2009 Employee Recognition Award Recipients

Presented June 26, 2009, San Francisco

Community Service Award - YuYu Thein
YuYu Thein has received our Community Service Award. The Community Service Award is given in recognition of a commitment to helping others through public service or community involvement in a non-Sierra Club cause. YuYu is our Conservation Operations Administrative Coordinator. YuYu and her husband, Coban Tun, have for the last 15 years been active in numerous humanitarian causes related to their native Burma.

In 2007, when the ruling military junta in Burma cracked down on free speech and jailed citizens Buddhist monks after they marched and demonstrated nonviolently, YuYu and Coban raised public awareness and held fund-raisers around the Bay Area, sending all the proceeds to Burma to assist in efforts to free the monks and others jailed in the military crackdown.

In 2008, Cyclone Nargis devastated much of coastal and southern Burma. YuYu was personally had a hand in the reconstruction of at least ten of the thatch-roofed schools that now shelter displaced children and raised funds to rebuild the destroyed classrooms in Labutta, one of the hardest-hit regions.

YuYu and Coban are officers of Burma Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to the oppressed people of YuYu's homeland. Their organization has been responsible for, among others, a series of campaigns to promote responsible corporate investment, sponsorship of a radio interview to highlight the plight of the refugees, and a Burmese film festival. Her work on behalf of the Burmese Americans in the Bay Area over the past 15 years is a reflection of the social responsibility Sierra Club promotes.

Behind the Scenes Hero - Adrian Cotter
Adrian Cotter is honored with our Behind the Scenes Hero Award. This award is given to salute an employee whose tremendous efforts, skills and talents have repeatedly and consistently supported and enabled others to advance the Club's mission in a significant way, or to accomplish a large and important project. This employee is an invaluable behind-the-scenes contributor who can be consistently relied upon by others for his or her highest service standards.

Adrian is our Senior Webmaster and was the design and technical lead for the redesign of the Club's public website, www.sierraclub.org, which has garnered kudos both within and outside the Club. The success of the redesign is a product of Adrian's creativity and design skills, and he is responsible for many technological updates and improvements that have made the website cutting-edge.

Adrian has been the technical lead for the Club's social networking venture, a complicated and ambitious undertaking to foster a huge community of activists. Adrian supplies this level of excellence to everything he does at the Club. He provides a lot of the glue that keeps the organization's web, advocacy, email outreach, and chapter support operations running, with grace and good humor. He is unfailingly a pleasure to work with, and one of the most congenial, dedicated people one could ever hope to meet.

Larry Mehlhaff Award for Excellence - Coal Team
In recognizing a distinguished record of achievements in developing new ideas and strategies through collaboration, the Move Beyond Coal Campaign has received the Larry Mehlhaff Award for Excellence. The recipient of this award has a distinguished and consistent record of many achievements in developing new ideas and strategies, implementing systems, programs and/ or services through collaborations or team efforts that have resulted in substantial improvements, efficiencies and/ or savings to services and operations Club-wide.

Receiving the award are Bruce Nilles, Jesse Simons, Sarah Hodgdon, Pat Gallagher, Ginny Cramer, Mary Anne Hitt and Heather Cusick. The Move Beyond Coal Campaign aims to move our economy forward to a clean energy future by stopping new coal-fired power plants, retiring existing plants, and keeping the massive U.S. coal reserves in the ground and out of international markets. The Campaign, led by a multi-function staff team, stopped 24 coal plants in 2008 and has stopped or blocked 82 plants since its inception.

The Coal Team has grown from a regionally-based Midwest program several years ago, to a multi-million dollar national campaign sustained by 57 staff. As the leading edge of the Sierra Club's Climate Recovery Partnership, the Coal Team is preventing run-away carbon dioxide emissions, including an estimated 82 million tons in greenhouse gas pollution in 2008. This is the equivalent of removing 15.2 million cars from circulation. In keeping with Larry Mehlhaff's legacy in forging collaborations across departments, the Coal Team is transforming the way the Sierra Club plans program, manages message, argues in the courts, engages volunteers, mobilizes the public, and secures funding resources.

Virginia Ferguson Award - Oliver Bernstein
Oliver Bernstein has been honored with the Virginia Ferguson award. This award honors an employee who has demonstrated consistent and exemplary service to the Sierra Club. Commitment to the organization is demonstrated not only through competence and longevity of employment, but also in congenial attitude, extraordinary spirit, and unquestionable integrity that makes this individual's performance an inspiration to the rest of the staff. Oliver is our Deputy Press Secretary of Diversity Programs.

A consummate media professional with contacts in many markets was he has fantastic people and personality skills. He is able to work with peoples' personalities to craft a message that fits them and their work. He makes a point of understanding the issues and programs so that he becomes a member of that team. His fluency in Spanish has enabled the Sierra Club reach into the Latino media market in substantive ways- not as a superficial fling. His care and concern with developing media with other ethnic groups is apparent through his thorough understanding of the Environmental Justice Program. Oliver Bernstein is an unsung hero in the Sierra Club who consistently gives above and beyond the call of duty with great ideas, great advice and always with great spirit!

Special Achievement - Bill Corcoran
Bill Corcoran has won our Special Achievement Award. This award is given to acknowledge an employee's special achievement that has benefited, changed, or streamlined the work of the Club, or enhanced its public image. As our Sr. Regional Conservation Representative in Los Angeles Bill worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help craft one of the biggest land conservation deals in California history, the Tejon Ranch conservation agreement. Thanks to Bill, the Club played a major role in setting aside 270,000 acres of important wildlife habitat in southern California.To protect so much land in this state at this point in history is nothing short of a miracle, and future generations will surely thank the Sierra Club for our work on this.

Bill also did an outstanding job of making headlines on the Tejon deal. He participated in a press conference with the governor and reached out to reporters. Thanks to his energy and diplomacy, the Club was given the credit it deserved with prominent coverage in the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, The New York Times, and many others. Conserving Tejon Ranch was an enormous achievement for the Sierra Club, and it would not have been possible without Bill Corcoran.

Mike McCloskey Award - Dave Muhly
Dave Muhly is our Mike McCloskey award winner. This award is bestowed upon an employee whose work has reflected and strengthened the meaning, purpose, and mission of the Sierra Club, and who has contributed to the prestige of the Sierra Club in the world community. The Mike McCloskey award honors a distinguished record of achievement in national or international conservation causes. Dave Muhly, over his many years on the Sierra Club organizing staff, has always served with distinction. Dave's team work is outstanding, as an original planning team member for the Leadership Development Project and as a trainer who has worked with chapters and staff through out the country identifying collectively held goals, creating a plan to accomplish those goals, and implementing the plan with strong teams that remain in place and share the work.

Dave was called upon twice in 2008 to serve as Acting Regional Field Staff Director. He served for several months as the Appalachian Regional Field Staff Director and, under the reorganized Organizing Department, served as the Acting Eastern Regional Field Organizing Director. During both Acting tours of duty, Muhly has provided outstanding leadership to staff in the region while still being able to perform with distinction in his normal job, of Organizing manager and key leader of the LDP project. He is highly respected as one of the finest organizers and organizing mentors in the Sierra Club Organizing Department. He "gets" organizing, knows the craft of organizing and shares that knowledge with young organizers. In addition to the above, Dave has served with professionalism as: A Sierra Club Training Academy trainer, Program Director for the Southern Appalachian Highlands Ecoregion, and BEC Organizer.

Special Recognition from the Cabinet - Vicky Barrett-Putnam
Vicky Barrett-Putnam is the Director of Donor Development & Member Acquisition in the Office of Development and has extensive experience in the direct mail & telemarketing industries, including bidding & negotiating contracts with vendors in those industries. In both 2006 & 2008, at Greg Haegele's request, Vicky bid out, negotiated & contracted for the Conservation Department Political Team's direct mail agency & telemarketing vendor contracts. This involved an extensive bidding process with vendors, as well as meetings & final selection by senior Conservation and Political Team management. In this way, Vicky ensured that the vendors selected would be able to achieve the Political Teams goals while at the same time achieving significant savings for the Sierra Club, the Conservation Department and Political Program.

Many hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings were negotiated for each of the years in which this was undertaken by Vicky vs the previous arrangements. At the Conservation retreat in December 2008, Greg Haegele & Cathy Duvall thanked Vicky for her work and Greg said "Vicky's outstanding work negotiating these contracts has helped us save many jobs in the Conservation Department". Greg is not only grateful to Vicky for her hard work and the savings it led to, but believes the sort of cooperation and support she provided are a model of the kind of work we can do to that ensure the Club will continue to play a vital role in defining the best solutions to climate change even while we are facing the very tough financial circumstances we are in.

Board of Directors Award: John Muir Award - Greg Haegele
The Executive Committee of the Board of Directors has awarded the John Muir Award to Greg Haegele. This award established in 1961 is the Sierra Club's highest award. The award will be presented at the National Awards Banquet in September, but we are also announcing it and the Employee Recognition Awards event this year so that staff may participate in celebrating and congratulating Greg. This award honors a distinguished record of leadership in national or international conservation causes, such as continuing John Muir's work of preservation and establishment of parks and wildernesses.

Greg has dedicated himself with unparalleled drive and commitment to building the Sierra Club as the most powerful advocacy group for the environment, capable of having the reach and the impact to achieve our conservation objectives. Greg brought to the Club an extraordinary ability to turn strategic thinking into organizational form and habit. But it is with his unique blend of disciplined and strategic thinker, conscientious manager, mentor, visionary, and friend that Greg has inspired volunteer leaders and staff throughout the organization to embrace the imperative of increasing Sierra Club's capacity and making the changes necessary to do so. Greg's insights and leadership were instrumental to the launch of the Climate Recovery Partnership, and its flagship effort, Beyond Coal, which has established the Club's reputation as the giant killer in the Great Warming. And Sierra Club's major and undeniable role in the electoral victories of the fall of 2008 rested heavily on Greg's ability to orchestrate the teamed organizing efforts of Club staff and volunteers.

Greg also has played a critical leadership role with the Club's new Mission Strategy Advisory Committee, in developing steps the Club could take immediately to enhance its ability to "get to scale" in its priority campaign work. While "strategy" is always essential to winning, he believed that major changes were required in the ways the Club thought about strategy in the context of climate change, due to the scale, complexity, and urgency of the challenge. By early 2009, Greg had helped identify systemic alterations in the Club's working assumptions about its goal-setting, planning, and organizing around its priority work. As a result of his work with the Mission Strategy team, in February 2009, the Board of Directors adopted new strategic priorities to guide the Club's highest priority programs and campaigns, including an outcomes-based model of Conservation management and an integration of the Club's on-line and off-line (grassroots) approaches to organizing. Although more subtle, perhaps, than a "get-out-the-vote" effort, these changes promise to influence the Club's work (and effectiveness) at all levels over the coming years.

Greg is a truly inspirational leader, to volunteers and staff alike. He models intense dedication to the Club and its mission. He has sought to foster a culture of embracing change, and an openness to envisioning where the Club is going, as the role of environmental organizations changes. He has initiated efforts to foster a new collaborative relationship in chapter and national work on climate recovery. And he has brought vision to our political program as a means to inspire and invest people in working on behalf of the environment.

20-YEAR EMPLOYEES
Congratulations to our colleagues who have each completed 20 years of service at the Sierra Club.

Ken Kramer
Being a director of an environmental organization in Texas is not an easy task. Not only is the political climate often hostile, but there is also the sheer size of the state. Due to the vastness and diversity every conceivable environmental problem is encountered-smog, sprawl, transportation, factory farms, coal plants, nuclear plants, forestry problems, oil refineries, coastal development, just for starters. In such a challenging environment Ken Kramer has labored for more than two decades as the Executive Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. He has not only survived, but through his patience, dedication, and incredible people skills, he has made the Sierra Club an important, respected, constructive force to be reckoned with in the affairs of the Lone Star State.

Jack Darin
Twenty years ago Jack Darin joined the Illinois Chapter staff as a first line organizer. Not so long after, when opportunity and skill merged, he was promoted to Chapter Director. Jack has grown, become a strong leader, one showing insight, compassion drive and determination. He is a respected environmental leader in Illinois. Jack's tireless work to find, support and cajole Illinois legislators and appointees stands as a standard for all of the environmental leaders in Illinois. Jack's quiet but tenacious pursuit of legislation to clean up Illinois rivers and air and stop coal plants is widely respected. Jack has also excelled in the popular Sierra Club activity, make happy with volunteers. Calm, deft and persistent works. Managing limited, sometimes diminishing resources to keep the Sierra Club Illinois Chapter front and center is a tough assignment. He excels.

Stephen Mills
Stephen joined the Sierra Club in 1988 as an assistant to the Club's Political Director. After the elections his focus changed to foreign policy and he has been with the international program ever since. Stephen Mills is the Director of the Sierra Club's International Programs, a position he has held since 1998. Mills' accomplishments include the creation in 1993 of the Sierra Club's innovative Human Rights and the Environment Program -- a collaborative effort with Amnesty International. While advocating for greater recognition in U.S. foreign policy for the support and protection of environmental activists abroad, the program provided assistance for environmental advocates worldwide who have been persecuted for their efforts. In 2001, Mills helped create the Sierra Club's "Beyond the Borders" program, the organization's first international capacity building and grant-making programs in Mexico and Southern Africa. Not one to rest on his laurels, Mills is currently leading the development of a new strategic energy-related partnership program in India. Mills is the 1995 recipient of the Sierra Club's Michael McCloskey Award which honors a distinguished record of achievement in national or international conservation causes. In 1995, Mills was recognized by the United Nations Association for his "outstanding contributions to human rights." Mills credits his environmental conversion to an up-close-and-personal experience he had with a humpback whale while working on a sailboat in Hawaii after college.

John Barry
John started at the Sierra Club 21 years ago this August as an editor/designer for what was then called the Public Affairs Department. He shifted out of that role when he got involved in starting (and naming) the Planet, our activist newsletter, for which he did all the original design and planning. The Planet was published ten times a year, covering both grassroots and the national landscape, and helped spread the word about engaging, positive, and inspiring stories of our activists' work. John has helped design and create messaging for outreach communications for our activists and staff, including one year when he helped create 2.3 million outreach postcards, with 30 different versions, for community walks on Earth Day weekend. He also helped to launch and design our trainings for newsletter editors, ensuring that editors around the country were producing excellent and informative newsletters to Sierra Club members and activists. He has expanded and re-designed our Clubhouse website, and is now launching a new on-line community called our activist network, which will help our teams around the country use social networking tools and resources to help win victories on important campaigns. John's many skills and congenial spirit have been a big asset to the Club, and we thank him for his many years of service.