Staff

Peter Bahouth, Executive Director

peterb@climatenetwork.org | 202-341-3310

Prior to USCAN, Peter was executive director for Ted Turner's family foundation for 9 years and managed the growth of that philanthropic organization from less than $1 million to over $50 million in grants per year. Prior to the Turner Foundation, Peter served as executive director and chairman of Greenpeace USA.

Peter is President of Art Papers and also serves on the board of  Atlanta Celebrates Photography.  Peter is an accomplished stereoscopic photographer represented by Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta Georgia.

Angela Anderson, Program Director

aanderson@climatenetwork.org | 202-609-9846

Angela Anderson has been engaged in efforts to curb global warming, for nearly a decade, most recently managing domestic and international climate advocacy efforts at Pew and the National Environmental Trust. Angela’s wide-ranging policy expertise is the result of a long tenure in the non-profit community.  Angela has a long relationship with Pew, serving as the first director of the Clear the Air Campaign, a nationwide coalition of legal, policy and public service organizations created in 1999.  Angela managed the campaign’s multi-pronged legal, economic analysis, and legislative program that used rigorous enforcement of the Clean Air Act to draw together the interests of citizens and industry for improved air quality first steps to curb climate.

Angela’s policy experience also extends into the areas of consumer protection, health care and international trade.  At a private sector consulting practice, she managed a consumer, labor and industry coalition on telecommunications policy and spearheaded the firm’s grassroots advocacy.

Angela also provided policy support to organizations advocating state health care ‘bills of rights’ and led the first large-scale coalition field operation in opposition to trade agreements without adequate environmental and labor provisions. Anderson began her career directing field operations for several NGOs including Public Citizen and the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG).

Kellyn Eberhardt, Southeast Regional Coordinator

keberhardt@climatenetwork.org | 828-337-5372
Kellyn came to USCAN from Environmental Defense Fund, where she was the Florida climate project associate working on state and federal climate and energy policy. She worked extensively with businesses, the agriculture industry and local governments to promote climate legislation, renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives.

While at EDF, Kellyn coordinated a media campaign promoting Florida green businesses, entrepreneurs and investors preparing for a low-carbon economy. This campaign, called The Faces of Climate Change in Florida, resulted in an Emmy award from the Suncoast Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Science.

Kellyn has always called the South her home, growing up in Alabama and living in Florida for the last 11 years. She has also lived in Buenos Aires and London. She received her undergraduate degree from Flagler College and a juris doctorate from Florida Coastal School of Law.

Jennifer Kurz, Outreach Director

jkurz@climatenetwork.org | 202-621-6237
Jennifer graduated in June 2008 from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with a Master of Public Policy in international affairs and environmental policy.  Her thesis was on how least developed countries are planning to respond to the adverse impacts of climate change and included a case study of Malawi.

Her thesis built on work she did with InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based international relief and development organizations, in the summer of 2007. Working with members and a number of environmental organizations, she developed a strategy for the coalition to advocate on climate change and other environmental issues.   Jennifer worked for InterAction for two years where she created and led a working group of member organizations interested in becoming more engaged in advocacy and campaigns.

Jennifer began her career at the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Team, where she did some of the initial research on the impact of sport utility vehicles on the climate. She then went on to work for Sierra Club's international team and political action committee, eventually running the population and sustainability program. She has worked in communications for the Brookings Institution and the TV-Turnoff Network, in monitoring and evaluation of campaigns for Oxfam America, and field organizing for a Senate campaign.  In addition to her work in the United States, Jennifer has lived in Mexico for a year working with an indigenous nonprofit organization in the southern state of Oaxaca.  She is a native of California and graduated from Pomona College with a BA in economics and politics.

Ryan Patterson, Administrative Director

rpatterson@climatenetwork.org | 202-609-9846
Ryan Patterson has been involved in nonprofit and international work his entire career. Previous to joining USCAN, Ryan worked with Greenpeace's Global Warming Campaign in Washington, DC, as a Greenpeace field organizer in Savannah, Georgia, and promoting clean energy and sustainable transportation for the University of Colorado.

Ryan has also worked outside of the environmental movement in the Montana State Senate Sergeant-at-Arms office, the International Exchange Bureau in Regensburg, Germany, and as a volunteer in the Fouta-Djallon region of Guinea. Additionally, he has served as a Social Justice Coordinator with United Ministries in Higher Education and as Youth Advocate in La Plata County, Colorado.

Passionate for travel, Ryan has been to over 35 countries and nearly 40 US States. He has lived and worked for extended periods in France, Germany, Guinea and the United States and is trilingual. He holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado in Germanic Studies and minors in French Language and Literature and Political Science.

Keith Schneider, Senior Writer

kschneider@climatenetwork.org | 231-920-0745
A nationally known journalist and policy strategist, Keith is one of the leaders in the United States of a new dimension in public interest communications made possible by online technology, multi-media storytelling, civic participation, and economic and environmental urgency. His work is constructed from the raw materials of a novel 21st century approach to information gathering and dissemination that integrates traditional journalism and science with open-source data management, collaborative public interest partnerships, and communications design.

Prior to joining the U.S. Climate Action Network, Keith was communications director for the Apollo Alliance, a coast-to-coast coalition of labor, green, business, and government organizations that helped to convince the White House and Congress to commit $340 billion over the next two years to scale up the clean energy sector and generate millions of green-collar jobs.

Keith is a regular contributor to the New York Times, where he was a national correspondent from 1985 to 1995 and reported on new developments in agriculture, environment, natural resources, energy, and transportation. His work has been recognized with numerous honors, including two George Polk Awards for environmental and national reporting, among the most prestigious in American journalism. Earlier in his career Keith won his first Polk Award for reporting in the NRDC's Amicus Journal on the consequences of an environmental laboratory scandal that prompted market withdrawals of hundreds of dangerous farm chemicals.

Keith’s work to merge journalism with public interest communications began in 1995 when he left daily reporting to found the Michigan Land Use Institute, a statewide research and policy organization where he was the executive director, and later served until September 2007 as editor, director of program development, and deputy director. Keith serves as senior editor and producer of Circle of Blue, an independent non-profit news organization that covers the global fresh water crisis from its base in Traverse City, Michigan. He reports on his ModeShift blog, and contributes to Grist Magazine, Yale Environment 360, Circle of Blue, The Energy Collective, Politico, National Journal, MLUI.org, and the USCAN Web site.

Kate Smolski, Domestic Policy Director

ksmolski@climatenetwork.org | 202-621-6235
Prior to her position at USCAN Kate Smolski served as the senior legislative coordinator for Greenpeace USA’s global warming campaign. In this role, Smolski served as lead lobbyist on global warming and energy issues, monitored congressional climate and energy policy and coordinated Greenpeace’s work with other national environmental groups organizing political and grassroots pressure to pass global warming legislation.

In her prior work as a clean energy campaigner for Greenpeace promoting the first offshore wind project on Cape Cod, Cape Wind, she became a specialist and spokesperson on offshore wind power.

Starting in 2002 Kate worked for the Sierra Club as a regional conservation organizer on the National Forest Campaign where she organized grassroots support for national forest protection in the southern Appalachians.

In August of 2001, she joined Green Corps where she worked as a field organizer.  During her time with Green Corps, she contributed to three major projects: the Greenpeace Clean Energy Now Campaign; the Collaborative Defense Campaign, and the Fund for Public Interest Research.  The Greenpeace Clean Energy Now Campaign resulted in Los Angeles community colleges becoming the largest solar-powered institutions in the country.

Kate earned a B.S. in Wildlife Biology and Management from the University of Rhode Island in 1999. Smolski went on to work for the Dynamac Corporation at the Kennedy Space Center as a wildlife biologist where she served as the lead researcher on the USGS Species at Risk Waterfowl Project.