Who are the Chapter staff?

Senior Chapter director Michael Bornstein has worked for 16 years in grassroots and political organizing. A graduate of the San Francisco public schools, he has a labor-studies certificate from UC San Francisco and a B.S. in organizational behavior from the University of San Francisco. Before working for the Bay Chapter, Michael worked for the California League of Conservation Voters, the San Mateo County Department of Health Services, and the San Francisco Democratic Party. In his free time he volunteers in progressive grassroots campaigns, travels, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of films. Michael's wife Py is pregnant with their first child.

Office manager Joanne Drabek started volunteering in the Chapter Office over 20 years ago. Before our previous Chapter administrator moved on, she recognized that Joanne had the capabilities to be a great successor, and Joanne, with her two daughters gone off to college, was ready for the new challenge.

Chapter conservation director Mike Daley has lived in California since the '60s, and has seen a lot of changes to our state and the Bay Area in that time, not all of them good. Mike has a degree in philosophy from UC Berkeley and a background in computer programming for environmental and health companies. Mike has worked for the Chapter for seven years, and was a volunteer for several years before that. His main environmental interest is keeping the Bay Area a place where people (and other species) will enjoy living for many generations to come.

Conservation manager Jonna Papaefthimiou is in love with the California landscape and with Sierra Club volunteers. When she's not organizing around local environmental issues, she's training for her first marathon or working on a tangled knitting project. She has bachelor's degrees in writing and urban studies, and a master's in city planning. Jonna and her husband Nicholas live a short bike ride from the Chapter Office in Berkeley. Much of her work for the Chapter has focused on Contra Costa and Alameda Counties west of the hills.

Conservation organizer Cathleen Sullivan graduated from Amherst College in anthropology and Spanish. She started her organizing career in Green Corps, "the field school for environmental organizing", and her responsibilities focus on issues in San Francisco and Marin and on clean energy.

Conservation organizer Anna Oursler started in the Chapter Office as a work-study intern. When we learned that she was taking a year off from her studies in environmental design, we insisted that she had to bring her talents here full-time. She will be leaving us July 1 to go off to Tanzania for her thesis research.

Development director and chief office rockclimber Bill Walsh has 20 years of customer-service experience and has been involved in environmental advocacy for 15 years. He has a strong background in starting up telephone-outreach programs, and began volunteering on the Chapter's Fundraising Committee in 1999. When the Chapter decided to start an in-house telephone-outreach team, Bill was the natural choice to lead it. He combines enthusiastic dedication to the environment with an intricate understanding of the technical details of fundraising.

Development clerk Oz Zur spent her childhood falling in love with reading, and traveling to and from an Israeli kibbutz. She began volunteering in the Chapter Office while still in high school. Due to her current studies at Vista College, she no longer spends her evenings doing member outreach, but she continues to help with the fundraising bookkeeping and data entry.

Membership outreach team leader Melanie Jolly has a BA in cultural anthropology (African studies) and an MA in international studies with an environmental concentration. After she finished her thesis, including extensive fieldwork in Malawi, her passion to work in the environmental field led her to Bill Walsh, who hired her after a phone interview. She left North Carolina and has been with us for almost four years. She says the best part of her job is hiring and training new fundraisers.

Membership outreach team leader Mary Krueger, also with the Chapter for four years, studied linguistics and worked in graphic arts and printing in former lives. Her hobby is glass-bead-making.

Membership outreach team leader Noel Fagerhough grew up in the Bay Area and spent her childhood riding her horse up and down the shores of San Pablo Bay from Rodeo to Point Richmond. She writes, gardens, and hikes, and is studying towards a degree in English.

Membership-outreach representative Rachel Fessenden spent her childhood roaming the Marin hillsides (on foot). She graduated from Oberlin College, in Ohio, in biology. Before coming to the Bay Chapter, she worked in a laboratory studying plants and as a grassroots political fundraiser.

Membership-outreach representative Walter Pope has degrees in economics and law. A long-time Berkeley resident, he has volunteered with the California Lawyers for the Arts and the Berkeley Community Law Center, and gone door-to-door to register voters. "Working for the Sierra Club is joyful. You always feel like socially useful labor on the front line," he says.

Membership-outreach representative Brian Busby studied psychology and music at Northwestern University. He is a big cat-lover.

Information-technology manager and webmaster Dennis Sheridan is the Chapter's main computer honcho and web person. Under the nickname "Crusty", he had a former career in the technical-publishing industry.

Yodeler editor Don Forman, a former linguistics professor and private nose, started volunteering for the Bay Chapter during a period of gainful unemployment. He found himself getting more and more involved until 14 years ago he found his true niche editing the Yodeler.

Yodeler ad manager Ellen Felker (technically a contractor and not on staff) once worked in the San Francisco advertising office of the New Yorker, but left to sell ads for the Sierra Club and other local organizations. For the last 15 years she has also volunteered in many different roles in the Berkeley public schools.