Board of Trustees

Marcie Tyre Berkley, Chair

Marcie Tyre Berkley is a nonprofit volunteer and activist, with a focus on broadening access to educational and outdoor opportunities, and on land conservation and environmental issues.   Previously, Marcie was an associate professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, where her research focused on organizational problem solving in manufacturing environments. Prior to MIT, she taught at Harvard Business School and at the Indonesian Institute of Management.  Marcie holds a BA in economics from Wellesley College, and an MBA and DBA from Harvard Business School.

Marlon Washington, Vice Chair

Marlon is an Administrative Organizer at 1199SEIU. Marlon comes with 13 years of labor and social justice work. He also worked for Better Future Project as an organizer. He helped to start the South East Mass node. Marlon is very passionate about working for justice for all which includes fighting for climate justice. Marlon lives in Taunton MA with Partner and 4 children Amaya, Alana, Isaiah and Elijah

Juliet Schor, Secretary

Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Juliet received her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Massachusetts. Her most recent book is Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (The Penguin Press, 2010). She is also author of the national best-seller, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (Basic Books, 1992) and The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (Basic Books, 1998), among other publications. 

David Klafter, Treasurer

David is semi-retired after a working life in a variety of occupations. A longtime activist in antiwar, labor and social justice organizations, he joined 350 Mass in the lead-up to the 2014 People's Climate March in New York City. He lives in Brookline, and is active in the Boston Node of 350 Mass, and on the Executive committee of 350 Mass’ Statewide Steering Team. He has been a 350 Mass representative to the Better Future Board for several years, and recently became a full Board member.

Ben Thompson

Ben is a Mathematics graduate student at Boston University. He has been involved in climate activism since 2008. In 2012, when he moved to Boston, he started volunteering with 350 Mass, and he launched a divestment campaign at Boston University that was supported by Better Future Project. Ben co-led the Energy Exodus-a 7-day march in 2014 organized by Better Future Project and Students for a Just and Stable Future. He chairs the Transportation Committee in Boston Universities Climate Action Plan Task Force. Ben was a GK12 NSF Fellow in 2014, spending two days a week in a middle school science classroom as a "resident scientist" and an AAAS Mass Media Fellow in 2017 spending ten weeks writing as a science journalist. 

Jon Grossman

Jon Grossman has been a lifelong labor movement activist.  After college, he worked as an aide in a state-run mental hospital in Boston and got involved with the union. Jon held various positions during his seventeen years there, finally serving as president of his small AFSCME Local. He moved on to a full-time job with SEIU 509 organizing state-funded private sector human service workers, where he still works today.  Most of Jon’s work at SEIU 509 has involved organizing, representing and negotiating for union members who work in social services for state-funded private agencies.  Recently SEIU 509 became the first union in Massachusetts to endorse the campaign to divest the Massachusetts state retirement funds from fossil fuels. 

Maggie Sullivan

Maggie Sullivan is a senior litigation associate at the law firm Goodwin LLP. She holds a bachelor's degree from Columbia University and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her husband and daughter.

Andrea Nyamekye

Ms. Nyamekye is the Co-Executive Director of Neighbor to Neighbor MA, a grassroots organization working to organize the “New Majority”: people of color, low-income and working-class people, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community in the four Gateway Cities of MA: Lynn, Worcester, Springfield and Holyoke.

Ms. Nyamekye has been in the fight for environmental justice for 7 years. Over the last 4 years, she has led Neighbor to Neighbor MA to think about the intersections of environment and climate with the myriad economic and racial justice issues facing marginalized and disenfranchised communities in the Commonwealth. Ms. Nyamekye immigrated from Ghana in 1998 when she was only three years old with her family. Ms. Nyamekye is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a B.S. in Natural Resources Conservation.

Damian White

Damian White is Professor of Social Theory and Environmental Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. He has been working on climate, environmental and labor issues since the early 1990s in the UK and the US. Most recently he co-organized a RISD Brown/Conference/lecture series on Climate Futures, Design and the Just Transition. Damian received his PhD in environmental sociology from the University of Essex in 2001. He is the author of among other publications. Bookchin-A Critical Appraisal (Pluto Press, UK/University of Michigan Press USA, 2008) and Environments, Nature and Social Theory: Hybrid Approaches (Palgrave Macmillian, 2015) - with Alan Rudy and Brian Gareau. He is presently working on a book entitled Imagining Just Transitions: Design Politics, Labor and Post Carbon Futures. He lives in Boston with his partner and their three boys.

Beth Kontos

Beth is the President of AFT Massachusetts. She was first elected to the position in 2018. Before becoming President, Beth served as one of the union’s Vice Presidents from 2014 to 2018. Beth has a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Spanish and a Masters in History from Salem State University. After 20 years working for Verizon as a telephone operator, computer technician, computer programmer, and software technical support agent, Beth left to become a history teacher in 2004. With the success of the Fair Share Amendment ballot initiative in November 2022, Beth will lead AFT MA in the effort to increase funding for public higher education so that our students can graduate without the burden of student loan debt. As a leader in the Massachusetts labor movement, she serves as a Vice President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and on the steering committees of the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, Vocational Education Justice Alliance, MassBudget, MassCare, and the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition.

Priya Gandbhir

Priya Gandbhir joined CLF in 2020. She is a Senior Attorney in the Clean Energy and Climate Change program. In this role, Priya works in pursuit of a clean and just energy future by, in part, working collaboratively with local community groups, advocating and litigating before public utility commissions, and engaging with New England’s regional independent electrical system operator, ISO-NE.

Priya has experience with a wide range of environmental matters, including utilities regulation, wetlands protection, hazardous waste clean-up and litigation, and environmental due diligence in real estate. In addition, Priya has significant experience in matters pertaining to municipal law, having served as Assistant City Solicitor for a central Massachusetts community and as a Conservation Commissioner for her hometown of Framingham, MA. Priya is a graduate of Wellesley College and received her J.D. and an LL.M. in Environmental Law from Vermont Law School. In her free time, Priya enjoys spending time with her friends and family, hiking with her dog Rey, and exploring New England’s diverse and scenic parks and beaches.

Distinguished Advisory Committee

• The Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, President and Minister, Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ
• Bonnie Cockman, Former Chair of Better Future Project Board, 2012-2015; CFO at Organization for Tropical Studies
• Dr. Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT
• Dr. Peter Huybers, Assistant Professor of Climate, Harvard University; former Tank Platoon Leader in the United States Army
• Lawrence Lessig, Esq., Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School; Director of Harvard University Safra Center for Ethics
• Dr. Atyia Martin, CEO and Founder of All Aces, Inc.; former Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Boston
• Bill McKibben, Founder, 350.org
• Greg Nickels, Mayor of Seattle, 2002-2009; former President, United States Conference of Mayors
• Dr. Juliette Rooney-Varga, Director of Climate Change Initiative, University of Massachusetts-Lowell
• Kelsey Wirth, Co-Founder, Mothers Out Front; Co-Founder, Align Technology, Inc.
• Junko Yoda, Managing Director, Shellingford Ltd.; former Asia Regional Treasurer, Deutsche Bank; former Vice President, Goldman SachS