Laura Stevens (she/her/hers), Senior Organizing Representative, Beyond Coal Campaign (National Sierra Club)
Laura’s passion lies in movement-building, and empowering leaders and communities to work for climate justice. Laura was born and raised in Portland. She got her start in environmental and social justice organizing while at DePauw University in Indiana.
In the following years she worked with: peasant farmers in Intag, Ecuador in their resistance to large-scale mining; Iowa meatpacking workers and their efforts to unionize; and communities in Maine fighting pollution in their neighborhoods and schools. She also ran a clean water fundraising campaign in New Hampshire.
Laura's Beyond Coal efforts began at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she led a campaign to retire their campus coal-fired power plant. Since returning to Portland, Laura has worked in Southwest Washington and Oregon to prevent coal export terminals from being built in the Pacific Northwest. She also contributed to getting Oregon's Clean Electricity and Coal Transition law passed.
In her spare time Laura likes to hang out with her family, grow vegetables, hike, play the piano, and meditate.
Languages Spoken: English, Spanish