Stefanie Penn Spear
Stefanie Penn Spear is founder, executive director and editor of EcoWatch. She has been publishing environmental news for more than two decades. Spear works to unite the voice of the grassroots environmental movement and mobilize millions of people to engage in democracy to protect human health and the environment. She seeks to motivate individuals to become engaged in their community, adopt sustainable practices and support strong environmental policy.
For more than six years, EcoWatch has been servicing the sustainability community of Ohio through its bimontly newspaper EcoWatch Journal, with a readership of more than 100,000 per issue. In 2011, EcoWatch in partnership with Waterkeeper Alliance expanded its services to promote the work of more than 1,000 grassroots environmental organizations worldwide through an online news service website EcoWatch.org.
Spear is president of Expedite Renewable Energy, a company that develops solar and wind projects in Ohio and helps companies through the many steps of investing in renewable energy. She works on energy policy on the local, state and federal level to help transition the U.S. to relying on cleaner, renewable sources of power.
Spear chairs the Green Commission for the Village of Moreland Hills, and co-chairs the Advanced Energy Generation committee for Sustainable Cleveland 2019. She is on the advisory board for GreenCityBlueLake Institute, Tri-C’s Green Academy and Center for Sustainability, and Sunflower Solutions.
Marc Yaggi
Appointed Waterkeeper Alliance’s Executive Director in June 2011, Marc Yaggi provides organizational leadership, builds cohesion between the organization’s support and advocacy functions, and coordinates advocacy efforts between the Alliance and its member organizations around the world. Marc is based at Waterkeeper Alliance headquarters in New York.
For more than a decade working within the Waterkeeper movement, Marc has been instrumental in expanding the Alliance’s international reach, helping to start new Waterkeeper programs around the world. As Deputy Director (April 2010 to June 2011) and Director of Waterkeeper Support (2005-2010), Marc has developed and maintained strong relationships with Waterkeepers and promoted their work in multiple outlets. In addition, Marc leads Waterkeeper Alliance’s media strategy and outreach efforts in order to raise public awareness of the environmental issues central to the organization’s mission.
Before joining Waterkeeper Alliance, Marc was a Senior Attorney and Watershed Program Director for Riverkeeper, Inc., where he worked to protect the 2,000-square mile watershed that serves as New York City’s drinking water supply. At Riverkeeper, Marc advised environmental advocates and citizens throughout the watershed on strategic planning to oppose harmful development projects and strengthen government protection policies. Before joining Riverkeeper, Marc served as a Staff Attorney with the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. He has authored legal articles on the U.S. Supreme Court, marine mammal protection, road salt, impervious surfaces, sprawl and clean air.
Marc is a 1993 graduate of The Pennsylvania State University. He earned a J.D. from the Pace University School of Law in 1997 and obtained an LL.M in Environmental Law in May 2002.
Nicole D’Alessandro
Nicole D’Alessandro is executive assistant at EcoWatch. She received her BFA from New York University and, after exploring and working in other parts of the country, returned to Cleveland.
D’Alessandro has worked in publishing for a decade and is completing an MA in Environmental Studies at Cleveland State University.
D’Alessandro has held a number of volunteer roles, ranging from recycling to videography to green building, and she enjoys spending time outdoors (particularly in the great park systems of Northeast Ohio), studying botany, gardening and creating various forms of art.
Matthew Peters
Matthew Peters is EcoWatch’s news aggregator. He spends his days filing through hundreds of posts from the grassroots enviornmental movement in the U.S. and pushes out the most exciting news of the day.
Peter’s education includes a BA in English from John Carroll University and an MFA from the University of Memphis.
His primary joys in life are his beautiful wife, daughter, black labrador, his increasingly voluminous stack of novels waiting to be read and, of course, his mission to promote EcoWatch with his astoundingly cool coworkers.
Gabriela Boscio
Gabriela Boscio is currently an intern at EcoWatch.
She was born on the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, in the city of San Juan. She completed a B.Sc. in Environmental Studies in Northern Wisconsin, and a master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Southern Sweden.
She enjoys writing, art, music, theatre, gardening, and photography and has a particular fondness for striped socks. Her personal and professional goal is to be an active and effective agent of change in the network of people working together to move our global society towards sustainability.
Amber Davidson
Amber Davidson is an intern at EcoWatch. She received a BA from Allegheny College in Meadville, PA.
Before joining EcoWatch, Amber worked in Washington, DC supporting energy efficiency and alternative energy clients through aprivate environmental consulting firms.
She is passionate about addressing social and environmental issues, and is glad for the opportunity to support the grassroots environmental movement.
Justin Bloom
Justin Bloom joined Waterkeeper Alliance as eastern regional director in July of 2011. He works on supporting and developing regional and local advocacy efforts by Waterkeeper Alliance members and helping to develop new Waterkeeper programs. Bloom also supports the executive director with administrative and legal matters.
Bloom spent the last six years in a private law practice focused on litigating environmental toxic tort and pharmaceutical fraud, and injury cases, as well as consulting on water related issues. Environmental cases he has worked on included the 20+ million gallon Greenpoint Brooklyn Exxon-Mobil Oil Spill and the Deepwater Horizon/BP Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Prior to his private litigation practice, Bloom was staff attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper, where he brought numerous actions against polluters and was engaged in efforts to protect communities in the Hudson Watershed from inappropriate or illegal development proposals and projects. At Riverkeeper, Bloom advocated for stronger governmental environmental policy and helped develop community based advocacy initiatives. Before joining Riverkeeper, he practiced tort, immigration and environmental law in Florida and was involved in several public interest environmental initiatives in Central America and in the Gulf of Mexico region.
Bloom is a 1991 graduate of The New College of Florida and its Environmental Studies Program. He earned a J.D. from Tulane Law School in 1996 and is a veteran of Tulane’s Environmental Law Clinic. He lives aboard a sailboat on the Hudson River and hopes to sail to meet with coastal Keeper programs in their watersheds.
Pete Nichols
Pete Nichols joined the staff of Waterkeeper Alliance in July of 2011 as the western regional director after serving on the Waterkeeper Alliance Board of Directors for three years as Pacific Regional Representative and nearly eight years as the Humboldt Baykeeper.
Nichols was co-founder of Humboldt Baykeeper, and was the Baykeeper and executive director since its inception. Nichols has a background in Conservation Biology and has been involved in conservation in northern California for more than fifteen years.
Originally inspired from the lakes and coastal waters of his childhood home of Maine, Nichols has always been an advocate for the environment. Upon arriving in northern California in 1992, he was deeply involved in the struggle to protect the last remnants of the region’s ancient redwood forests. Prior to his arrival at Humboldt Baykeeper, Nichols acted as the project and science coordinator for the California Wildlands Project, a habitat-based conservation planning project of the California Wilderness Coalition.
A successful effort to defeat a proposed Liquefied Natural Gas proposal on Humboldt Bay in 2003, led Pete and others to realize that there was a need for a and strong advocate for Humboldt Bay and coastal waters of the north coast of California. In October of 2004, Humboldt Baykeeper was formed, and has been a strong voice for the Bay and coast ever since.
In addition to his role at the Waterkeeper Alliance, Nichols is also the founder and president of the Nature Iraq Foundation, a philanthropic charity dedicated to protecting the environment of the Middle East. Pete also serves on the board of the Friends of the Eel River and is the president of the Northcoast Environmental Center, a bioregional conservation organization for northwest California and southern Oregon.
