Green Corps Organizer Laura Westwood, right, worked with the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters Institute to educate citizens and candidates on conservation issues.

Thanks to your support, Green Corps is fulfilling our mission of training young environmental leaders. Green Corps believes it takes leadership and proven skills to curb global warming, protect communities from toxics, improve air and water quality, and preserve biodiversity. We also believe that leaders are rarely discovered—they are identified, recruited, trained and nurtured. Your support has allowed us to find and train hundreds of emerging leaders, some of whom you’ll read about in this newsletter.

Each year, Green Corps reaches out to thousands of college seniors around the country and selects the top applicants to participate in our Environmental Leadership Training Program after graduation.

Green Corps’ Class of 2007, selected from a pool of 700 applicants, represents the nation’s best and brightest young, aspiring environmental leaders. To help them launch their careers in the environmental field, our program provides both classroom and hands-on learning experiences with a job-placement component at the end of the program year.

Here are just a few profiles of members of the Class of 2007, the future leaders of the environmental movement.

Ashley Schaeffer
After graduating from Whitman College in 2004 with a degree in Environmental Studies and Politics, Ashley spent a year traveling in South America. There, she decided her calling was to organize for environmental change. She witnessed firsthand how multinational corporations were destroying the Amazon and devastating indigenous communities. Upon returning to the United States, Ashley sought environmental career opportunities and found Green Corps.

This fall, Ashley worked in North Carolina, California and Florida to launch Toxics Action Center’s national campaign to phase out the use of dangerous lawn care pesticides. According to government reports, 67 million pounds of pesticides are used annually on U.S. lawns, filling backyards with chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, Ashley organized a media event at the TruGreen ChemLawn headquarters, to deliver 500 “Refuse to Use” community pledges to the company manager. Ashley’s event was featured by all of the state’s major media outlets and generated a response from the company. Using the skills learned from Green Corps, Ashley was able to recruit hundreds of volunteers, generate a flood of public comments, and build national visibility for the campaign in just a few months.


Laura Westwood
Laura graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. While at Princeton, Laura organized voter education drives and volunteered her time during the 2004 election. As graduation approached, Laura was searching for a way to combine her two passions—the environment and politics—when she found Green Corps.

After participating in Green Corps’ Introductory Classroom Training, Laura was sent to Green Bay, Wisconsin, as a field organizer for the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters Institute. Her job: to raise visibility for conservation issues in the 2006 election.

Laura helped launch a voter and candidate education campaign in order to bridge the gap between citizen support for conservation and the actions of the state’s elected officials. Laura educated hundreds of citizens about local conservation issues, such as protecting the Great Lakes and preserving the state Stewardship Fund, dedicated funding for land conservation. In addition, she recruited and trained more than 30 citizens to become conservation advocates—people who will speak to candidates about the need for pro-conservation policies.


Kate O'Donnell
Kate graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in Anthropology and Political Science. During college, she was a leader with the campus environmental group and coordinated multiple environmental and social justice campaigns. Through her activism, Kate was introduced to several Green Corps graduates, prompting her to think about pursuing a career in the environmental movement.

As a Green Corps organizer, Kate worked with Partners for Open Space, a 140-member coalition of Maryland conservation organizations. Kate’s job: to mobilize grassroots support for an open space ballot measure that would require the General Assembly to oversee the sale or transfer of conservation lands. Kate recruited and trained citizen activists, helping to educate 36,000 voters about the issue. On Election day, the ballot measure passed by an overwhelming 85 percent.