Milestones: From graduates to movement builders

More than 400 new organizers have completed the Green Corps training program. The vast majority are still organizing campaigns and building organizations that protect the environment and serve the public. Here are three of them:

Johanna Neumann (Class of 2002)

Johanna Neumann’s environmental awakening came at an early age, when in 1986 radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown reached her native Germany.

Fifteen years later, after graduating from Tufts University, Johanna was accepted into the Green Corps program. Since then, she has taken on a range of positions within the environmental and public interest communities, including organizer with Community Action Works (then called Toxics Action Center), director of Maryland PIRG, and director of donor relations with The Public Interest Network.

In 2020, Johanna became the senior director of Environment America’s 100% Renewable Energy campaign. In just two years, Johanna and her team helped win commitments to 100% clean energy by Illinois, Oregon and Tampa, Florida; extend federal clean energy tax credits; advance offshore wind developments in Massachusetts, California and New Jersey; win stronger appliance efficiency standards in Oregon and New Jersey; and secure a $73 billion investment in clean energy as part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

Patti Lynn (Class of 1997)

Since graduating from Green Corps, Patti Lynn has spent nearly her entire career in social change with Corporate Accountability, an organization that stands up to global corporations on the environment, human rights and democracy.

A signature campaign for Corporate Accountability has been Think Outside the Bottle, an effort aimed at persuading people to stop buying bottled water and opposing the privatization of public water supplies. It’s also a campaign that gave Patti and her team an opportunity to work with newer Green Corps organizers. Corporate Accountability partnered with Green Corps to build support for the campaign, organizing events such as the Tap Water Challenge, inviting passersby to see if they could taste the difference between bottled water and water from the tap.

As executive director since 2015, Patti has built Corporate Accountability’s organizational strength and resources. Patti also has focused on training and developing Corporate Accountability’s staff at every level of the organization.

“I have witnessed incredible courage in the hearts and actions of so many people through this work,” said Patti. “We face down tremendous power and win important change together with people around the world.”

Jesse Littlewood (Class of 2004)

When the first Green Corps class graduated in 1992, the World Wide Web had only recently been invented. The Class of 1995 graduated months after the first mass email action (to protest a bill outlawing rave festivals in the United Kingdom).  By the time Jesse Littlewood graduated with the Green Corps Class of 2004, a few Harvard students had just created “The Facebook.”

In the years to come, however, Jesse would apply many of the organizing lessons he learned with Green Corps to the emerging field of digital organizing for the environment and the public interest.

After he graduated, Jesse remained with Green Corps, working with new organizers while building a stronger digital presence for the group. From there, he pivoted to full-time digital work with The Public Interest Network, leading a major overhaul of our web presence, including the Environment America website.

Jesse gained more digital expertise with Echo & Co., a for-profit digital agency that focused on working with non-profits, including his award-winning project for Understood.org. In 2015, Jesse came on as digital director of Common Cause, the long-time democracy advocate.

At Common Cause, Jesse helped grow the organization’s membership and activist list from 250,000 to more than 1 million members and supporters and raised more than $4 million online from thousands of small-dollar donors.

And he’s still training others: Jesse also lectures at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he teaches “Social Change in the Digital Age.”

About this series: PIRG and The Public Interest Network have achieved much more than we can cover on this page. You can find more milestones of our work on Green Corps below. You can also explore an interactive timeline featuring more of our network’s Green Corps milestones.