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.