Pennsylvania
Staff
Allentown
Frederick "Rick" Loomis came to Clean Water Action's Allentown office in 1998 after leaving a 35-year career as a YMCA professional in New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. He holds a B.S. and a M. Ed. in Social Agency Administration from Springfield College in Massachusetts. His concern for the environmental legacy we are leaving our youth led him to Clean Water Action. Rick currently works throughout the Lehigh Valley and other northestern PA communities on trash and landfill issues, land-use policies, and stormwater management. He also works with Hazelton residents to fight dredge spoils dumping and with Bucks County residents on MTBE contamination in their groundwater.
Philadelphia
Alisha Deen-Steindler joined Clean Water Action's Philadelphia office in June of 2006. She worked closely with Clean Water Action/Clean Water Fund San Francisco while working as a legislative and policy analyst for the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water from 2003 - 2006. Before that, Alisha attended the University of Oregon for graduate studies where she researched multicultural environmental education, receiving a M.S. in Environmental Studies in 2002. She developed an interest in water policy early on in Miami, FL while getting her B.A. in Environmental Studies at Florida International University with a campaign to get herbicides out of the campus ponds from 1994-1998. Alisha then worked for a federal task force on Everglades preservation in Miami, Florida, called the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force in 1998 - 2000. After six years on the West Coast, she is thrilled to be back east with Clean Water.
Billy Goldsmith has been the Staff and Outreach Director in Philadelphia since March of 2003. After graduating from the University of Florida in the Spring of 2000, Billy moved to Northampton, MA and began doing outreach for Clean Water Action there. In addition to outreach and election organizing, he has organized public hearings in Western Massachusetts to hold coal fired power plants accountable. He also serves a trainer at national and regional conferences for Clean Water Action's outreach programs and has helped train over 10 Staff Directors across the country.
Anne Misak joined Clean Water Action in August 2007 as a Program Organizer. Anne graduated from Oberlin College in 2007 with a degree in Politics. During her time at Oberlin, she helped organize students going to anti-war rallies as a member of the Peace Activists League, supported unions on campus as the Liaison for the Student Labor Action Coalition and organized events and trainings as the Education Coordinator for the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association. Anne has also worked on political campaigns, including Dennis Kucinich's 2004 Presidential Campaign, Global Exchange's Democracy Campaign for electoral reform in 2005 and Bob Casey's 2006 Senate Campaign. She is the primary organizer for establishing water management and protection ordinances throughout the Schuylkill watershed, which helps local communities protect their water sources from contamination related to development.
Pittsburgh
Myron Arnowitt served as Clean Water Action's Western PA Director for eleven years and is currently the PA State Director. Myron has worked as a community organizer for over 18 years for a variety of neighborhood, environmental, and social justice organizations in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chester, PA. Myron's local work with CWA in Pittsburgh included establishing PA's first community air monitoring program, and passage of strict air pollution compliance regulations. He has also helped residents with contaminated drinking water sources and worked with the Pittsburgh School District to reduce pesticide use. In addition to his Clean Water Action work, he serves locally on the board of the Central Northside Neighborhood Council.
Ashleigh Deemer joined Clean Water Action in July of 2006 as a Program Organizer in Pittsburgh. Her work with Clean Water Action includes working with the Allegheny County Partnership to Reduce Diesel Pollution, which promotes the installation of pollution control devices on dirty diesel vehicles. The Partnership's primary focus has been on school buses and transit buses, which expose many children and commuters to the toxic effects of diesel emissions each day. She graduated in 2005 with a degree in Environmental Policy & Advocacy and a minor in Botany from Chatham College in Pittsburgh. Before joining Clean Water Action, she was an Assistant Canvass Director for a national environmental and consumer rights organization in Brooklyn, New York.
Kathy Lawson joined the Clean Water Action staff in June 2007 as the Western PA Director. After years of experience in the business world, her professional relationship with The Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA) led to an opportunity to express her personal concern for a clean environment as Director of the Healthy Children Project. During her time at LDA, she coordinated the organization's national educational, advocacy, and collaborative efforts to raise awareness of the link between unnecessary exposure to environmental toxicants and learning disabilities. Kathy is a native of Pittsburgh and is delighted to continue her work of preventing harm from exposure to dangerous chemicals with Clean Water Action.
Cole Lea, Assistant Phone Canvass Director, grew up in the West End area of Pittsburgh near Neville Island and has been an environmentalist ever since! An activist and political poet, Cole enjoys educating, training and developing new organizers, as well as motivating and reactivating seasoned veterans. She has been with Pittsburgh's Clean Water Action office since 2001 and considers it a great privilege to empower people for a living.
Felicia Sam returned to her activist roots, after many unfulfilling years as a financial systems analyst, to open Clean Water Action's Pittsburgh Phone Canvass in 1988. She became the director of the program, building it into one of the most successful canvasses in the country. Felicia has coordinated work on hundreds of issue and election campaigns, and in spite of the many exciting campaign victories, she feels her most important role has been recruiting and training hundreds of activists and organizers throughout the country, many of which continue to inspire her today.
Chris West has been Staff and Outreach Director for Clean Water Action's Field Canvass in Pittsburgh since May of 2006. Chris has been involved in activism with at-risk youth, Working America, and Clean Water Action since graduating from Allegheny College in 2002. He loves working with Clean Water Action because every day there is the opportunity to hold politicians and corporations accountable to the people.
