We are excited to share that two new staff joined the Sierra Club in Michigan! The Michigan Chapter welcomed Mama Erin Preston Johnson, Esq., community organizer, and the Field Department welcomed Bryan Smigielski, field organizer. Mama Erin will lead green stormwater infrastructure programs and conservation efforts in the Detroit area and Bryan will lead Beyond Coal Campaign efforts in Detroit.
Mama Erin Preston Johnson, Esq.
Mama Erin Preston Johnson, Esq. is an unapologetically Black, lifelong organizer and unschooling mama of a 7-year-old as well as co-founder of Detroit’s Urban Forest School. Mama Erin honed her skills as an organizer and activist during her enrollment at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she served as President of the campus NAACP and earned a B.A. in History. She went on to the Howard University of Law where she graduated as the President of her class and has practiced law in the District of Columbia and Michigan for the past 17 years.
Most importantly, a student of the Earth centered culture and the cosmology of her African ancestors, Mama Erin’s most meaningful contributions come from intentional cultivation of the land, her family, her community and her village. Being a musician, grower, educator, community leader and mother, all inform her work leading the Urban Forest School, a free, outdoor, nature-based, culturally rooted program for BIPOC Detroit children under 12, as well as her other community endeavors. Mama Erin is a co-founder of the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund, current board president of the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network (DBCFSN) and a Board Member at the Black to the Land Coalition. She is also a member-owner of the Detroit People's Food Co-op, which is opening to the public on May 1, 2024 in Detroit, MI!
Mama Erin is elated to be the Sierra Club of Michigan’s newest Community Organizer!
Bryan Smigielski
As a lifelong environmental activist, systems theorist and educator on environmental issues, Bryan Smigielski brings a deep mix of hands-on environmental activism and theoretical insight to his role as Sierra Club's new field organizer in Detroit, Michigan.
Bryan is deeply committed to an organizing style that serves to amplify the voices of others. As he prepares to publish a book on the ecopsychology of supporting collective reform efforts in the midst of ecological collapse, Bryan’s organizing is aimed at shifting from despair into systemic transformation. Instead of leading from the top down, he aims to facilitate our collective intelligence and our ability to work in a communal way to bring about cohesive and purposeful action.
Together with his partner Megan, he helps maintain a thriving herbal garden within the Detroit Abloom community garden space, where they craft medicinal plant remedies to support and share with the community. As a thru-hiker of the 2,600-mile-long Pacific Crest Trail and many others, Bryan is also a proud member of the 'hiker trash' community, and those endless hours spent in the wild have led him to viscerally experience the tolls that climate change is taking on our environment.
In Detroit, Bryan has spent his recent years leading environmental education initiatives in schools, engaging tens of thousands of students through dynamic presentations that inspired environmental justice activism and supported communities overburdened by industrial polluters with strategic nutrition and health education. In his new organizing role, he's ready to support the passionate network of already existing communities fighting for environmental justice in Detroit, and to cultivate the next generation of environmental activists.