WVE STAFF & BOARD

Staff Retreat with Board President
Montana, September 2007

WVE STAFF

Dori Gilels
Executive Director

Dori Gilels lives in Missoula and is a past president of the WVE board. She holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Montana in Environmental Education. She worked on hardrock mining issues for almost four years beginning in 1996, first as a Project Coordinator for Mineral Policy Center and then as the Montana Director of the Rock Creek Alliance, a non-profit organization working to protect the Clark Fork River and Cabinet Mountains Wilderness from the proposed Rock Creek mine. In the spring of 2000, Dori worked for the Nancy Keenan for Congress campaign as a field organizer. She also worked for the Center for Environmental Politics as founder and Director of the Montana Political Accountability Project, which offered the first major public critique of former Governor Judy Martz for her failure to uphold campaign promises on key environmental, economic and social justice issues. In 2004, Dori contracted with WVE as the coordinator of breast milk contamination issues and joined the staff in 2005 as the Northern Rockies Program Director, providing management and oversight of all WVE programs and fundraising in Idaho and Montana. Dori balances her passion for environmental health and justice advocacy with parenting two small children, playing on a women’s hockey team, skiing, camping and getting back in the kayak for a good paddle now and then.

Jean Claire Duncan
Director of Finances & Administration

Jean Claire Duncan has a Master's Degree in Business Administration from the University of Montana and a Bachelor's of Science from University of Kentucky. Jean oversees the financial, human resource and technical systems management of the organization. She brings eight years of experience with business and financial management, office systems and other entrepreneurial endeavors. Most recently, Jean spent the last six years working with Montana-based Alternative Energy Resources Organization (AERO) as an Interim Executive Director and board member. She also served three years as the Business Manager for Jeannette Rankin Peace Resource Center in Missoula, as Executive Director of the Montana Hunger Coalition, and as the General Manager of a California-based food cooperative. The pursuits that keep her happy are the great out of doors, fresh local organic food consumption and being with her wonderful children, all but one of whom are up and out!

Alexandra Scranton
Director of Science and Research

Alexandra Gorman has a Masters degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana and a B.A. from Amherst College. Alex organizes WVE's regional toxics campaigns and provides scientific review for the organization's programs. Alex also conducts WVE's watchdog program which involves monitoring and commenting on industrial activities related to toxics (permits, public hearings etc.) Prior to working at WVE, Alex worked in the epidemiology and statistics unit at the American Lung Association headquarters in New York. Alex currently sits on the Montana Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Advisory Group, the Missoula City/County Air Quality Advisory Council and the Institutional Biosafety Committee for Rocky Mountain Laboratories (NIH).

Jamie Silberberger
Campaigns Organizer

Jamie Silberberger has a M.S in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana and a B.A. from UCLA.  While attending the University of Montana, Jamie was named a Doris Duke Conservation Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (2005-2006). Jamie currently leads WVE’s mercury campaign and lends her support to other campaigns as needed.  Prior to joining the WVE staff, Jamie worked as a research associate at the University of Montana, a policy intern at Save America's Forests in Washington D.C., and a seasonal park ranger in Yellowstone National Park. She sits on the Missoula Water Quality Advisory Council, the Montana Recycling Market Development Task Force, and the state steering committee for Montana Women Vote. When not fighting toxic contamination, Jamie enjoys exploring the Montana wilderness and keeping up on current events.

Ali Solomon
Director of Communications/Membership

Ali Solomon has more than 11 years experience in marketing and communications in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. In November 2007 she moved to Missoula from Chicago, where she spent nearly seven years directing the communications department at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. Her corporate experience includes a stint as the online community manager at iExplore.com, an adventure travel web portal, and three years as an acquisitions coordinator for the best-selling book series ...For Dummies. Ali holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She and her trusty dog Tuck enjoy exploring Missoula’s hiking trails.

Erin Thompson Switalski

Senior Campaigns Organizer

Erin Thompson has several years of grassroots organizing experience in Montana. Erin came to Missoula, Montana from Colorado in 1997 and graduated from the University of Montana in 2001 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish. Erin was active at the University as a student Senator and chairwoman of the student political action committee and sat on the board of the Montana Public Interest Research Group. She coordinated a youth “Get Out the Vote” campaign with a “Vote Environment” component and organized student lobbying efforts for higher education funding at the Montana State Legislature. Erin is the Board treasurer of the Missoula-based social justice organization Community Action for Justice in the Americas and through this organization has traveled to Colombia twice to act as a human rights observer. At WVE, Erin is primarily responsible for overseeing the Safe Cleaning Products Initiative. In her free time, Erin can be found backcountry skiing, cycling around Montana, or backpacking in her favorite wilderness areas.

On Contract

Maria Mabbutt
Latina Outreach Coordinator

Maria Mabbutt was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas but has called Idaho home since the early ‘70s. She brings many years of experience in grassroots advocacy. She worked with farmworker advocacy for 15 years with Idaho Legal Aid Services, Migrant Farmworkers Law Unit and the Idaho Department of Employment as the state’s Farmworker Advocate. She also served as the Executive Director for Marketing for the Hispanic Business Association and coordinated Idaho Hispanic Caucus Institute for Research and Education’s Latino Vote 2002. Maria currently serves on the Board of the Western States Center has been President of Idaho’s Hispanic Women’s organization, Mujeres Unidas.

INTERNS/FELLOWS

Cassidy’s activist work began in California with the Surfrider Foundation, and followed her north to Montana.  She has an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana to accompany her B.A. from UCLA.  She’s worked in many capacities in the Missoula community: with Students for Economic and Social Justice in their pilot semester, as a campaign organizer with Montana Conservation Voters, as a volunteer to the GUTS! (Girls Using Their Strengths) program, and is currently a board member for Community Action for Justice in the Americas.  She is also the author of Fighting for the Dream: Voices from a New Generation of Maya Women.  In her free time, Cassidy likes snowy slopes, fast rivers, and pulling weeds out of her garden.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Lisa Woll
Washington, D.C.

President

Lisa Woll is CEO of the Social Investment Forum (SIF), the non profit organization representing the socially responsible investing industry which integrates social, environmental and other screens in investing. Prior to SIF, Lisa was executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation, an international organization seeking to strengthen the role of women in the news media around the world and to protect press freedom. Lisa has extensive experience in international and domestic social policy and has worked extensively around the globe on human rights issues, particularly children’s human rights. She was the director of the first international study to look at the impact of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and directed the Washington, DC office of Save the Children, She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. She has also worked on a wide range of social policy issues in the United States, as executive director of Friends of Vista, as a legislative assistant in the U.S. Congress, and as a New York City Urban Fellow. Lisa is the founder of Suited for Change, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that provides professional clothing and ongoing career education to low-income women who have completed job training programs and are seeking employment. She was a founding board member and former president of the board of The Women's Alliance, a national membership organization of community organizations that increase the employability of low-income women. In 2001, Lisa was named a Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian Magazine in recognition of her pioneering role with Suited for Change. She has received numerous other awards and has volunteered on numerous other nonprofit boards and commissions. Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Illinois and a master’s degree in public policy and women’s studies from George Washington University. She spent 1990 – 1991 in Melbourne, Australia, as a Fulbright Fellow.

Aimee Boulanger
Seattle, WA

Aimee Boulanger is program director for the Institute for Children's Environmental Health. Prior to this, Aimee served as executive director for Women's Voices for the Earth, a national organization increasing women's leadership to reduce the environmental links to breast cancer, birth defects, children's illnesses, and reproductive harm. She has also worked as field director for the Mineral Policy Center (now called EarthWorks), supporting communities in the western US and around the globe to reduce the negative impacts of mining. Aimee has lived in Alaska, working for Alaska Center for the Environment on environmental health and for the Sierra Club on coastal forest protection. She focused on hunger issues in a position with Oxfam America, traveled to the Philippines to study deforestation issues, and has years of experience working in environmental education programs for children. Aimee serves on the board of Great Basin Mine Watch in Nevada and the Western Mining Action Project in Colorado. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and Politics from Mount Holyoke College.

Joyce Mphande-Finn, Ed.D., LCPC, has B.A. in Education from the University of Malawi, a BSc in Business Administration from Berea College, an M.A. in Counseling from University of Montana, and earned a Doctorate in Education with emphasis in Counselor Education and Supervision at the University of Montana. Her dissertation was on the rural women’s experiences of living with HIV/AIDS. She has worked as a high school teacher, a training coordinator for volunteer organizations in her country of Malawi, such as Peace Corps, and British Volunteer Organization, Japanese and Canadian volunteer organizations. She worked as a health educator with World Health Organization in Malawi in the early years of HIV/AIDS. In the US, Joyce has worked for Planned Parenthood, Blue Mountain Women’s clinic, the Missoula Indian Center as a counselor and educator, and the Missoula Health Department as a community health specialist. She is currently a member of the Community Planning Groups for both HIV Prevention and Treatment in Montana. She is currently working as a Clinical Supervisor for Planet Kids (a Supervised Visitation and Exchange Program under the Missoula YWCA). Also currently contracting with Missoula Partnership Health Center – running support groups for women living with HIV/AIDS and Families affected by HIV/AIDS. She is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor with her own private practice in Missoula – Counseling and Consulting.

Angela Park
Hartland, VT

Angela Park is an independent consultant and founder and director of Diversity Matters, a nonprofit organization that aims to make diversity and inclusion foundational assets of environmental and social change leaders and organizations. As a writer Angela's articles have been published most recently by Yale University Press, The Diversity Factor, and Grist Magazine. Angela brings government, nonprofit, and private sector experience to her expertise on diversity and inclusion, organizational culture change, sustainable development policy, environmental justice, community development, and leadership. She has testified before Congress and state legislatures; consults to foundations, community-based organizations, national social and environmental policy organizations, Fortune 50 companies, and educational institutions; and lectures at universities across the country. Previously, Angela worked at The White House in both terms of the Clinton/Gore administration, directed state level sustainable development policy initiatives at the Center for Policy Alternatives, and co-founded and served as deputy director of the Environmental Leadership Program. She participated in the inaugural class of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program, graduated from the NTL Institute's Diversity Practitioner Certificate Program, and was named a Young Woman of Achievement by the Women's Information Network. She lives on an organic farm and 270-acre ecological cohousing community in Vermont.

Anja Rudiger
New York, NY

Anja Rudiger is a policy analyst with over ten years’ experience working for gender and racial equality and advancing economic and social rights. She currently directs the Human Right to Health Program, a national capacity building initiative based in New York City and run jointly by the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) and the National Health Law Program (NHeLP). In all her activist and professional roles, Anja has sought to integrate a rights-based approach into policymaking at local, national, and international level. Prior to settling in the U.S., Anja was based in London and carried out consultancies for clients including the European Commission and the British government. She also established the research department at the British Refugee Council, managed the UK Secretariat of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, and led a small nonprofit gender consultancy firm. She is a former board member of Women’s Design Service, a London-based nonprofit that works with women to make urban planning more responsive to women’s needs and rights. Anja received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kiel in Germany.

ADVISORY BOARD

Sandra Steingraber is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Ithaca College in New York. Sandra is a noted ecologist, author and internationally recognized specialist on the connection between environmental pollution and its impact on human health. Steingraber's highly acclaimed book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment presents cancer as a human rights issue. It was the first to bring together data on toxic releases with newly released data from the U.S. cancer registries. Her second book, Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood, is both a memoir of her own pregnancy and an investigation of fetal toxicology. In August 2007, Sandra published a report for the Breast Cancer Fund called The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know. Sandra is an enthusiastic and highly sought-after public speaker, known for her unique ability to serve as a translator between scientists, activists, researchers and mothers.

Liz Banse is Associate Director of Resource Media in Seattle. She provides media support, training, and outreach for environmental and public health organizations across the West.

Anita Dupuis is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. She has a Masters Degree in Business Administration and has been working in sustainable economic development for 15 years. In this work she has emphasized strategies that are culturally and environmentally appropriate and which support the integration and application of tribal traditional values in a modern context.

Marcy Mahr is a founding member of Voices for the Earth and served as our first Board Chair. She is a conservation biologist currently directing the Conservation Science program of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, in which she coordinates a myriad of scientists throughout the Y2Y region to conduct research in support of local and regional conservation designs for protecting biodiversity and ecosystem health. Marcy holds a M.S. in Botany from the Field Naturalist Program at the University of Vermont and a B.A. from Middlebury College. She spent the latter half of the 1980s working for the Vermont Natural Resources Council on land and water conservation and wildlife mitigation. Over the last decade, Marcy coordinated field research for the Craighead Wildlife-Wildlands Institute and the US Forest Service's Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project. Marcy also spent a year with AERO designing and piloting a bioregional food system to increase Montana's self-reliance and sustainability. She lives with her family in Montana's Flathead Valley in a solar-powered, strawbale house and enjoys eating organic fruits and veggies from their farm.

Dr. Mary O'Brien has a Ph.D. in Botany and works as the Ecosystem Projects Director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. Mary is the former president of the Board of Directors of Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and has recently authored a book entitled Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative to Risk Assessment.

Dr. Mary Rohlfing is Professor of Communications at Boise State University in Idaho and is an outspoken activist on gay and lesbian rights and the environment.

Terry Tempest-Williams is an author specializing in environmental issues and natural history. She is the former Naturalist-in-Residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History.