Divest Ed and our parent organization Better Future Project have been supporting campus leaders in and beyond the Massachusetts on their fossil fuel divestment campaigns since the movement kicked off in fall 2012. As these campaigns have heated up, students have run into both expected and unexpected challenges. We know there are many professionals out there who do not have the time to form relationships with campus groups pushing for divestment, but are eager to share what knowledge they can. To meet the need of students to navigate challenges and the desire of professionals to support them, we have assembled the Campus Divestment Advisory Committee, or “CDAC.” This is a team of experienced professionals from different fields who are able to lend their advice, legitimacy, and strategic engagement to student fossil fuel divestment campaigns.
Each semester, we gather our student leaders and CDAC members to think through different challenges, such as how to escalate, how to address financial arguments, and how to engage faculty. In addition, CDAC members agree to be contacted for a limited number of student support opportunities throughout the academic year. Finally, we ask that CDAC members help make sure that Divest Ed’s fellowship program remains financially viable by making personal contributions and/or helping attract financial support for the program.
Expectations of Membership:
- Be willing to receive a limited number of requests per semester (set by each CDAC member) from students for support, such as speaking at events, authoring op-eds, or providing advice.
- Make an effort to attend once per semester digital calls with Divest Ed Fellows and other CDAC members.
- Help financially support Divest Ed’s Fellowship program through direct giving and/or fundraising from others at a level that is meaningful to you.
Benefits of Membership:
- An opportunity to connect with and support student leaders waging exciting fossil fuel divestment campaigns from across the region.
- An opportunity to connect with other dynamic community leaders (including university faculty, faith leaders, socially responsible investment professionals, media professionals, etc) supportive of divestment and student leadership in the climate movement.
- Recognition for your leadership on Divest Ed’s website and in other written materials.
How to Join:
- We are expanding the CDAC to be a national body! You can join from wherever you are based.
- Applying to be a member of CDAC is ongoing and requires filling out a brief form and agreeing to the above expectations of membership.
- For questions about joining the Campus Divestment Advisory Committee, contact Craig at craig@betterfutureproject.org.
Meet our current Campus Divestment Advisory Committee:
Jim Armstrong
Public Relations Manager
Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island
Area(s) of expertise: Media and Communications
Jim Armstrong is a strategic communications professional with a background and lifelong interest in public policy and social justice. A former AmeriCorps volunteer based in an urban public school system, Jim went on to spend more than 17 years as a broadcast journalist covering breaking news across the country. His reporting earned several regional and national awards, including an Emmy in 2009. In late 2015, Jim switched gears to work as Public Relations Manager for a successful Rhode Island non-profit health insurance company that has a strong history of advocacy and engagement with the community.
Marcelle Grair
Organizer
Boston Teachers Union
Area(s) of expertise: Media and Communications, Community/Campus Organizing, Faculty/Faculty Organizing, Faith/Faith Organizing
Marcelle is from northeast Ohio and started organizing during high school at the age of 15. During high school she organized phone banks, canvasses, and other events to support legislative and electoral campaigns in her home state. While at Spelman College she started organizing in the labor movement as a Regional Organizer for the student labor solidarity group, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). She worked with community and labor groups to build a coalition to support workers in a fight for the benefits they deserved. After her time at Spelman, she became a National Organizer/Domestic Campaigns Coordinator for USAS. She worked with students, unions and community groups across the country on living wage and anti-privatization campaigns, contract fights, and she supported campus workers organizing to form unions. In addition to this, she organized with students and garment workers in countries such as Bangladesh to improve working conditions at factories where college apparel is made. After USAS Marcelle became a Community Organizer for Service Employees International Union (SEIU, Local 509). She organized with folks from across movements to build support for members and to establish new relationships. In addition to this, she supported the work of the local's Racial Justice Task Force. Marcelle currently works as an organizer for the Boston Teachers Union where she supports educators and other staff at schools working to form unions and secure collective bargaining agreements, and fighting for the schools that students deserve. Family means everything to her and they are the reason she organizes.
Lisa Anne Hamilton
Attorney and Climate Advocate
Area(s) of Expertise: Institutional Divestment, Environmental/Climate Justice
Lisa Anne Hamilton is the Adaptation Program Director for the Georgetown Climate Center in Washington, DC and the former Director of the Climate & Energy program for the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Ms. Hamilton’s work focuses on championing ambitious climate policies by leveraging the power of law to protect the environment and promote human rights. She has provided input to stakeholder convenings and technical assistance as a regulatory consultant for the Pace Energy & Climate Center and the Institute for Energy Economics Financial Analysis (IEEFA). Her work focused on closing the information gap to inform decision making about the fiscal and financial risks and opportunities for pubic power and investor-owned utilities. Ms. Hamilton has been a moderator for the Climate Resilience Planning and Adaptation Project with WEACT for environmental justice in Harlem and continues to collaborate with a global network of attorneys and activists to foster a Just Transition. Prior to joining GCC, she provided technical assistance to the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (NCEL) to further state-led coastal resilience. She is a member of the Global Adaptation and Resilience Working Group (GARI) and the Campus Divestment Advisory committee. She is a frequent speaker and panelist on the intersection of environmental sustainability and financial risk and a contributing author to the Research Handbook on Climate Finance Law (publication pending). Ms. Hamilton is a graduate of Howard University School of Law and Cornell University.
Paul Horvitz
Writer/Editor
Area(s) of Expertise: Media and Communications, Finance/Socially Responsible Investing
Paul Horvitz is a former reporter and editor at The New York Times, Bloomberg, the International Herald Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He focused on politics, the environment, business, and finance. He also worked for a decade in the investment management industry, handling communications for a firm that invests endowment capital for U.S. non-profits.
Amelia Koch
Controller
University of Mass Building Authority
Area(s) of Expertise: College administration
Amelia Koch has 30 years of experience in higher education administration. She transitioned from CPA at Coopers and Lybrand to Assistant Controller at Wellesley College and spent 12 years as Controller and the Assistant Vice President for Finance at the Rhode Island School of Design and then 9 years as Vice President for Finance at Berklee College of Music. She currently works as the Controller at the University of Massachusetts Building Authority.
Elizabeth Levy
Senior Vice President, Portfolio Manager
Trillium Asset Management
Area(s) of expertise: Finance/Socially Responsible Investing
Elizabeth Levy is Senior Vice President, Portfolio Manager, and Research Analyst with Trillium Asset Management, and leads Trillium's Fossil Fuel Free Core strategy. Before joining Trillium in 2012, Elizabeth worked as a Portfolio Manager for Winslow Management Company, a division of Brown Advisory, where she had been since 2004. She managed two environmentally-focused investment strategies, the Winslow Green Large Cap strategy from 2009-2011 and the Winslow Green Growth strategy during 2011. Elizabeth also provided equity research across Brown Advisory’s strategies, with a focus on water companies and green transportation companies.
Before joining Winslow, Elizabeth was a research associate for Tellus Institute, an environmental research organization. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the UMass Boston Center for Sustainable Enterprise and Regional Competitiveness and recently served on the Steering Committee of the Social Investment Research Analysts Network (SIRAN). Elizabeth was previously Treasurer and Vice President of the Board of Directors of Harvest Cooperative Markets in Boston.
Elizabeth holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary, and a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, as well as the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
Erina McWilliam-Lopez
Membership Manager
Intentional Endowments Network
Area(s) of Expertise: Media and Communications, Community/Campus Organizing, Finance/Socially Responsible Investing, Faculty/Faculty Organizing
Erina manages memberships for the Intentational Endowments Network. Previously, she was the Founding Associate Director of the Social Impact Lab at Lynn University, and before that on the founding leadership team of the Middlebury Institute’s Center for Social Impact Learning in Monterey, California where she oversaw the Frontier Market Scouts, a professional certificate training and fellowship in social enterprise management and impact investing.
Bill Page
Senior Vice President, Portfolio Manager
Essex Investment Management, LLC
Area(s) of Expertise: Finance/Socially Responsible Investing
Bill is a Portfolio Manager on the Global Environmental Opportunities Strategy (GEOS). Bill directs environmental investment policy and research for Essex, and is on the Investment and Proxy Voting Committees. Prior to joining Essex in 2009, he spent eleven years at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), most recently as Lead Portfolio Manager for GEOS and Head of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investment team. Bill developed GEOS over a four year period at SSgA, and was a member of the Global Fundamental Strategies group. Prior to SSgA, Bill worked in product management for Wellington Management Company, LLC. Before Wellington, he worked for Fidelity Investments in asset allocation. Bill has lectured extensively on environmental investing at global investment conferences and academic institutions. During business school, Bill worked on socially responsible investment research at KLD Research & Analytics. Bill is a founding board member of the Energy + Environment Foundation, focusing on strengthening energy and environmental education and promoting renewable energy. Bill is also on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Environmental Investment, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes original research at the intersection of the environment and investing. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Boston University and an MBA from the F.W. Olin School of Business at Babson College.
Nathan Phillips
Professor
Boston University
Area(s) of expertise: Faculty/Faculty Organizing, Climate Science
Nathan Phillips is an ecologist working on climate-relevant processes in natural and human systems, and a parent and citizen committed to accelerating our transition to a just and sustainable future.
Jim Recht
Physician
Clinical Asst. Prof. Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Area(s) of expertise: Community/Campus Organizing, Faculty/Faculty Organizing, Environmental/Climate Justice
A psychiatrist and clinical faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Tufts University School of Medicine, Jim became a climate activist in late 2012 after attending his first 350-MA meeting in Cambridge. In 2013, he helped spearhead an initiative that culminated in the Cambridge city council's endorsement of fossil fuel divestment. Impressed with the work and spirit of local student leaders, Jim then began collaborating with other concerned Harvard faculty to support the work of Divest Harvard. Their accomplishments include a widely published, frequently quoted public letter to Harvard's president and fellows that now has more than 260 faculty signatures, and a frequently cited FAQ on divestment of college endowments. Most recently, Jim has been working with a coalition of students, faculty and alumni from numerous Boston-area campuses that aims to foster solidarity and mutual support: the All-Campus Divestment Collaborative (“ACDC”).
Andrew Rodriguez
CEO + Chief Investment Officer
Change Finance, PBC
Area(s) of expertise: Institutional Divestment, Finance/Socially Responsible Investing, Faith/Faith Organizing, Environmental/Climate Justice
Andrew Rodriguez is CEO and Chief Investment Officer at Change Finance, PBC. He began his environmental and social justice work as a pastor, though after pursuing his MBA in Sustainable Systems from Bainbridge Graduate Institute, he began managing high-impact investment portfolios and SMAs. Andrew co-founded Change Finance in 2016, along with a team of three, to build publicly available, performance-oriented funds that change the world. Their first fund has been trading on the New York Stock Exchange since 2017.
Juliet Schor
Professor
Boston College
Area(s) of expertise: Faculty/Faculty Organizing, Environmental/Climate Justice
Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Juliet received her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Massachusetts. Her most recent book is Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (The Penguin Press, 2010). She is also author of the national best-seller, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (Basic Books, 1992) and The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (Basic Books, 1998), among other publications.
Michael Swack
Director
Center for Impact Finance, Carsey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire
Area(s) of Expertise: Finance/Socially Responsible Investing
Michael Swack is a professor at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire where he directs the Center for Impact Finance and the Master’s Program in Community Development, a program designed for adult practitioners. He has been involved in the design, implementation, and management of a number of community development lending and investment institutions both inside and outside the United States. He was the first Chairman of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA), a state-chartered equity fund for community economic development ventures and projects. He is the founding president and a current board member of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund. He was a founding board member of the Opportunity Finance Network. In 2000 he founded and continues to direct the Financial Innovations Roundtable, a program that promotes new approaches and policies designed to build the field of community development finance and increase access to capital for community development intermediaries.
Pat Miguel Tomaino
Director of Socially Responsible Investing
Zevin Asset Management
Area(s) of Expertise: Institutional Divestment, Finance/Socially Responsible Investing
Pat leads environmental, social, and governance (ESG) research and engagement — to help create responsible investment portfolios as well as a positive impact on behalf of our clients. To that end, Pat negotiates with portfolio companies; connects with experts, NGOs and activists; and challenges firms to improve using shareholder proposals. After graduating from Harvard College, Pat worked for several years as a senior analyst on the responsible investment team of F&C Asset Management, a large London-based sustainable investment firm. He has held research roles for several progressive groups, including Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2012 campaign and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Pat serves on the Socially Responsible Investing Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Investment Committee of Boston Ujima Project. Three facts about Pat: he is an avid runner, a U.S.-Mexico dual citizen, and a former public radio producer.
Sabine Von Mering
Professor
Brandeis University
Area(s) of expertise: Community/Campus Organizing, Faculty/Faculty Organizing, Climate Science, Environmental/Climate Justice
Sabine von Mering was born in Germany and grew up on a small car-free island in the North Sea called Langeoog. She came to the United States in 1992. Since 1998 she has been teaching German literature and culture at Brandeis University. As Director of the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis, she has organized events about climate change for almost two decades. She is an active member of the Metrowest node and serves as volunteer coordinator of the Statewide Steering Team of 350 Massachusetts.
Justin Wright
CEO
Habitus Incorporated / Active Neutrals
Area(s) of expertise: Institutional Divestment, Faith/Faith Organizing, Climate Science, Environmental/Climate Justice, Negotiation, Communication, Conflict Management, Facilitation, Mediation, Meeting Design and Facilitation
Justin Wright is a consultant, facilitator, and executive coach. He has expertise providing transactional assistance, advising clients on behavior change, mediating disputes and providing mediation and negotiation training and executive coaching. Justin has trained and advised individuals at companies such as the Sustainable Endowments Institute, Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Better Future Project, FINCA International, Neighborworks, and more. This corporate training work is complemented by the academic teaching Justin has done at Yale and Northeastern University. At present, Justin is focused on training individuals and organizations pursuing missions of Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship.
Quinton Zondervan
Software Engineer and Cambridge City Councillor
Area(s) of expertise: Media and Communications, Community/Campus Organizing, Institutional Divestment, Finance/Socially Responsible Investing, Faculty/Faculty Organizing, Climate Science, Environmental/Climate Justice
Quinton Zondervan is an environmental activist, a successful biotech entrepreneur, and an award-winning software engineer currently serving as a Cambridge City Councilor. Quinton is the co-founder and past CEO of Excelimmune, a biopharmaceutical company that develops human antibodies against infectious disease targets. Prior to founding Excelimmune, Quinton served as the CTO of software startup Clickmarks, developing innovative web and mobile software applications. Quinton began his career as a software engineer at IBM where he co-invented the SyncML data synchronization standard. In addition to his work at the Cambridge City Council, he serves as president of Green Cambridge, a nonprofit organization that promotes energy conservation, recycling, and other sustainability initiatives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and on the board of the Climate Action Business Association. Quinton holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and two bachelor’s degrees in the fields of mathematics and computer science from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida.