Gene Karpinski – President.  Gene joined LCV and LCVEF in April 2006 after serving for more than a dozen years as a member of the LCV and LCVEF Boards of Directors and the LCV Political Committee.  Under Gene’s leadership, LCV has played a lead role in the environmental community’s efforts to pass clean energy and climate policies. Additionally, LCV’s electoral budget has more than tripled since 2006. Prior to joining LCV, Gene worked for 21 years as the Executive Director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), the national lobbying office for state PIRGs across the country, where he led many national environmental issue campaigns.  He has served on a number of national boards, including America Votes, Earth Share, the Partnership Project, the Beldon Fund, and the National Association for Public Interest Law.  Gene is a graduate of Brown University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Tiernan Sittenfeld – Senior Vice President, Government Affairs.  Tiernan directs LCV’s policy and lobbying efforts and oversees the National Environmental Scorecard.  Before joining LCV and LCVEF in April 2005, she worked for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) as the Preservation Advocate, specializing in national forest, public lands, and oceans issues.  She was also the Co-Director of the Heritage Forests Campaign, a national coalition dedicated to protecting roadless areas in national forests.  Prior to joining U.S. PIRG’s staff, Tiernan worked as the Field Director for Oregon State PIRG and as a Campus Organizer with California PIRG at UC-Davis and UCLA.  She spent three summers directing citizen outreach offices for the Fund for Public Interest Research.  Tiernan is a 1996 graduate of Dartmouth College.

Jennifer Allen – Senior Vice President, Community & Civic Engagement.  Jennifer joined LCV and LCVEF in April 2013 to expand Latino support base in the fight against climate change.  Prior to joining LCV and LCVEF, for ten years Jennifer was the founding Executive Director of the Border Action Network, Arizona’s largest immigrant and border community organization, where she led successful state and national policy campaigns.  Jennifer’s prior experience includes economic and community development work with indigenous and rural communities throughout the southwest.  She is a frequent source for national media, a guest speaker at national venues, and has published numerous reports and academic publications.  She is a graduate of the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO.

 Johana Vicente, 25, community organizer. She is a community organizer with the Chispa Maryland program and will be speaking at the PCM closing rally on 4/29. She works with Latino mothers and children in Maryland. Her story and the stories of moms working to advance clean energy, ban fracking, support solar to lower utility costs and around building sanctuary communities haven’t been told locally. These are the folks who are working to protect their watersheds for recreation, for resources and are fighting back to increase pro-environmental policies. She will be leading the Creators of Sanctuary contingent at PCM in DC on April 29. Maryland voice

Katherine Lorenzo is a community organizer for the League of Conservation Voters’ Chispa Nevada program. She was born in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic. In 1997, Katherine, moved to Texas with her parents and her two older sisters. Katherine later moved to Las Vegas where she attended Western High School and received her Bachelors in Political Science from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She began interning with Organizing for America as young teenager and fell in love with civic engagement. Her passion grew from the frustration through the injustices that low income communities faced. In 2015, she was hired on as an Organizer with Mi Familia Vota and heard the stories of people in her community that wanted to vote but were silenced because they were undocumented. She later transitioned into CHISPA NV as a community organizer. Now Katherine works organizing youth in her community ranging from elementary to college students to make sure they have a voice in issues concerning the environment. Nevada voice

Candida Garcia, an activist and Chispa Maryland volunteer, is working to advance climate policies from her town of Hyattsville in Prince George’s County. As a married mother of four and a leader in the fight for the rights of her communidad, she works to organize parents others to create healthy changes.

Arturo Gonzalez, 21, Nevada resident, LCV volunteer. Arturo will be speaking at the official PCM Press Conference Saturday morning near the reflecting pool. He’s been an active promotor for our Chispa program, engaged in the local fight against big polluters. His activism stems from growing up with asthma in Las Vegas.