Orion Grassroots Network

Orion Grassroots Network - Who We Are

The Network Team

Erik Hoffner
Coordinator
In addition to coordinating the Orion Grassroots Network, Erik is a regular contributor to Orion magazine and Grist. He also serves on the boards of Co-op Power and Northeast Biodiesel, two community-owned renewable energy development organizations. Erik's work as a photographer also appears in Orion and The Sun, and he is an exhibiting member of the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro, VT. To see more of his personal work, visit www.erikhoffner.com.

Silas Branson
Intern
Silas is a junior at Haverford College in Pennsylvania majoring in History and English. He is taking a year off to work at Orion. Silas grew up and lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts. He enjoys Red Sox baseball and playing soccer.

Our Advisors

Gwen Barlee is Policy Director for one of Canada’s leading wilderness conservation groups, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, in Vancouver, BC. Her diverse education and experience includes social work, film production, and web development, and she is a past executive team member of the Victoria chapter of the Council of Canadians.
Marcelo Bonta is the founder and director of the Center for Diversity & the Environment and the Young Environmental Professionals of Color. He consults with environmental organizations and institutions on diversity issues in areas including outreach, partnerships, recruitment, retention, and pipeline issues. Marcelo has authored numerous papers on the topic and is also a co-author of the book Diversity and the Future of the U.S. Environmental Movement.
Rev. Clare Butterfield is Executive Director of the Chicago-based Faith in Place, an interfaith project that gives religious people the tools to become good stewards of the Earth. She preaches and teaches regularly at congregations throughout Illinois, while coordinating programmatic and organizational development. She is a Unitarian Universalist minister from central Illinois with a lifelong interest in environmental matters.
Mike Connelly is the former Executive Director of the Klamath Basin Ecosystem Foundation in Klamath Falls, OR, a collaborative, community-based conservation organization bringing farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and river advocates together. Mike has served on the board of the Klamath County Farm Bureau, and is currently working to open a bakery to make bread with locally-grown Klamath wheat. Read Mike's article in Orion: Home Is Where They'll Lay Me Down
Mark Dowie is a former publisher and editor of Mother Jones magazine. He is the author of four books, including Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century, published in 1995 by MIT Press and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and American Foundations: An Investigative History. Dowie’s investigative journalism has won dozens of major awards, including four National Magazine Awards. Read Mark's articles in Orion. Conservation Refugees & In Law We Trust
Gloria Flora is founder and Executive Director of Montana-based Sustainable Obtainable Solutions, an organization whose mission it is to revamp the paradigm of public land management to one that respects all the needs of people and nature. In her prior 22-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, she became nationally known both for her leadership in ecosystem management and for her courageous principled stands, for which she won the Murie Award from the Wilderness Society.
Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, best-selling author, and a proponent of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices. He is author and co-author of dozens of articles as well as six books including Blessed Unrest, The Next Economy, Growing a Business, the best-selling The Ecology of Commerce, and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution with Amory and Hunter Lovins. His Natural Capital Institute in northern California recently launched WISER Earth, an online hub and directory of hundreds of thousands of grassroots organizations working towards environmental sustainability and social justice around the world. Read Paul's articles in Orion: Listening & To Remake the World
Pramila Jayapal is the founder and Executive Director of Hate-Free Zone Washington in Seattle. An activist and writer, Pramila has been actively involved in international and domestic social justice issues for over 12 years, working across Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as domestically with immigrant and refugee communities in Washington state. She is the author of Pilgrimage: One Woman’s Return To a Changing India.
Cheryl King Fischer is the founder and executive director of the Montpelier, VT-based New England Grassroots Environment Fund, a grantmaking collaborative that focuses on community-based environmental issues, civic engagement, democracy, and social justice. NEGEF is a unique fund in that it a) gives directly to activist groups whether or not they are non-profits, b) supports the very widest range of environmental initiatives, and c) has a large pool of funding partners.
Dana Lanza is the Executive Director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association in New York City. Before EGA, Dana founded a youth empowerment and environmental health and justice non-profit organization in San Francisco called Literacy for Environmental Justice, which she directed from 1998-2005. In addition to Dana's leadership within LEJ, she has served as faculty at New College of California.
Meizhu Lui was a Boston City Hospital kitchen worker and union member for 20 years, rising through the latter’s ranks to ultimately become President of AFSCME Local 1489. In 1993 Meizhu became an organizer for Health Care for All, building a multi-ethnic coalition that challenged Boston’s hospitals to fund community driven health projects.
Tom Petersen is Development Director of Wildlands CPR in Missoula, MT. Tom has an MS in Environmental Studies and has worked as a fundraiser for non-profit environmental groups for thirteen years. He co-founded and directed an environmental education organization in North Carolina for seven years and is a published nature writer. He is the editor of the book, A Road Runs Through It: Reviving Wild Places, recently published by Johnson Books.
John Weisheit is the Colorado Riverkeeper and also the Conservation Director for Living Rivers in Moab, UT. He has a long history of advocacy for rivers in the Southwest and is a licensed river guide. With two co-authors, John is author of Cataract Canyon: A Human and Environmental History of the Rivers in Canyonlands.