Meet Our Staff

Joe Richie
Midwest Regional Organizer - Madison, WI
joe [at] ssc.org / 608-257-4997

Joe grew up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While in college, he worked on campus for the Howard Dean presidential campaign and as an intern for Sen. Russ Feingold’s reelection campaign. He also worked with the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group on bringing more sources of clean energy to Wisconsin.

After graduating with honors in history and math, he worked at a WISPIRG outreach office on a campaign to save the last of Wisconsin’s undeveloped national forests, collecting petition signatures and turning out citizens to speak at public hearings. In August of 2006 he began working as a campus organizer for the New Voters Project at the University of Nevada-Reno where starting from scratch he built the biggest little student movement in Reno. Along with a team of fifty dedicated volunteers, he worked to register young voters and get them to the polls to vote.

After the election, he moved back home to the Midwest to work as a Regional Organizer for the Sierra Student Coalition. He is truly excited to be working with dedicated students around the region to take action and begin solving the world’s greatest environmental and social problem.

In his spare time, Joe enjoys running, reading, backpacking, playing guitar, watching too much TV, and cheering for the Badgers and Packers.

Maura Cowley
Northeast Regional Organizer - Boston, MA
maura [at] ssc.org / 617-423-5775

Maura has been the Northeast Organizer for the SSC since August of 2006. She began organizing while attending Penn State University, where she served as the president of the university's environmental activist organization for two years. During that time, she coordinated two successful campaigns and had the privilege of working with some top-notch student organizers. Together, they organized Penn State's Farm to College campaign, which asked the university to purchase locally grown produce. Following the campaign, Maura was hired by Penn State to implement the school's Farm to College program. While she was wrapping up the Farm to College program, Maura began coordinating a campaign asking Penn State to commit to a comprehensive energy policy which included renewable energy purchasing, energy efficiency and conservation and on-site renewable energy generation. The campaign was supported by over 4,500 students at Penn State and received local, regional and national media attention.

Maura graduated from Penn State in August of 2006 with majors in political science, anthropology and economics. After graduating, she jumped right into her job, which was created as a result of the SSC/Climate Campaign Merger. She is very excited to be working with dedicated and talented student leaders from across the Northeast on the issue that she believes truly is the challenge of our generation- global warming.

Aside from working with students to win rocking victories, Maura also enjoys traveling, spending time with friends, reading and hiking.

Kim Teplitzky
PA, OH, WV & MI Regional Organizer - Philadelphia, PA
kim [at] ssc.org / 215-508-3310

Kim started organizing in college where she led a clean energy campaign at Temple University in Philly, pressuring the administration to purchase wind power. Through her on-campus work she got involved in the Climate Campaign helping create a state-wide network of student groups throughout Pennsylvania and the Northeast. She then joined up with the Energy Action Coalition where she represented the Climate Campaign at their founding meeting joining way too many committees, but helping to get the coalition off the ground. She now serves on their Steering Committee helping build partnerships for The Challenge.

That same summer she had the pleasure of attending her first SSC SPROG training program which led her to a trainings internship in the SSC's DC office. It was there she stepped up to work with the Conservation and Energy Committees and through them she helped organize the U.S. and international youth presence at the U.N. Climate Negotiations in Montreal in 2005.

She has also interned with Campus Progress where, among other things, she blogged undercover from conservative events and was a Young People For 2006 Fellow. Eventually though, she did graduate from Temple with a degree in journalism and after some brief forays into South America joined the SSC staff team in what she believes is one of the best jobs in the country.

Yochanan Zakai
Program Assistant - Washington, DC
yochi [at] ssc.org / 202-548-4593

As a sophomore at Walter Johnson High School in Maryland, Yochi was recruited to join the SSC's Montgomery County Student Environmental Activists by Leeza and the Brendler twins. After a couple of weeks of hanging out with the SSC'ers and going to meetings, he started organizing. After the turn of the millennium he organized a county-wide recycled campaign that gained media attention and attracted the support of the county council.

While an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, Yochi founded a business partnership called Brewing Hope with farmers in Chiapas, Mexico. Working with students, faculty and businesses interested in promoting the fair trade system, Yochi set up a program that not only sold coffee, but also created a relationships between coffee growers and latte drinkers. Brewing Hope's student delegations visit Mexico to learn about coffee production and meet with indigenous communities while farmers from Chiapas travel to speak at educational events in the Midwest. He turned over the management reins of Brewing Hope to study the connection between biodiversity, economic sustainability and coffee certifications in Central America.

Yochi re-joined the SSC in December 2005 as the first Program Assistant. He now has the privilege of working with Energy Action's talented organizers and the environmental movement's finest students.

When not organizing, Yochi enjoys backpacking, bike riding and dancing merengue.

Jon Barrows
Trainings Director - Washington, DC
jon [at] ssc.org / 202-548-4592

Jon started organizing as a high school student in the beautiful state of Maine. He first joined the SSC in 1998 while interning with the NH Chapter of the Club. He went on to be a founding member of the Trainings Department, helping to create the current model of SPROGs, staffing a near record number of programs over the next 4 years.

Since being a student volunteer, Jon has coordinated the Vote Environment campaign during the 2000 election for the SSC, worked as a Conservation Organizer with the NH Chapter on sprawl and forestry issues, served as the NH Chapter Chair during his two year stint in grad school at Antioch New England, made a foray into the world of high school biology teaching, and coordinated the Greenpeace Organizing Term.

He is now grateful to be able to return home to the SSC and help guide the organization forward as it tackles, head on, the climate challenge. There is no place more important to be that right her, right now—the climate crisis is quite possibly the gravest challenge our society has ever had to face in modern times; and as with past challenges, it will be the youth who lead the way to a solution and a better future.

When not training students to be more effective organizers, Jon enjoys contra dancing, ultimate frisbee, traveling, and writing poetry.

Eliza Simon
National Campaign Organizer, Campus Climate Challenge - Washington, DC
eliza [at] ssc.org / 202-548-4594

Eliza has been the SSC's National Campaign Organizer for the Campus Climate Challenge since August, 2006. She grew up in the Washington, DC area and attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut. After graduating with Honors and a BA in Anthropology, Eliza entered the world of professional organizing as a campus organizer for the New Voters Project, the largest youth voter registration and mobilization effort in history. Alongside a stalwart team of interns and volunteers, she coordinated the registration of more than 5,100 students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and helped turn out thousands to the polls on Election Day. After the 2004 election, Eliza moved to Madsion, WI, to research, lobby, and organize around water issues as the Clean Water Associate for WISPIRG, the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group. Eliza worked for WISPIRG until 2006, also directing two citizen outreach offices in the summertime.

Her experiences working with talented and inspiring young people during the summertime made her realize that student organizing was the way to go, so naturally she jumped at the opportunity to work with amazing students all over the country with the SSC. She is particularly excited to be working on the Campus Climate Challenge and to help youth lead the way toward solving the most pressing environmental/social/you-name-it problem of our time: climate change. She is also happy to be a resource for all student organizers, so if you think she can help you, be in touch!

In her spare time, Eliza enjoys reading, travelling, road-biking, playing with her pet rabbit, and the company of others.

Jared Duval
National Director - Washington, DC
jared [at] ssc.org / 202-548-4591

Jared started as an SSC’er when he was a junior in high school, organizing a successful campaign to protect the Great Hollow Wetlands of Lebanon, New Hampshire from a supermarket construction project.

Since then Jared has led a World Bank Bonds Boycott at Wheaton College in MA, served as the Energy and Environmental Policy Intern for Howard Dean's Presidential Campaign, and taught at St. Mary’s high school in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, working with students on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.

He graduated from Wheaton College in 2005, double majoring in Political Science and Economics. Now he's devoting himself full-time to doing what he loves and what he hopes to inspire others to love -- organizing with students to protect our environment and ensure a more just and sustainable future. He believes, as you do, that our generation must not wait for others to achieve progress for us. As youth we must reclaim our compromised future ourselves, repairing our world and fully realizing our vision of a just and sustainable future now.

Jared has also been honored to receive the Brower Youth Award, the Morris K. Udall Scholarship, and the Harry S. Truman scholarship and he enjoys helping students develop as both organizers and as scholars.