Lehigh Valley

Cathy Frankenberg came to the Lehigh Valley after working with Clean Water Action in Pittsburgh, PA. She has a BFA in fine arts from Slippery Rock University and is completing her MA in Art History at the State University of New York, Buffalo. Her concern for the protection of our health and our resources from toxic waste led her to Clean Water Action, where she is proud to work on issues that directly affect our environment and public health.

Philadelphia

Brady Russell began working for Clean Water Action in the late summer of
2008. He became interested in the environment while watching TV specials
about Earth Day in 1990 back home in Pittsburg, Kansas. Since college,
he's been a professional organizer working with religious communities,
low-income people, national organizations, coalitions, unions and, for
three years, as the Campus Organizer for the student government at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison. He joined the fight against
charitable choice in the early years of the Bush Administration, worked
with a small team of Pennsylvania lobbyists to win the state's first
investment in home heating assistance for low-income people, helped pass
the minimum wage increase for Pennsylvania and convened the first local
forums on the Governor's plan to expand health insurance coverage in
four different cities across Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1999 from
Cornell University. 

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.

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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.