, inspiring young people on climate solutions, Jenny can often be found biking and walking the streets of Portland, hiking, reading movement and non-movement books, watching $3 movies, and tossing around frisbees.
Maura Cowley
Campaign Director - Washington, DC
Campaign [at] ssc.org / 202.548.4594
Transitioning from the SSC's Northeast Organizer to it's National Campaign Director, Maura has been with the SSC since August of 2006. She began organizing while attending Penn State University, where she served as the president of the university's environmental activist organization for two years. During that time, she coordinated two successful campaigns and had the privilege of working with some top-notch student organizers. Together, they organized Penn State's Farm to College campaign, which asked the university to purchase locally grown produce. Following the campaign, Maura was hired by Penn State to implement the school's Farm to College program. While she was wrapping up the Farm to College program, Maura began coordinating a campaign asking Penn State to commit to a comprehensive energy policy which included renewable energy purchasing, energy efficiency and conservation and on-site renewable energy generation. The campaign was supported by over 4,500 students at Penn State and received local, regional and national media attention.
Maura graduated from Penn State in August of 2006 with majors in political science, anthropology and economics. After graduating, she jumped right into her job, which was created as a result of the SSC/Climate Campaign Merger. She is very excited to be working with dedicated and talented student leaders from across the Northeast on the issue that she believes truly is the challenge of our generation- global warming.
Aside from working with students to win rocking victories, Maura also enjoys traveling, spending time with friends, reading and hiking.
Tamara EvansNational Director - Washington, DC
tamara [at] ssc.org / 202.548.4591
After graduating summa cum laude from the University of Missouri with a few B.A.'s in Spanish, History, Political Science and Environmental Studies, Tamara accepted a Greencorps organizing fellowship and spent a year helping launch the Sierra Club's Building Environmental Communities program, working to protect the Arctic National Wildlife refuge from oil drilling with the Alaska Coalition, and breaking fundraising records in the Cleveland office of the Fund for Public Interest Research.
Tamara joined the SSC as Trainings Director in May 2005, and coordinated two summers of fantastic activist trainings. During her tenure, the Sierra Student Coalition trainings department expanded to include the first Spanish-language training, and partnered with Building Bridges to the Outdoors to empower students to confront environmental injustice in their communities. She also fashioned and implemented the Building Environmental Campus Communities Fellowship program, which provides financial and campaign support for outstanding student organizers.
Tamara believes students are by far the most strategic, effective, and fun demographic with whom to demand and implement just and effective global warming solutions, and is thrilled to be doing this important work with her own generation. If you catch her out of the office, it's likely to be on a bike, in the woods, or running. She also enjoys reading, salsa dancing, yoga, and exploring Washington DC.
kristin [at] ssc.org / 202.548.4593
Kristin Moe is the newest member of the Washington staff, and her path to it has been fairly roundabout. She
graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Kenyon College with a B.A. in American Studies in 2007. Her passion for activism grew out of a thesis on the Mississippi civil rights movement that explored the question, “Why do people become activists?” (She’s still figuring it out.) Kristin was increasingly active in Kenyon's environmental community, and loved organizing events that bridged the worlds of nature and the arts. She was also part of a task force that created a road map for Kenyon's sustainable development, both environmental and social.
Kristin lived in Mexico for a time after graduation--volunteering, teaching, dancing and speaking Spanish--and landed in DC ready to immerse herself in the climate justice movement! After an internship at Oil Change International, she joined the SSC in January of 2009. She's always blown away by the passion and commitment of her colleagues in the movement, and she looks forward to learning from their wisdom.
When not "juggling cats" in the SSC office, she's most likely to be found on the grass in a patch of sunshine, reading, painting, documenting an oral history, or wrestling with her great American novel... as always, a work in progress.
Kim Teplitzky
Field Director - Philadelphia, PA
kim [at] ssc.org / 215.508.3310
Kim started organizing in college where she led a clean energy campaign at Temple University in Philly, pressuring the administration to purchase wind power. Through her on-campus work she got involved in the Climate Campaign helping create a state-wide network of student groups in Pennsylvania. She then joined up with the Energy Action Coalition where she represented the Climate Campaign at their founding meeting. She now serves on their Steering Committee helping build partnerships for The Challenge.
That same summer she attended her first SSC SPROG (summer training program) which led her to a trainings internship in the SSC's DC office. It was there she stepped up to work with the Conservation and Energy Committees and through them she helped organize the U.S. and international youth presence at the U.N. Climate Negotiations in Montreal in 2005.
She has also interned with Campus Progress where, among other things, she blogged undercover from conservative events and was a Young People For 2006 Fellow. Eventually though, she did graduate from Temple with a degree in journalism and after some brief forays into South America joined the SSC staff team in what she believes is one of the best jobs in the country.
Zo Tobi
Northeast Regional Organizer - Worcester, MA
zo [at] ssc.org / 603.305.3825
Zo joined the youth clean energy movement at Clark University in 2003, finished an International Development degree in 2007, and chose to forgo a free master's degree to organize full-time in 2008.
Zo was raised in New Hampshire by his father Ariel and his mother Nancy. Ariel, born into a working-class Israeli home, married after serving in Israel's elite paratrooper force, and, with little English, launched a house-painting business to support his young family. Nancy, born into a middle-class Jewish-American home, has juggled motherhood and employment in the corporate world, while somehow making a name for herself as an environmental & democracy advocate.
Through long walks in the woods and long days on the painting ladder with his father, Zo learned that all creation deserves reverence, all children deserve a chance, and all work deserves care. Through his mother's organizing for citywide recycling during his young years and now for election protection, Zo learned we all have a responsibility
to each another, and, with a little courage and strategy, we all can make a difference.
In his spare time, Zo is a Bikram Yoga enthusiast and has performed as a progressive folk-rock songwriter in the New England college scene. He may pursue music full-time, attend Rabbinical school, or take up holistic healing, after having attended to some of the converging catastrophies of the 21st century.
Great Plains Regional Organizer - Des Moines, IA
juliana [at] ssc.org / 425.274.5877
Juliana began organizing as a freshman at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She successfully led a campaign that made Whitman to become the first college in the state to purchase renewable energy. Over the next few years, Juliana succeeded in increasing the college's purchase of renewable energy, served as co-President of Campus Greens, and founded the Whitman Campus Climate Challenge group. She has been involved with the SSC since 2004, serving on the Conservation Committee and as chair of the Personnel Committee. She represented the SSC at the U.N. Climate Negotiations on Climate Change in Montreal in 2005, co-directed the Northwest Climate Justice Summit and was a co-founder of the Cascade Climate Network, both in 2007. After graduation from college, she moved to Des Moines, Iowa as part of the team organizing the SSC's March to ReEnergize Iowa. She loved it so much she decided to stay in the Midwest.
Outside of organizing, Juliana plays (and coaches) a ton of ultimate frisbee, jams out on her string bass, and is a complete geology nerd.
Cody Young
cody [at] ssc.org / 765.404.2477
Cody started organizing at Indiana University with INPIRG (Indiana Public Interest Research Group), where he helped initiate an office of sustainability and created the largest coalition in IU history. The coalition began working with local residents and organized concerts, marches, workshops, and discussions.
After graduation, he stayed in Bloomington and helped build one of the largest organic farms in Indiana, an experience that helped him recognize the power of communities. I began to see that community organizing is the only way that we, as nation, will ever adequately address some of the most dire problems in our country and our world. He joined the SSC in August of 2008 and has been striving to help build student communities ever since.
Cody says, “I firmly believe that humans never would have made it this far without cooperation. We are social creatures built for friendship and community, and it is out of friendship and community that our future will be born.”
In his free time he likes to pretend he’s a ninja.
