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Gabriel Gerow (GOT Coordinator, SF) - Gabe joined the GOT staff team in January 2007. An alumnus from the Spring 2006 GOT, Gabriel has also sailed as a bosun on board the Greenpeace US boat s.y.Witness, worked as a team-leader in the San Francisco canvass office, and has participated in Greenpeace actions and actions training. Gabriel has worked with Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition on their toxic-tech student campaign as well as helping run the ChangeIT! program last summer. Gabriel studied Philosophy and Religious Studies at San Diego State University. Apart from working to save the planet Gabriel loves to practice traditional internal Chinese Kung-fu, climb things, play paint ball, and enjoys any kind of outdoor activity.

Rebecca Van Damm (GOT Coordinator, D.C.) - Rebecca hails from Atlanta and studied Anthropology and Environmental Ethics at the University of Georgia. Just before her senior year she jumped into organizing in college when she became the programming director of her college radio station, 90.5FM in Athens. Realizing that she wanted to use her people skills to protect the environment, she accepted an internship with the Sierra Club called the Hybrid Evolution Tour where she drove a Toyota Prius for six weeks from Key West to Maine and chatted up citizens and news cameras about clean energy solutions to global warming. She continued her work with the Sierra Club by helping to educate voters about the environmental records of George Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 Environmental Voter Education Campaign (EVEC). Recognizing that organizing was her calling she applied to Green Corps, a year-long field school for environmental organizing. During her Green Corps year she worked with several organizations including the Alaska Coalition in Syracuse, NY to organize 55 volunteers to hop on a bus to Washington, DC to lobby their congressman to vote against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She also worked with Environment Colorado to organize the first ever Roaring Fork Citizens' Roadless Strategy Session to protect roadless areas in the White River National Forest. After graduating from Green Corps she came back to Philadelphia to work with the Sierra Club on the 2006 Voter Education Campaign for the national midterm elections where she organized hundreds of volunteers to knock on doors and get out the vote, successfully kicking out one of the worst environmental senators in history: Rick Santorum. Rebecca loves working with students and helping them develop the skills they need to run successful campaigns on campus. In her free time she enjoys dance parties, indy movies, yoga, biking, cooking and singing.

Ashley Schaeffer (GOT Coordinator, SF) - Ashley hails from Ukiah, California, a small Northern California activist community nestled in the heart of Mendocino County.  She spent a lot of time in Bali, Indonesia, Mexico and Australia growing up and after high school lived in Costa Rica and Spain.  During college, Ashley studied abroad in Ecuador and studied the struggles of the Ecuadorian people against the oil industry, visiting the Amazonian sites of oil extraction. During college she also led a group of American high school students to Ecuador for two summers with the World Learning Institute.  She participated in Semester in the West, a dynamic field study dissecting the environmental and political situation of the American West.  Ashley graduated from Whitman College in 2004 with an Honors degree in Environmental Studies and Politics, and a minor in Spanish.  Her thesis explored the indigenous resistance to the oil industry in the Ecuadorian Amazon, which eventually led her to work with Amazon Watch for 8 months after a year of travel in Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. She worked on the Chevron Toxico Clean Up Ecuador Campaign to hold Chevron accountable for their environmental abuses in the Amazon. As part of the Green Corps class of 2007, Ashley worked to get TruGreen ChemLawn to phase out toxic chemicals in their lawn care program with the Toxics Action Center, to ban bottled water in San Francisco with Corporate Accountability International, and to direct a canvass office in Pittsburgh.  Ashley now finds herself excited to be training and inspiring more students to join the social change and environmental movement.  In addition to traveling, Ashley loves trail running, swimming, yoga, acai, Afro-Brazilian and salsa dancing, speaking foreign languages, hula hooping, flaxseed, and seaweed.

Adam Conlin (GOT Coordinator, D.C.) - Adam Conlin was first introduced to Greenpeace through the GOT in the Summer of 2007.  After a great term with Rebecca and Gabe, he traveled across the country from DC to San Francisco in the Rolling Sunlight (a bio-diesel Greenpeace truck covered in solar panels) giving presentations on global warming to citizens coast to coast.  Adam then returned to the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse to finish his degree in Sociology, minor in Philosophy, while doing undergraduate grant research on student social movement organizations and co-chairing a student organization, the UWL Progressives.  He has worked on everything from political campaigns to issue-based community organizing, but ultimately loves to work with students to create environmental change!  To remain sane, Adam builds and maintains bicycles, enjoys backpacking and abides by the New Glarus adage "keep it local - drink indigenous."

Heather Booth - Heather has worked on elections and social change organizing for over 40 years, starting in the civil rights movement. She is now a consultant with groups working to build democracy including the National Organization of Women, Campaign for America's Future, MoveOn.org, Working Assets and TrueMajority.  She is also a founding director and president of the Midwest Academy, a USAction support affiliate and national training center for social change organizations including the Sierra Club, Children's Defense Fund and NARAL. In 2000, Heather was the Executive Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which helped to increase the African American turnout by nearly two million voters.

Lois Gibbs - In 1978, Lois founded the Love Canal Homeowners' Association, and Citizens for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) in 1981. She is the recipient of the 1990 Goldman Environmental Prize, the 1998 Heinz Award and the 1999 John Gardner Leadership Award from Independent Sector.

Todd Gitlin - Todd was the third president of Students for a Democratic Society and coordinator of the SDS Peace Research and Education Project, during which time he helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first civil disobedience against an American corporation (Chase Manhattan Bank) for its ties to South Africa. He was a professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at the University of California, Berkeley, and a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. He is now a professor of journalism at Columbia University.  Todd is currently a member of the Greenpeace Board of Directors.  

Ross Gelbspan - Ross was a reporter and editor for 31 years at The Philadelphia Bulletin, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. At the Globe, he conceived, directed and edited a series of articles that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Following his retirement from daily journalism, he published The Heat Is On: the Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription (Perseus Books, 1998) and Boiling Point (Basic Books, 2004).  He maintains the website: www.heatisonline.org

John Willis - John has extensive experience with Greenpeace, having worked as a campaigner for Greenpeace Canada (1981 - 1988), a project coordinator for Greenpeace International (1988 - 1995) and as national campaign director for Greenpeace Japan (1995 - 1996).  He currently is a member of the Greenpeace U.S. Board of Directors.

Terri Swearingen - Terri is a registered nurse, dental lab technician, wife, mother and homemaker. She is the current coordinator and founding member of the Tri-State Environmental Council. She has served on numerous boards, including Environmental Background Information Center, GreenWatch, Second Look and the Ohio Environmental Council and its Citizens Pollution Prevention Campaign.  In 1997, she was the Goldman Environmental Prize winner for North America. She is currently a member of the Greenpeace U.S. Board of Directors.

John Passacantando - With more than 10 years in the public interest sector, John came to serve as executive director of Greenpeace after co-founding Ozone Action, a grassroots organization dedicated to stopping global warming.  John holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Wake Forest University and a Master of Arts in economics from New York University.

Philip D. Radford - Phil manages Greenpeace's student, community and Internet grassroots organizing teams. Prior to joining Greenpeace, Phil served as the founder and executive director of Power Shift, was a Partner with Clean Edge, Inc., the national field director of Ozone Action, the lead organizer with Green Corps and a canvass and campaign director for several state Public Interest Research Groups.

Nadine Bloch - Since 1980, Nadine has been involved with non-violent direct action campaigns, both locally and internationally. Currently, Nadine leads workshops in active non-violence, direct action skills (blockades, climbs, boats, banners, etc.), political performance/street theater, puppet and prop-construction, creative conflict resolution, campaign development, scouting, strategic planning and much more.

Neal Kemkar - Neal has experience in clean air, urban sprawl and corporate accountability issue campaigns. Neal has directed several fundraising and political canvass programs. In the 2004 election cycle, Neal helped the Sierra Club execute its Environmental Voter Education Campaign, a nationwide direct contact effort aimed at getting out the environmental vote. Neal organized for John Kerry in the 2004 Iowa caucuses, helped write trainings manuals and run trainings for Democratic GAIN and coordinated the DNC's outreach to Native American tribes in Nevada.

Amy Faulring - (Frontline National Canvass Campaign Coordinator, Greenpeace) coordinates grassroots tactics for the Frontline (street canvass) offices around the country to implement. She also trains Frontline canvassers in essential organizing skills through regional weekend trainings. Before working on Frontline campaigns, Amy was the first Greenpeace Organizing Term Coordinator, kicking off the program in August 2004 and continuing until April 2007. Prior to her work at Greenpeace, Amy was trained in grassroots organizing by Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing. That year Amy helped launch the Sierra Club's Building Environmental Communities Campaign, a multi-million dollar field organizing effort in New Hampshire, worked in Ann Arbor, MI with Bluewater Network's "Stop Global Warming Campaign," a consumer boycott campaign demanding Ford Motor Company increase their fuel efficiency standards, launched a strategic field campaign in New Orleans for Oceana demanding that Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines stop dumping unfiltered sewage into the oceans, and directed a political canvass office in Atlanta, GA for the Georgia Public Interest Research Group (GA PIRG). Amy has a B.A. in History from Duke University. When she is not campaigning to save the environment and training activists, Amy enjoys biking, cooking, Ultimate Frisbee, hiking and spending quality time with friends and family.