PowerShiftWest

Bernadette Del Chiaro directs Environment Californias clean energy and global warming programs for Environment California and Environment California Research & Policy Center. Since joining staff in 2002, Ms. Del Chiaro has led a number of highly successful campaigns including the Million Solar Roofs initiative which created the nations largest investment in solar power in history. She was also a leading voice in the landmark campaign to establish an economy-wide cap on global warming pollution in California, AB 32.

As program director, Ms. Del Chiaro advocates before the California State Legislature, the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission, and before numerous municipal agencies and governments on clean energy and global warming issues. She's been widely quoted and published in numerous media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, New York Times, BBCs World News, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters and Bloomberg News.

Prior to joining Environment Californias staff, Bernadette served as Organizing Director for the Toxics Action Center where she coordinated the successful campaign to clean up Connecticut's "Filthy Five" coal-fired power plants as well as assisted dozens of community groups throughout New England fighting local environmental hazards. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Toxics Action Center as well as Pesticide Watch, a California-based group providing assistance to communities fighting pesticide pollution. She is a former Board Member of the New England Grassroots Environment Fund. In 1998, she graduated from Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing, and from 1995-1996, Ms. Del Chiaro staffed the local campaign office to stop the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump in Needles, California as an intern with Greenpeace. Del Chiaro holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. She grew up in Sonoma California and now lives in Sacramento, California with her husband, Steve Blackledge and son, Oliver Cassius.

Alli Chagi-Starr is the Senior Community Engagement Strategist with Green For All, a national organization dedicated to lifting people out of poverty through the green economy. A resident of Oakland, CA, Alli is a co-founder of the 10-year old Art in Action Youth Leadership Program and its new Green Youth Arts & Media Center. Alli has worked as a choreographer, theater director, cultural event producer, writer and dancer. She facilitates seminars on developing creative tools for global/personal transformation and community building. She has a B.A. in Cultural Organizing and Performance from The Art and Social Change Department of New College of California, 1991. Her essays about innovative activism appear in multiple publications.

In our crazy-mixed up modern world of SecondLife.com and Snowcrash, if not the decline of the nation state, political strategist Dan Carol cheerily consults on "what's next" for foundations, the renewables industry and elected officials.




Most recently, Carol served as the Content & Issues Director in Chicago for the Obama for President Campaign, where among other responsibilities he guided the launch of Obamas NewEnergyforAmerica.com plan and the 2008 Democratic Platform, Listening to America.

In response to September 11th, Carol spearheaded the creation of The Apollo Alliance (www.apolloalliance.org), a growing strategic effort to promote a "moon mission" national commitment to energy independence and unite Americans of all political stripes in a common purpose.

Before that, Carol served as Research Director for the DNC during the 1992 presidential cycle, where he directed staff work on the Party's platform and worked for the Clinton-Gore debate team. Carol then built the first US Senate campaign website in 1994 and started CTSG, a 70-person pioneer in online cause campaigns, sold in 2004.

A former environmental and energy budget analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Presidential Management Fellow, and trend consultant for the Congressional Institute for the Future, Dan has spoken on public affairs to groups such as the JFK School of Public Affairs and The London School of Economics. As a strategic advisor, he has served as a consultant to a number of candidate and communications campaigns, including the International Labor Organization for their successful, five-year child labor eradication effort. Carol has served as a Visiting Instructor in Politics at the University of Oregon. His writings and commentary are featured in The Huffington Post.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan Honors College, Dan also holds a MRP in Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina.