Interview with my mentor Elizabeth Saunders
How did you arrive at your current position?
“I started at Clean Water in 2001 as a campaign organizer, working specifically on our toxic chemical campaigns and my position just kept evolving over the years so that I ended up doing more and more at the State House and on legislative work and we kept changing my title to catch up with what I was actually doing so I became the legislative director. We didn’t actually have the position of Massachusetts Director. Cindy as a New England Director was basically serving as both Connecticut and Massachusetts Directors while overseeing Rhode Island, and there used to be Co New England directors. It happened that Cindy became the sole New England Director. It was clear that was too much for one person, so we created the positions of Massachusetts and Connecticut Directors and I took over the Massachusetts Director role. So I just basically, its a fairly classic, ‘worked my way up through the organization’ over the last 14 years.”
When did you know that this was the profession you wanted to pursue?
“I have a memory of being in eighth grade and sitting around with some friends and saying, ‘what do you think your going to do when you grow up?’ and I said I’m gonna be an Environmentalist and I never changed my mind. That could mean a lot of different things and I don’t think I really necessarily knew what I meant by it at that point, like it could be doing this work, it could be doing science, it could be environmental education, it could be any number of different things, but I think I knew in sort of high school and college as I was doing a lot of on campus organizing, I think I knew that I was interested in the political and organizing side of things. I did kind of stray into field work and more the scientific side for the last year or two of college and then I kind of found my way back here. In terms of environmentalist broadly, since middle school.”
What is the most challenging thing about your field or job?
“The amount that we try to do with the amount of resources that we have available and the disparity between those two, that’s the first thought and really the biggest hurdle is just the incredible control corporations have on our society right now and on our political system and that’s really actually the biggest one. Without that, we could actually successfully appeal to peoples rational thinking and rational minds and rational understanding of the world and just make happen what we need to make happen.”
Why do you continue to do what you do? How do you stay hopeful?
“Probably just because of the amazing people that I get to work with all the time and their just whether it’s my co-workers here or activists or coalition partners, people in other organizations we work with, just everybody. There’s a lot of people doing great work out there and I sort of just adopt the perspective that why not? It is a lot more interesting to be hopeful and see about how you can figure out the solution than it is to get discouraged about it and kind of wallow in that. It leads for a more interesting path.”
What life experience has been most valuable to you professionally?
“I mean really everything that is most important in this work is just ability to interact with people and listen well, understand where they’re coming from and also be able to communicate what I need to communicate in a way that people can actually hear it. I think that almost every aspect of my job is a nuanced version of that except for the part where I’m crunching numbers to make sure our budget balances, but aside from that, almost every bit of it is figuring out just how to actually really connect with people on a person to person basis and then communicate in a way that is really genuine and meaningful and that they are able to hear it and I am able to listen to what they are doing.”
What environmental issue do you think is most pressing?
“It’s hard to call anything more pressing than climate change. There is nothing that is more pressing. There are many other things that I might call equally pressing to climate change, but the future of our species is at stake with climate change so that’s pretty pressing, that is pretty important. Ultimately, I also think that we need to be careful as environmentalists to not stop there, but actually realize that in order to address that problem, or any other environmental problem that we’re looking at, this issue of the way that we have our society set up right now, so that profit is more important than anything else and really short term profit is more important than anything else, and that is actually the most pressing issue because everything else even climate change is never going to get fully resolved well we are operating under that paradigm. Until we change that system, really what we’re doing is we are all holding our fingers in the dikes and sort of putting band aids on things.”
What are your professional goals for the next 5 -10 years and how do you hope to accomplish them?
"Most of my time at Clean Water Action has very much been working on toxic chemical policy and some on solid waste policy meanwhile, I’m Massachusetts Director and the largest percentage of our campaign work is actually energy and climate change policy right now in terms of funding that’s coming in and staff time that allocated to it. So one of my goals is to actually become better versed in climate and energy campaign issue work. That is sort of a personal professional goal and my big goal for the organization is to have us really tackle head on and effectively the problem of what’s seen as the traditional ‘environmental movement’ being dominated by white and middle class people and what actually needs to be a movement that is racially diverse and is economically diverse and actually has everybodys voices at the table and I think that is one of my big goals professionally is to see Clean Water become a leader in breaking down that disparity and that barrier and moving the movement forward. I think that is going to be essential for us to be successful. Related to that is to see the environmental movement defining success If we ‘end’ climate change, but it ends up increasing economic disparities through the solution, then we haven’t actually solved what we need to solve, that is not success in my mind. That is another professional goal is pushing the envelope forward on that in the environmental movement to make sure they are thinking more holistically.”
What do you love about your work and what would you change if you could?
“I love the people as I said before and what I like specifically about Clean Water Action is that I feel like we are trying to push envelopes and really try to look at the bigger picture. We’re trying to do more than just put bandaids on problems and just clean up problems after they happen, we are trying to get at some of those root issues. So I look forward to us doing more of that. That’s one thing I particularly like about it and actually thought about over the years ‘do I want to leave Clean Water?’ The first thing that always comes to my mind when I think about that is ‘but all these people that I’ve built relationships with through this work’. What would I change? I would have environmental groups be more well resourced. The resources and the racial/class disparity issues are the biggest things that I would want to change. More specifically about the resources issue is that we get so much of our funding from grants that are from private foundations and they foundations end up really controlling more than I think they should get to what we do and that’s one of the specific things I would change with in the funding structure so that the funds were actually being distributed by say people who were affected by the problem and that there was a lot more room for flexibility and just trust between the foundations and the groups that we’re going to use the money effectively.”
As someone looking for a college major or experience that gives me both the environmental policy aspect and the science side, what is your advice on that?
“For myself, I studied ecology in college and I have some background in the science and I honestly don’t use it almost at all for my work. I think that probably I use it in ways that I’m not totally aware of in that scientific things come across my desk and somebody who has less scientific background might kind of cringe at them, where as I can kind of just take a minute and move on. So I think that in that way, I probably do use it a bit but honestly, I’m not reading scientific papers, I am certainly not doing any lab work. I think it is good that I have some of that background, although I work mostly on toxic chemical policy which has a lot to do with human health and toxicology and I studied ecology and the biology of arthropods and marine ecosystems and things that are not actually things that I am working on right now. I’m going to tell you a sort of random story that is related, which is so when I was interviewing for this job, I talked about the 20 page paper I had written for some class on mercury pollution in the Amazon and I talked about all my science classes and I talked about my work with the student environmental coalition on campus but the thing that my then boss told me was related to the thing that made her hire me was the fact that I had spent the summer before my senior year and the summer after my senior year and some time in between each organizing folk music festivals. I was part of a very small leadership team organizing these folk music festivals one year and then the next year, and she said ‘those were the skills that actually made me think that you would have the skills we needed for this job. It was the event planning, the attention to lots of details, fundraising and things like that that she was like ‘ya your science background, fine, and your environmental background was all good and that was helpful, but that was the thing that made us feel that you could actually do the job. That was interesting. For doing work like this, that organizing experience is the key thing. The issues it’s helpful to have some background in the issues but those you can learn as you go, but the organizing skills, I mean you learn those as you go too, that’s certainly how I learned but that is some of the key work. But what did you ask about choosing a major? I meant for like a profession like this, is it important to have that and if so, should I pursue a major that would allow me to do both? To be honest, to do campaign organizing, like we are doing, the science is sort of optional. It is obviously really important to the work that we do and so I am really glad that there are scientists out there doing it, but in terms of doing political advocacy, then you need communication skills, you need organizing skills. So we are equally thrilled about a communications major coming in here for example. They got skills that we need, that we may or may not even have here. I think it is really important to have some background in environment especially if you want to go in straight out of college.”
What are your hopes for younger generations in terms of creating positive environmental change?
“My hopes are that first and foremost that those of us in older generations will actually make some progress so you don’t have to do it all but there is clearly going to be a lot more to do. Going back to your question about what keeps you hopeful, so it is easy to look around and get discouraged, so my main hope for younger generations and myself is for people to look around and be able to take in and notice the great things that have been done and the strides that have been made and the passion that is there for actually fixing this problem and move forward based on hope, not on discouragement. That is sort of amorphous but I hope that the next generation will turn our political system in the U.S. around too so that in a few number of years, can look back at the time when conservative politics had a big rise in the U.S. that we can eventually look back on that as just a bump in the road and not the permanent trend.”
Could you tell me about your biggest professional accomplishment? Maybe not just yours, but Clean Water Action in general.
“The concrete policy thing that I am proud of is the passage in Massachusetts of a bill called the Mercury Management Act that phased out the use of Mercury containing products and required that any that weren’t phased out be labeled. It plus a whole lot of other states doing similar bills, led to the fact that Mercury containing thermostats are not sold in the U.S. anymore. That is one particular campaign that I personally worked a lot on and I was very personally involved, so it is sort of my own personal proud policy moment. I think what I am the most proud of is the collaborations and the trust that we have built with partner organizations and that our work with low income people that are working in the labor movement. We are looked to by a lot of our partners in some of these fields that are not traditionally been well thought about by environmental groups and we are looked to as a trusted partner who will make sure those voices are brought to the table and that is something that I am really proud of that people look to us for that.”
What are your top tips on how to make a campaign successful?
“Build relationships, build more relationships but I think 1. bringing the people who are going to be impacted by both the problem and the solution, making sure that they are at the table.The more you can have relationships with businesses, with folks who are in communities that are affected by the problem, folks who could potentially do the work that the solution that will entail. The more you can have relationships, the better. That being said, you’re never going to have all the industry, but having those relationships preferably built up before the campaign starts, or have the campaign have enough time built into it to take that on. 2. I think just having a really good campaign plan and following it. It seems basic, but it is easier said than done. I think that having a good media strategy and make sure that you’ve got your issue out in the public eye is really important and making sure that you really bring people that you need as part of the campaign, make sure you are bringing them along as you go whether that is coalition members like really making sure that you bring people along as you go. The more collaborative you make it, the more effective the campaign will be.”
How did you arrive at your current position?
“I started at Clean Water in 2001 as a campaign organizer, working specifically on our toxic chemical campaigns and my position just kept evolving over the years so that I ended up doing more and more at the State House and on legislative work and we kept changing my title to catch up with what I was actually doing so I became the legislative director. We didn’t actually have the position of Massachusetts Director. Cindy as a New England Director was basically serving as both Connecticut and Massachusetts Directors while overseeing Rhode Island, and there used to be Co New England directors. It happened that Cindy became the sole New England Director. It was clear that was too much for one person, so we created the positions of Massachusetts and Connecticut Directors and I took over the Massachusetts Director role. So I just basically, its a fairly classic, ‘worked my way up through the organization’ over the last 14 years.”
When did you know that this was the profession you wanted to pursue?
“I have a memory of being in eighth grade and sitting around with some friends and saying, ‘what do you think your going to do when you grow up?’ and I said I’m gonna be an Environmentalist and I never changed my mind. That could mean a lot of different things and I don’t think I really necessarily knew what I meant by it at that point, like it could be doing this work, it could be doing science, it could be environmental education, it could be any number of different things, but I think I knew in sort of high school and college as I was doing a lot of on campus organizing, I think I knew that I was interested in the political and organizing side of things. I did kind of stray into field work and more the scientific side for the last year or two of college and then I kind of found my way back here. In terms of environmentalist broadly, since middle school.”
What is the most challenging thing about your field or job?
“The amount that we try to do with the amount of resources that we have available and the disparity between those two, that’s the first thought and really the biggest hurdle is just the incredible control corporations have on our society right now and on our political system and that’s really actually the biggest one. Without that, we could actually successfully appeal to peoples rational thinking and rational minds and rational understanding of the world and just make happen what we need to make happen.”
Why do you continue to do what you do? How do you stay hopeful?
“Probably just because of the amazing people that I get to work with all the time and their just whether it’s my co-workers here or activists or coalition partners, people in other organizations we work with, just everybody. There’s a lot of people doing great work out there and I sort of just adopt the perspective that why not? It is a lot more interesting to be hopeful and see about how you can figure out the solution than it is to get discouraged about it and kind of wallow in that. It leads for a more interesting path.”
What life experience has been most valuable to you professionally?
“I mean really everything that is most important in this work is just ability to interact with people and listen well, understand where they’re coming from and also be able to communicate what I need to communicate in a way that people can actually hear it. I think that almost every aspect of my job is a nuanced version of that except for the part where I’m crunching numbers to make sure our budget balances, but aside from that, almost every bit of it is figuring out just how to actually really connect with people on a person to person basis and then communicate in a way that is really genuine and meaningful and that they are able to hear it and I am able to listen to what they are doing.”
What environmental issue do you think is most pressing?
“It’s hard to call anything more pressing than climate change. There is nothing that is more pressing. There are many other things that I might call equally pressing to climate change, but the future of our species is at stake with climate change so that’s pretty pressing, that is pretty important. Ultimately, I also think that we need to be careful as environmentalists to not stop there, but actually realize that in order to address that problem, or any other environmental problem that we’re looking at, this issue of the way that we have our society set up right now, so that profit is more important than anything else and really short term profit is more important than anything else, and that is actually the most pressing issue because everything else even climate change is never going to get fully resolved well we are operating under that paradigm. Until we change that system, really what we’re doing is we are all holding our fingers in the dikes and sort of putting band aids on things.”
What are your professional goals for the next 5 -10 years and how do you hope to accomplish them?
"Most of my time at Clean Water Action has very much been working on toxic chemical policy and some on solid waste policy meanwhile, I’m Massachusetts Director and the largest percentage of our campaign work is actually energy and climate change policy right now in terms of funding that’s coming in and staff time that allocated to it. So one of my goals is to actually become better versed in climate and energy campaign issue work. That is sort of a personal professional goal and my big goal for the organization is to have us really tackle head on and effectively the problem of what’s seen as the traditional ‘environmental movement’ being dominated by white and middle class people and what actually needs to be a movement that is racially diverse and is economically diverse and actually has everybodys voices at the table and I think that is one of my big goals professionally is to see Clean Water become a leader in breaking down that disparity and that barrier and moving the movement forward. I think that is going to be essential for us to be successful. Related to that is to see the environmental movement defining success If we ‘end’ climate change, but it ends up increasing economic disparities through the solution, then we haven’t actually solved what we need to solve, that is not success in my mind. That is another professional goal is pushing the envelope forward on that in the environmental movement to make sure they are thinking more holistically.”
What do you love about your work and what would you change if you could?
“I love the people as I said before and what I like specifically about Clean Water Action is that I feel like we are trying to push envelopes and really try to look at the bigger picture. We’re trying to do more than just put bandaids on problems and just clean up problems after they happen, we are trying to get at some of those root issues. So I look forward to us doing more of that. That’s one thing I particularly like about it and actually thought about over the years ‘do I want to leave Clean Water?’ The first thing that always comes to my mind when I think about that is ‘but all these people that I’ve built relationships with through this work’. What would I change? I would have environmental groups be more well resourced. The resources and the racial/class disparity issues are the biggest things that I would want to change. More specifically about the resources issue is that we get so much of our funding from grants that are from private foundations and they foundations end up really controlling more than I think they should get to what we do and that’s one of the specific things I would change with in the funding structure so that the funds were actually being distributed by say people who were affected by the problem and that there was a lot more room for flexibility and just trust between the foundations and the groups that we’re going to use the money effectively.”
As someone looking for a college major or experience that gives me both the environmental policy aspect and the science side, what is your advice on that?
“For myself, I studied ecology in college and I have some background in the science and I honestly don’t use it almost at all for my work. I think that probably I use it in ways that I’m not totally aware of in that scientific things come across my desk and somebody who has less scientific background might kind of cringe at them, where as I can kind of just take a minute and move on. So I think that in that way, I probably do use it a bit but honestly, I’m not reading scientific papers, I am certainly not doing any lab work. I think it is good that I have some of that background, although I work mostly on toxic chemical policy which has a lot to do with human health and toxicology and I studied ecology and the biology of arthropods and marine ecosystems and things that are not actually things that I am working on right now. I’m going to tell you a sort of random story that is related, which is so when I was interviewing for this job, I talked about the 20 page paper I had written for some class on mercury pollution in the Amazon and I talked about all my science classes and I talked about my work with the student environmental coalition on campus but the thing that my then boss told me was related to the thing that made her hire me was the fact that I had spent the summer before my senior year and the summer after my senior year and some time in between each organizing folk music festivals. I was part of a very small leadership team organizing these folk music festivals one year and then the next year, and she said ‘those were the skills that actually made me think that you would have the skills we needed for this job. It was the event planning, the attention to lots of details, fundraising and things like that that she was like ‘ya your science background, fine, and your environmental background was all good and that was helpful, but that was the thing that made us feel that you could actually do the job. That was interesting. For doing work like this, that organizing experience is the key thing. The issues it’s helpful to have some background in the issues but those you can learn as you go, but the organizing skills, I mean you learn those as you go too, that’s certainly how I learned but that is some of the key work. But what did you ask about choosing a major? I meant for like a profession like this, is it important to have that and if so, should I pursue a major that would allow me to do both? To be honest, to do campaign organizing, like we are doing, the science is sort of optional. It is obviously really important to the work that we do and so I am really glad that there are scientists out there doing it, but in terms of doing political advocacy, then you need communication skills, you need organizing skills. So we are equally thrilled about a communications major coming in here for example. They got skills that we need, that we may or may not even have here. I think it is really important to have some background in environment especially if you want to go in straight out of college.”
What are your hopes for younger generations in terms of creating positive environmental change?
“My hopes are that first and foremost that those of us in older generations will actually make some progress so you don’t have to do it all but there is clearly going to be a lot more to do. Going back to your question about what keeps you hopeful, so it is easy to look around and get discouraged, so my main hope for younger generations and myself is for people to look around and be able to take in and notice the great things that have been done and the strides that have been made and the passion that is there for actually fixing this problem and move forward based on hope, not on discouragement. That is sort of amorphous but I hope that the next generation will turn our political system in the U.S. around too so that in a few number of years, can look back at the time when conservative politics had a big rise in the U.S. that we can eventually look back on that as just a bump in the road and not the permanent trend.”
Could you tell me about your biggest professional accomplishment? Maybe not just yours, but Clean Water Action in general.
“The concrete policy thing that I am proud of is the passage in Massachusetts of a bill called the Mercury Management Act that phased out the use of Mercury containing products and required that any that weren’t phased out be labeled. It plus a whole lot of other states doing similar bills, led to the fact that Mercury containing thermostats are not sold in the U.S. anymore. That is one particular campaign that I personally worked a lot on and I was very personally involved, so it is sort of my own personal proud policy moment. I think what I am the most proud of is the collaborations and the trust that we have built with partner organizations and that our work with low income people that are working in the labor movement. We are looked to by a lot of our partners in some of these fields that are not traditionally been well thought about by environmental groups and we are looked to as a trusted partner who will make sure those voices are brought to the table and that is something that I am really proud of that people look to us for that.”
What are your top tips on how to make a campaign successful?
“Build relationships, build more relationships but I think 1. bringing the people who are going to be impacted by both the problem and the solution, making sure that they are at the table.The more you can have relationships with businesses, with folks who are in communities that are affected by the problem, folks who could potentially do the work that the solution that will entail. The more you can have relationships, the better. That being said, you’re never going to have all the industry, but having those relationships preferably built up before the campaign starts, or have the campaign have enough time built into it to take that on. 2. I think just having a really good campaign plan and following it. It seems basic, but it is easier said than done. I think that having a good media strategy and make sure that you’ve got your issue out in the public eye is really important and making sure that you really bring people that you need as part of the campaign, make sure you are bringing them along as you go whether that is coalition members like really making sure that you bring people along as you go. The more collaborative you make it, the more effective the campaign will be.”