Sierra Club Green Home

Recently, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope set out to “green” his home and discovered a problem: even for him, this wasn’t so simple. Plenty of information was available, but widely disparate and sometimes conflicting sources made things confusing. When meeting with some top donors, the idea of Sierra Club launching a special website to address this problem seemed like a good solution.

Sierra Club Green Home was developed with a simple mission in mind: to help Americans make their homes more energy efficient, environmentally sustainable and healthy. We do not sell products or services. Instead, we educate consumers on how to improve their home health and connect them with Providers that can help them achieve their goals. Our screening process ensures that all Providers listed on our site can help you create a greener, healthier home by reducing

• your use of energy
• your use of non-renewable natural resources
• the presence of toxins and chemicals in your home.

While our education contains some fairly sophisticated content, we focus primarily on “non-green” and “newly-green” citizens.  Research indicates the vast majority of Americans are not taking even simple steps to reduce their impact — things like installing CFLs, turning off the water when brushing teeth, recycling cans, bottles and newspapers, or looking for organic produce options.  We believe this is where SCGH can have the greatest benefit, by influencing people to take those simple first steps to practice environmental responsibility at home.  And of course, we offer vast amounts of education and products for the already-green who are looking to do even more.

All content found on our site is original unless otherwise noted. Our education is developed by a dedicated writing staff with tremendous experience and credentials in all things green. We have tried to deliver an honest, balanced perspective and will continue to update our articles as new issues and solutions arise.

Below is a brief description of each of our key team members. But first, we’d like to thank Gary Rappeport. Without his imagination, this project would never have happened.

OUR STAFF

Jennifer Schwab, Director of Sustainability
As Director of Sustainability, Jennifer is responsible for all environmental information, education and initiatives at Sierra Club Green Home.

Trained as an accountant, Jennifer worked in tax consulting at Ernst & Young before making a career change to pursue her passion for all things sustainable. Inspired by worldwide outdoor and adventure travels, Jennifer decided that environmental preservation would become her life’s work.

She went on to study environmental design and sustainability at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and then completed her Master’s in Urban Planning and Sustainable Design at the University of California — Irvine. Jennifer is a LEED Accredited Practitioner and serves on the USGBC Education Committee. She also serves on advisory boards for the UC-Irvine Sustainability Leadership Program and Healthy House Institute. She has participated on several panels including the University of California’s “Green Development: A Search for Solutions” and has spoken to many different audiences on reaching the new green consumer.

Away from work, Jennifer can be found on the tennis court, trail running, or in the Bikram yoga studio. She follows art and design avidly and is also a trained Cessna pilot. You can find her innermost green thoughts as a weekly blog contributor to the Huffington Post, as well as on the home page of www.sierraclubgreenhome.com.

Gordon Wangers, CMO
Gordon serves as lead marketer and chief editor at Sierra Club Green Home (SCGH). He is also responsible for SCGH’s brand image. Gordon believes that together we can impact climate change with each person doing their part to live greener. He became a hardcore recycler more than 25 years ago while working at Alcoa, Inc., which created one of the first aluminum can recycling programs, and has expanded his environmental efforts ever since.

Previously, he spent three decades in marketing communications, with PR agencies Burson-Marsteller and Golin Harris; sports marketing firm Advantage International (now known as Octagon); and the marketing and promotion firm, AMCI, which he ran for 20 years before selling the business to advertising conglomerate, Omnicom.  Gordon studied journalism and business at the University of Illinois and University of Missouri.

In his spare time, Gordon can be found exercising or jamming the blues on harmonica.

Rebecca ‘Abi’ Wright, Advertising Coordinator
As Advertising Coordinator at SCGH, Abi is primarily responsible for creating and implementing a variety of online advertising packages. She is also responsible for researching, identifying and interacting with prospective advertising partners for the site.

Abi began her sales and advertising career in Savannah, GA while working as a sales rep and sales manager in the timeshare industry with Bluegreen Corporation. During her tenure within the Outdoor Traveler Division, Bluegreen’s sales volume more than doubled. Next, Abi joined Clear Channel Radio as account executive, where she fine-tuned her sales abilities and gained experience with online content.

Growing up in Ohio, Abi attended Wright State University.  At SCGH, she is able to unite her sales and advertising background with her concern for the environment. Abi’s next goal is to become a LEED Home Accredited Professional, but in the meantime, she’s focused on ‘greening’ her newly purchased home in Las Vegas, NV.

Regina Stepanov, Supervisor to the ‘Green Team’ and GreenCheck Specialist
Regina is responsible for managing the SCGH Green Associate Team, while creating new and original articles to promote education on becoming green. She also researches, identifies, contacts and recruits green product and service Providers to be added to the SCGH database once passing the GreenCheck process. In addition, she designs and executes creative plans to build daily traffic for SCGH.com. This includes, but is not limited to, blogging and social networking.

In 1998, Regina moved to Ohio from her birthplace of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (former Soviet Union), and remains fluent in the Russian language. She attended Ohio State University and received a minor in Russian Studies. Currently, she is attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where she is majoring in Environmental Studies. Regina is the former Vice President with the Sierra Student Coalition at UNLV. Her lifestyle also includes various environmental practices like avid recycling and vegetarianism. When not in the office or the classroom, Regina can be found volunteering, practicing horticulture, hiking, and enjoying the company of her family and animal companions.

Heidrun Mumper-Drumm, Consultant
Heidrun is a graphic designer and letterpress printer and an Adjunct Associate Professor in Graphic Design, Product Design and Humanities & Design Sciences at Art Center College of Design. Her design practice includes identity systems, marketing materials, and books, and her work has been recognized in industry periodicals and exhibitions.

Since 2003, Heidrun’s focus has been on the incorporation of sustainability goals and lifecycle strategies into design education and into the design process. She has developed and teaches academic and studio classes related to design for sustainability at Art Center College of Design, and lectures and conducts workshops on lifecycle thinking and design process. Formerly an environmental engineer for Bechtel and Parsons Engineering, her experience includes nuclear, geothermal, solar and wind energy projects, as well as environmental management for NASA and the US Air Force.

Joan Hamilton, Writer and Editor
Joan is a freelance environmental writer and editor based in Berkeley, California. She has written for Audubon, Bay Nature, Mother Jones, Orion, Sierra, and The Nation. From 1995 to 2007 she was editor-in-chief of Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, and has also been top editor at Climbing and High Country News. In addition to her work at Sierra Club Green Home, she is editing a book, writing magazine articles, and producing downloadable audio guides to the outdoors. For more information, go to her website at http://web.mac.com/joanham or email her at joanham@gmail.com

Jennifer Roberts, Writer
Jennifer is a writer, lecturer, and consultant specializing in ways in which we can improve our environment and enrich our lives by building better buildings and making smarter choices at home and at work. Educated at both Dartmouth and Stanford, she has written about green buildings and healthy living for publications as varied as Dwell, Professional Builder, Body + Soul, and the Financial Times of London. She holds a certificate in urban permaculture design and has professional accreditation from LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council program that recognizes expertise in green building practices. She is the author of Good Green Kitchens, Good Green Homes, and Redux: Designs That Reuse, Recycle, and Reveal. She lives in San Francisco with her partner, their dog, and four chickens. Visit her website at www.jenniferroberts.com.

Bob Schildgen, Writer
Bob has been writing for Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, for 15 years. He served as managing editor of Sierra from 1997 to 2005, when he began a popular environmental advice column, “Hey Mr. Green.” His book Hey Mr. Green, a collection of these columns, was published in 2008 by Sierra Club Books. In addition to numerous articles, columns, and reviews in Sierra, his work has appeared in wide variety of other publications. He also edited The Corporate Reapers, a classic study of American agribusiness that was published in 1992. Schildgen is a founding board member of the national Green Chamber of Commerce and a cofounder of Pacific View Press, a multicultural publisher. A native of rural Wisconsin, he now lives in Berkeley, California, where he grows more than 40 different types of vegetables and herbs in a small urban garden.

Jennifer Taggart, Writer
Jennifer is an environmental attorney specializing in consumer product labeling law, a former environmental engineer, an eco-consultant helping to make homes green and non toxic, and author of the forthcoming The Smart Mama’s Green Guide: Simple Steps to Non Toxic Babies from Center Street of Hachette Book Group USA. She runs the website TheSmartMama and also blogs for 5 Minutes for Going Green and Amazon Green. She regularly lectures in Los Angeles on how to reduce toxic chemicals in the home, from green cleaning to cleaning up the toxic toy box. She says her most important job is raising two children in a mostly green, mostly non-toxic environment.