Staff
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Co-Director
lily@350vt.org
Lily joined 350VT’s staff in 2017, and since the organization began shifting to shared leadership in 2019, her main areas of work have been organizational development and operations. She has also contributed to various educational and community-building projects at 350VT, like collective grief gatherings, a Just Transition study group, and the climate justice zine project. Since 2008, Lily has been involved in various groups and various forms of study related to permaculture, nonviolent communication, intentional communities, earth-based spirituality, and collective liberation. She lives in Burlington and goes to the lake and into the woods as often as she can. She loves making music, especially singing with other people.
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Co-Director & Lead Organizer
vanessa@350vt.org
Vanessa has been organizing for climate justice since the fall of 2006 when she saw An Inconvenient Truth and decided to find people in her community of Somerville, MA who also wanted to do something about the problem. Since that time, she has connected with many passionate and dedicated people and worked with them to catalyze a just transition off fossil fuels. Her journey has included co-founding and co-leading Better Future Project and 350 Massachusetts and Mothers Out Front, a national organization focused on building the power of moms to address the climate crisis. She moved from Somerville to Strafford, VT, nine years ago with her two children, Isabelle and Cedric. She has a passion for ensuring all voices are at the decision-making table and for developing the leadership of others so we can build the collective power we need to create the change we want.
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Community Organizer
andres@350vt.org
Andrés Oyaga (he/him) is a community organizer and agroecologist who hails from Los Angeles, California, with familial roots in Guatemala and Colombia. He graduated from Middlebury College in 2023 with a B.A. in Environmental Justice, bringing an agroecological, anti-capitalist, and justice-focused lens to all his studies, work, and shenanigans. He is excited to join 350 Vermont to do the spadework of bringing about a Just Transition in Vermont. Andrés resides in Burlington and is a volunteer at and lover of The Knoll at Middlebury College, a collective member of the People’s Agroecology School (a project of Rural Vermont), past Foodways Organizer for the VT Releaf Collective, and slowly getting better at translation and interpretation support. You can find him on long bike rides in the middle of nowhere, reading a book, and/or cooking for loved ones. His door is always open.
Interns
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Communications Intern
media@350vt.orgAlyssa is a 350VT communications intern and high school student with a passion for advocacy and science. She has been involved in numerous legislative advocacy projects spanning nearly five years. As a leader of her High School’s Environmental Action Club, she helped organize many letter writing campaigns and petitions and testified twice in front of the Vermont Legislature. She also solo-directed several online first of their kind educational programs providing academic enrichment to historically underrepresented students. In her free time she can be found being nerd sniped by math puzzles, reading and crocheting next to her cats.
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Co-Director & Lead Trainer
trainings @350vt.org
Sonia runs 350VT’s training programs and works internally on organizational development and finances. She is an experienced trainer, facilitator, and organizer who prioritizes using experiential and popular education techniques to train activists and organizers. She has over 15 years experience working in social justice movements, including as the Executive Director of the Washington Peace Center in DC and board member of Training for Change. Originally from New York, she now lives in Brattleboro, VT, where she supports local racial justice organizing and plays in the woods.
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Empower VT Organizer
rebecca@350vt.org
Rebecca has worked as a volunteer for the past decade with various climate justice organizations including 350VT, Sunrise Montpelier, and Citizens for Climate Advocacy. She's also worked as the Community Climate Program Manager for Climate Economy Action Center of Addison County.As a parent of a jubilant and curious five year old, the effects of climate change have become more poignant and tangible in her family's day to day life. At the same time, Rebecca is buoyed by the way our movement is growing and changing; she is thrilled to be joining the 350VT staff and working with 350VT's thoughtful, caring, and dedicated base of volunteers. In this work, she wants to continue to learn how to genuinely center equity, anti-racism, and justice in our organizing spaces; work toward a just transition; and co-create a regenerative world.
Rebecca lives with her family on a hill in Northfield where she tends a rather wild no dig garden, explores the woods whenever possible, and tries to be present for the sweetness/difficulty of parenting.
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Families Rise Up Organizer familiesriseupmontpelier@350vt.org
Hannah grew up in Hartland, VT and now has a home with her family in Plainfield, VT. She is a clinical herbalist, homesteader, and mom. Hannah has cared about climate justice for as long as she can remember, and credits her parents for bringing her to large mobilizations and marches from a young age. She has been involved in activism for over a decade, including direct-action campaigns such as the Tarsands Blockade in TX and anti-fracking in PA, along with community and climate- justice organizing closer to home.Despite the overwhelming fullness of life with two little ones, Hannah believes she is a better organizer since becoming a mom; she is reminded multiple times a day about the importance of humor, compassion and patience, and she has to be efficient with her time, and clear about her priorities. Working toward the world she wants her kids to inherit is top of the list. She is passionate about connecting with other families to find joy and meaning, to build a network of support and community, and to embolden each other toward meaningful action for climate justice and collective liberation.
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Operations Director
robert@350vt.org
Robert grew up both in Vermont and Colorado, before ultimately settling in the Green Mountain State as an adult. Since 2009 he has made his home in Winooski, where he lives with his spouse and three cats. Robert received a BA in English from UVM, with minors in Political Science and Vermont Studies, but has spent most of his career working in operations and finance, primarily for political campaigns and nonprofits. Prior to joining 350Vermont he worked on both of US Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns and several years at Front Porch Forum, among other positions. Robert is a strong believer in the power and importance of local politics, and has served on both the School Board and City Council in Winooski, as well as on several local and regional commissions.
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Organizing Intern
intern@350vt.orgElio is a 350VT organizing intern focusing on strategic research and based in Middlebury. His prior organizing experience includes Sunrise Movement, Migrant Justice, lots of queer youth work, MiddPride, and a brief stint in national electoral politics. Sex education, abolition, and interfaith community are especially important to him. A Climate Action Fellow at Middlebury College studying Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (GSFS) and Education, they use their education in intersectional feminist principles and pedagogy to build community networks that can care for each of us and counter systemic oppression. Elio leads with transformative joy, revolutionary love, and deep respect. They do this work because our kids deserve better. When not organizing, he is a ravenous reader, adding garlic to everything, and writing letters to loved ones.
Board
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Board Member
Heather has traveled and worked in many roles centered around community organizing, environmental education, and nonprofit management. She first connected with 350VT in 2019, when she took on the role of Families Rise Up organizer. She held this position from 2019-2022, working to help families with young children find a sense of place in the climate justice movement. She is immensely grateful for the community of families she has met through her work with 350VT who have helped her feel hopeful in an increasingly overwhelming world and who constantly inspire her to direct her anxiety to meaningful action.
These days her primary job is mom, though she is also a fervid gardener with a small market business. Heather feels incredibly lucky to have found home on a beautiful mountain top in Tunbridge where she can tend her garden and play in the woods every day with her kids.
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Board Member
Una Fonte first became interested in climate organizing at 14 when she went on 350VTs Next Steps Climate Walk. After organizing various climate initiatives at her school, including a sustainable purchasing policy, she worked with 350 Vermont as a summer fellow on sustainable and accessible transportation. Currently, she is studying environmental science and policy at Smith College while continuing environmental and disability justice organizing work on campus. Her work building disabled community with dis-organizing and furthering food justice with the Smith’s Food Rescue Network brings her joy. In her free time, she enjoys hula-hoop dance, theater, and reading.
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Board Member
Sean first became involved with food waste organizing while at school at St. Lawrence University, which was a slippery slope that ultimately led to working with the Divestment Movement and to attending The People's Climate March in 2015. Since then he has worked as a farmhand, farm to school educator, and as a project manager for residential solar companies within the state of Vermont and is deeply passionate about targeting direct source carbon pollution. He has been actively organizing with 350VT's Chittenden Node for the past three years. You can find him wandering the Long Trail, sailing Lake Champlain, or tending to his garden when he's not organizing with 350VT.
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Board Member
Sarah became interested in climate organizing at a young age. Overwhelmed by the scale of the universe, the harm being done to our earth, and the systems of oppression that are so embedded in our society— as well as the beauty of every day and the gratitude that deserves, she began organizing in high school. Sarah was a leader in the movement to successfully divest the University of Vermont from fossil fuels in college. She has worked on many local and statewide Progressive campaigns. In her free time, Sarah enjoys painting, cycling, camping, and spending time with her cats.
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Board Member
Ita is a hot sauce connoisseur and can often be seen traipsing about town talking loudly, in the drama, interrupting hurtful remarks and breaking up fights. They are a founding member of CQ Strategies, which helps organizations become more culturally proficient and equity literate through education, resources, and on-going support.
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Board Member
Ali has been involved with organizing work since their time in high school where the pandemic truly invigorated her political awareness in the world. They helped to work with a local voting outreach group that helped register young voters throughout Bucks County, PA, which is where Ali is originally from. They are now a senior studying environmental studies and political science at University of Vermont and are working on a thesis related to environmental justice policy recommendations and migrant farmworkers in Vermont. In her free time, they dance salsa, play music, and read.
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Board Member
Maggie is an outdoor enthusiast and opportunistic eater, motivated by good food grown in healthy soil. Her engagement with combating the climate crisis emerged from working directly with the land as an organic farmer in some of the world's most beautiful natural landscapes including Vermont, the East End of Long Island, and Tuscany. She is equally likely to be found either contributing to carbon drawdown on her own property through gardening and land management with her husband and their two dogs, or peer-pressuring friends into running long distance races through Vermont's mountains and valleys. Maggie currently works managing agricultural development grants for Vermont's Agency of Agriculture and is excited to join the hard-working board of 350Vermont to support climate justice on the ground in her home state.
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Board Member
Jessica Van Oort is a writer and editor, and the social media coordinator for the Five Wits Press. She lives in Pawlet, VT, where she is on the Planning Commission and the Selectboard.