Introducing Bay Chapter staff

The Sierra Club Bay Chapter has an outstanding and dedicated staff. Our main mission is to facilitate and extend the work of our volunteers, doing jobs that require a full-time presence or otherwise wouldn't be possible or reasonable for volunteers. We operate the Chapter Office and provide support for the Chapter's key campaigns.

Senior Chapter director Michael Bornstein has worked for 20 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 bachelor's degree 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 an attending physician at Highland, Alameda County's public hospital. They have two children, Sarah (2-1/2) and David (1).

Office Manager Joanne Drabek has been supervising the office for seven years. She enjoys her daily interactions with staff, volunteers, and members; and loves being helpful. She is amazed at all the work the chapter does and is glad that she can be of assistance to the many leaders on the front lines. When Joanne is not busy at the Chapter Office, she can be found hiking trails in the East Bay Regional Parks, or enjoying the company of her family, friends, and three cats.

Legislative coordinator Brad Johnson started with the Chapter in the fall of 2006 as a conservation organizer. Before coming to the Chapter, he worked on environmental issues in Ohio, Louisiana, Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, and California and combines an interest in environmental policy with a love of the outdoors. Brad is falling in love with the Bay Area and is trying to spend enough time in Yosemite to qualify for full-time residency.

Organizing manager Laura Hahn joined our team in late January. She has been an organizer for six years, the last two as California statewide organizer for a national reproductive-rights organization. Laura was drawn to the Sierra Club for its unique structure and political power and intends to be the physical manifestation of our slogan: explore, enjoy, and protect!

Conservation organizer Christina Armor has been a community organizer on environmental issues for six years. She began working for the Bay Chapter in 2006, eager for her opening assignment of helping to defeat anti-environmentalist Rep. Richard Pombo. Before that, she worked on state and national issues in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Christina grew up in Fremont and is proud to be back in the Bay Area protecting the area where she grew up. Despite her vivacious sense of humor, Christina couldn't think of anything funny to include here.

Conservation organizer Misha Rashkin was born in Moscow, Russia. He immigrated to the United States when he was 5 and grew up in Salt Lake City. Misha studied liberal arts at St. John's College in Santa Fe and Annapolis. He then began organizing campaigns for Environment California and CalPIRG. He worked on the successful campaigns to pass the Million Solar Roofs Bill and AB 32, the state's landmark global-warming bill, and this past summer he worked on national Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards. He has been working with the Bay Chapter since September. If he had a superpower, he says, it would be his feet. As Pushkin said, "nozhki, nozhki, gde ty nyne?" (`Little feet, little feet, where are you now?', but it sounds different in Russian.)

With a bachelor's in political science, conservation organizer Jessica Hendricks got her start on the campaign trail for the 2006 mid-term elections with the Democratic National Committee and MoveOn.org. She went on to recruit and organize volunteers for the San Francisco Green Festival, which brought her to the Sierra Club, the perfect mix of public policy and environmental protection.

Conservation assistant Tracy Shepard graduated last year from Stanford with a bachelor's in film and media studies. Though intially interested in producing wildlife documentaries, she finally grappled with the fact that one must move to Los Angeles to pursue film, and decided to go into saving the planet through grassroots organizing instead. A Peninsula native, Tracy is glad to be exploring more of her beloved Bay by working on campaigns in the East Bay and Marin.

Development director Bill Walsh has 20 years of customer-service experience and has been involved in environmental advocacy for 15 years. He has a history of building outreach programs with various non-profits and began volunteering on the Bay Chapter's Fundraising Committee in 1999. When the Chapter decided to bring its fundraising program in-house in 2000, 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. When he's not in the office, he's usually hanging off a rock in Yosemite pretending to be John Muir or David Brower!

Stephen Becker, director of individual giving, joined the Chapter staff in March after retiring from a 34-year career in museums and cultural organizations. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley and holds a master's degree in folklore and folklife from Indiana University. His past positions include executive director of the California Historical Society, deputy director of the Lindsay Wildlife Museum (Walnut Creek), and director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (Santa Fe, NM). An avid fly-fisherman and life-long environmentalist, Stephen lives in Berkeley with his wife Beverly.

In January 2007, after 5-1/2 years of development work with the Chapter, Melanie Jolly was promoted to development manager, overseeing our telefundraising program. She has a bachelor's in cultural anthropology (African studies) and a master's in international studies with an environmental focus, which involved extensive fieldwork in Malawi, Africa. Her current focus is dedicated to building great relationships with our members, thus securing a brighter future for the Chapter, as well as the planet. Still, the best part of her job is training new fundraisers and seeing them succeed. "It makes me happy!"

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 is a child of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. An opponent of tyranny, superstition, unbridled greed, aggression, and other demons of irrationality, he enjoys doing his share at the Chapter Office advocating for environmental protection. He has also spent a lot of time studying music and playing piano with a jazz trio, sometimes performing just down the street from the Chapter Office at Caffé Trieste or at the Z Café in Oakland. He also enjoys reading and discussing history, "a great subject". He grew up here in Berkeley and graduated from Berkeley High School. Later he received a bachelor's degree in economics from UC Davis and a law degree from New College School of Law.

Membership-outreach representative Phill Russell comes to us from the hinterlands of Nebraska, where he studied music and theatre. (When the back room of the office was empty briefly, before we moved into it, he was heard filling it with reverberations of a Baroque aria.) After a brief stint working on environmental issues in New York he wanted to see if West Coast life was wicked-cool and/or awesome. He has decided that it is, in fact, and has been with the Chapter over a year.

Membership-outreach representative Kim Beavers comes from the East Coast, but fell in love with Northern California more than seven years ago. Her experiences as a news reporter in Humboldt County led her to become a dedicated tree hugger. She has been working at the Bay Chapter since last April, and is very dedicated to the "Save the Oaks" campaign and the TreeSpirit Project, as well as other local environmental concerns.

After living in the Windy City for the majority of his life, membership-outreach representative Dan Lloyd was blown westward and found himself in the Bay Area. Instantly he noticed a strong sense of community and wanted to be a part of it. Environmental issues soon became one of his passions. He also enjoys classical music, baseball, and black coffee.

Dennis Sheridan is our information-technology manager, handling all things computer. In past lives he was a master furniture-maker, restorer of primitive art and artifacts, director of online services, and editorial director in the computer-press industry. He says all of this occurred as a result of a tour of duty in the U.S. Navy as a youth, which left him dazed and confused.

Don Forman has been Yodeler editor since 1991. When the job came open, he found it the perfect place to combine all the skills he had learned up till then as a poet, linguist, volunteer activist, and scientific generalist, and to learn a few new ones to boot. Since then, he hasn't found anything else he would rather do. He has worked for the Chapter longer than anyone else, and when nobody else can remember something, people ask him.

Yodeler ad manager Ellen Felker is a freelance advertising, graphics, and marketing consultant for local arts and environmental organizations including the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Cal Performances, and the Yodeler. Prior to creating her own business in 1989, she worked for diverse regional, national, and local publications from The New Yorker to Children's Advocate. She has volunteered in the Berkeley public schools for 18 years as newsletter editor, grant writer, writing coach, scriptwriter, arts coordinator, and classroom assistant.