STAFF
Johanna Bozuwa
Executive Director
Johanna (she/her) is the Executive Director at the Climate and Community Project. She directs the network of researchers and experts to develop crucial and justice-based climate policy. Her research focuses on extraction and fossil fuels, energy justice and democracy, and the political economy of transitions. Prior to joining the Climate and Community Project, Johanna managed the Climate and Energy Program at the Democracy Collaborative, a think tank focused on designing a more democratic economy. Johanna cut her teeth organizing in the Netherlands against fossil fuel infrastructure, influence, and finance, particularly against Royal Dutch Shell. Her work has been published and cited in outlets such as the Nation, the Guardian, Huffington Post, and the Hill.
Patrick Bigger
Research Director
Patrick (he/him) is the Research Director at the Climate and Community Project (CCP). Prior to joining CCP he was a Lecturer in Economic Geography at Lancaster University in the UK and holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Kentucky. His scholarly research focused on the creation and regulation of new financial mechanisms by governments, financiers, and NGOs that try to reconcile capitalism’s environmental and economic contradictions. He has written extensively on these issues in academic journals including Science; Nature: Ecology and Evolution; and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, as well as other outlets including The Nation and The Conversation. At CCP his research focuses domestically on Green Industrial Policy, and globally on fiscal justice and reparations for climate action.
Laurel Chen
Operations Manager
Laurel Chen (she/her) is the Operations Manager at the Climate and Community Project (CCP). She works alongside staff to set up and maintain the backbone organizational systems that allow for smooth, sustainable, and just operations. Prior to joining CCP, Laurel worked on the Communications Team at the Green New Deal Network. Laurel's experience ranges from doing communications and organizing for climate justice, housing justice, and police abolition campaigns to defendant support for pipeline resistance. She lives in Chicago and holds a master's degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago.
Ruthy Gourevitch
Policy Manager, Housing & Communities
Ruthy Gourevitch (she/her) is the Housing Policy Manager at the Climate and Community Project (CCP), where she works with organizers, researchers, and policymakers to advance housing and climate justice. Ruthy has worked on housing policy at the local and federal levels as a researcher, political staffer, and advocate. Ruthy was a Senior Policy Advisor for Congressman Jamaal Bowman, where she developed and advanced policy focused on housing, utility justice, and disaster recovery. Ruthy has also worked in roles providing policy and research support to tenant-led coalitions and campaigns fighting for tenant protections. Ruthy lives in New Haven and holds a master's degree in city planning from MIT.
Batul Hassan
Policy Manager, Care & Education
Batul Hassan (she/her) is the Care & Education Policy Manager at the Climate and Community Project (CCP), where she works closely with member scholars and movement allies to research, manage, and execute projects that build the case for transformative, racially-just climate policy. Before joining CCP, she worked in New York City Health and Hospital's COVID-19 response as a community engagement specialist. Previously, Batul worked for Planned Parenthood's national office and for Save the Children Northwest Balkans in its European refugee response. She was also formerly active in SWC-UAW Local 2110 and in DC 37 Local 768. Batul lives in New York City and holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
Emmett Hopkins
Policy Manager, Transportation & Mining
Emmett (he/him) is the Transportation Policy Manager at the Climate and Community Project, where he works with members and partners to advance a new vision for mobility that centers justice across the transportation supply chain. Emmett previously worked as Operations Director at Climate Mobilization Project and led CMP’s intersectional organizing for transportation justice. He brings over a decade of experience collaborating with diverse stakeholders to activate power towards equitable transportation systems, build community food systems, ensure equitable access to public lands, and mobilize resources towards a just transition. He graduated from Stanford with a BS in Earth Systems and MS in Urban Planning & Sustainable Design. Emmett enjoys growing food and cultivating relationships, riding bikes and buses, and reimagining our communities to better serve all the people living in them.
Daniel Aldana Cohen
Founding Co-Director
Daniel (he/him) is the Founding Co-Director of the Climate and Community Project, where he advises the strategic direction of the project. He is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2, and serves as a faculty affiliate in the graduate program on Political Economy. Daniel works on the intersections of the climate emergency, housing, political economy, social movements, and inequalities of race and class in the United States and Brazil. Cohen has been cited for his research and public engagement in The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Vox, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Huffington Post, Energy & Environment News, Gizmodo, and elsewhere.
Billy Fleming
Founding Co-Director
Billy (he/him) is the Founding Co-Director of the Climate and Community Project, where he advises the strategic direction of the project. He is the Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center in the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and currently Diana Balmori Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. Prior to joining Penn, he worked as a landscape architect, city planner, organizer, and, later, in the Obama Administration’s White House Domestic Policy Council. His writing on climate, disaster, and design has also been published in The Guardian, The Atlantic, CityLab, Dissent Magazine, Houston Chronicle, Jacobin, Places Journal, and Science for the People Magazine.
Thea Riofrancos
Strategic Co-Director
Thea Riofrancos (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), as well as in peer-reviewed articles in Perspectives on Politics, Cultural Studies, World Politics, and Global Environmental Politics (forthcoming), essays that have appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, n+1, Dissent, Jacobin and NACLA, and in her coauthored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019).
