OUR TEAM
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Prior to leading the Building Power Resource Center, Yong Jung (she/her) served as the National Field Director for the Green New Deal Network. She built a network of dozens of state-wide coalitions to develop and champion climate policies at all levels of government, including the Inflation Reduction Act. In the last 14 years, Yong Jung mobilized tens of thousands of young people for climate action, co-founded a national political organization, led electoral campaigns from the municipal to presidential levels, and worked on historic legislative fights. Yong Jung brings policy expertise, strategic campaigning and coalition building skills, and facilitation savvy to all of her work. She has a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and graduated magna cum laude with honors in political science from Bryn Mawr College.
Yong Jung Cho
Bill Lipton
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Bill (he/him) spent 23 years founding, growing and eventually running the New York Working Families Party. He helped elect hundreds of candidates at the local and statewide level and passed dozens of bills in New York, including groundbreaking legislation requiring paid sick days in New York City as well as the state’s Climate Leadership Community Protection Act. Since then Bill has been working on projects that support a just transition.
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Sonal (she/her) is an environmental and energy justice advocate and public health expert. Previously, she served as the Director of Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, leading the New York policy team and advancing the organization’s policy agenda at the local, state, and national levels. Sonal spearheaded several successful policy campaigns, including New York State's Cumulative Impacts law and New York City’s All-Electric New Buildings Act. She is renowned for her work in advancing environmental and energy justice through policy and program implementation, particularly at the intersection of public health, air quality, and healthy housing. Sonal is a member of the New York State Climate Justice Working Group and the New York City Sustainability Advisory Board. She is also a Climate and Community Project Fellow and a board member for the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships. Sonal holds an MPH in Population and Family Health, with a concentration in Climate and Health, from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Sonal Jessel
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Chelsea (she/her) is an accomplished campaign strategist, organizer, facilitator, and researcher with over a decade of experience in the climate justice movement. Previously, Chelsea led Sierra Club’s federal organizing program, where she spearheaded dozens of congressional and federal advocacy campaigns, including the successful campaign to pass and implement the Inflation Reduction Act. As an executive leader of the Progressive Workers’ Union, she fought for and enforced groundbreaking contracts and led intersectional labor, environmental, and racial justice campaigns. Chelsea received a B.A. in Environmental Studies with a concentration in environmental justice at Yale University, and is currently working towards her M.S. in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management at The New School. She lives on the land of the Lenape people in Brooklyn, NY.
Chelsea Watson
Theo Daniels
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Theo (he/him) is a Master’s student at Georgetown University where he is completing his M.S. in Environmental Metrology and Policy. He completed his undergraduate degrees in Environmental Science and Political Science at Howard University where he was involved in many activities on campus. He has prior work experience at the White House, Congress, and NASA working on various climate topics in addition to several international research expeditions focusing on climate science topics. Theo loves to travel, and hopes to visit every continent besides Australia due to his fear of spiders.
Josefina Hajek-Herrera
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Josefina (she/her) is an energy decarbonization advocate specializing in advancing equitable, zero-carbon energy and circular policies for local governments. She is passionate about closing the socio-economic gap in the energy industry and enabling communities to achieve their climate mitigation and resilience goals.
Josefina holds a Master's of the Environment in Renewable and Sustainable Energy from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she specialized in techno-economic analysis and project development of zero-carbon energy systems. While in graduate school, she co-authored the Sustainable and Circular Public Procurement Toolkit for ICLEI USA, shared with 382 communities to serve as a guide for creating equitable, emissions-reduction, and resource-optimization policies for local government procurement.
Josefina recently moved to Boulder, CO, from San Antonio, Texas. Her previous work includes residential solar development and co-founding an analytical chemistry startup, through which she patented an instrument supporting atmospheric and climate research.
Sinéad López
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Sinéad (she/her) has a decade of experience in the social justice nonprofit and philanthropic sector. As a national grantmaker at the Surdna and Nathan Cummings foundations, she helped mobilize over $60M for historically marginalized artists, storytellers, cultural strategists, culture bearers, journalists, urban planners, faith organizers, and movement builders fighting for justice and multiracial democracy domestically and abroad.
Sinéad believes narrative and culture are necessary sites of transformation for expanding imagination and for realizing new political possibilities, and she is committed to the long-term work of building community power, resilient institutions, and robust infrastructure to advance a more just and equitable society—including a just transition.
Sinéad holds an MPA in Public & Nonprofit Management & Policy with a specialization in Advocacy & Political Action from NYU Wagner, as well as a BA in Art History from Northwestern University. Born and raised in Las Vegas, NV, Sinéad has multi-generational family roots in NM and is proudly celebrating 10 years in New York City. An avid reader, she is currently obsessed with N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy and other works of speculative fiction.
Eric Holmberg
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Eric (he/him) is a policy researcher and organizer who previously served as Senior Policy Analyst for the Chicago City Council Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight, as well as a Chicago Mayoral Fellow supporting the city's infrastructure and environment departments. Over the last ten years, he has organized hundreds of workers into unions, led a successful campaign to win $300 million of health care assistance for seniors, and developed legislation to secure public financing for municipal campaigns. As a campaign worker turned super-volunteer, knocking on doors combines his obsession with walking around cities and his commitment to people-centered politics. He recently earned a Master of Public Policy degree with honors from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, with a specialization in Data Analytics. Eric also holds a B.A. in History from the University of Chicago.
Shannen Maxwell
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Shannen (she/her) is a public policy and advocacy strategist from Mexico, Missouri, home to her family's fourth-generation farm. She previously served as a Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Program Office. In this role, she led stakeholder engagement initiatives across the IRA's clean energy tax credits and worked with state and local governments around the country to raise awareness of the opportunities unlocked by the IRA and Direct Pay.
While completing her Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, her research focused on accelerating equitable IRA implementation and clean energy development in under-resourced communities.
She has worked on electoral campaigns at the federal and local levels, as well as led national advocacy efforts for federal legislation to support family farmers and sustainable farming practices. Shannen currently lives in Washington, DC with her dog, June Bug.