Elizabeth (Betta) Broad
Campaign Director
Betta Broad is working on the transition to a clean energy economy in New York. A native New Yorker, Betta has been an advocate for social justice, peace and sustainability for over two decades. Her first campaign was organizing for “Justice for Janitors” on her college campus. She then worked for a labor union, on campaigns to oppose unfair free trade agreements and to repeal the Rockefeller Drug Laws. As Deputy Director of Earth Day Initiative, she organized the major Earth Day festivals in NYC for five years before joining the campaign to ban fracking. She co-produced a series of videos called “Love NY: don’t frack it up!” and worked with advocates across the state to successfully ban fracking in New York. While working for Catskill Mountainkeeper she created the RenewableNY program that subsequently received a $1.8 million award from NYSERDA to expand Solarize campaigns across 15 counties.
In 2016, she helped launch the New Yorkers for Clean Power campaign and continues to serve as NYCP’s director, working collaboratively with an extensive network of advocates to accelerate the shift off fossil fuels in the building, transportation and power sectors. She recently joined the team at the Association for Energy Affordability as the Director of Advocacy and Organizing where she primarily works on advancing energy efficiency, equitable electrification, and clean energy policy, programs and legislation that benefit low-income communities in New York. She serves on the boards of directors of Communities for Local Power and Brooklyn for Peace. She was appointed to the City of Kingston’s Climate Smart Commission, the Ulster County Climate Smart Committee and the Power Generation Advisory Panel for the NYS Climate Action Council, making her the only person in New York to serve on a climate action advisory board at the city, county and state level.
Lisa Marshall
Advocacy & Organizing Director
Lisa Marshall joined the NYCP team after serving as Program Director of HeatSmart Tompkins, New York’s first and most successful Clean Heating and Cooling community program. As HeatSmart Director, Lisa implemented education and outreach about heat pumps and other building energy efficiency measures as well as providing direct support to households, businesses, and municipalities implementing building decarbonization. Under her leadership, HeatSmart Tompkins doubled previous program participation and dramatically increased the proportion of low-to-moderate homes getting heat pumps installed.
Prior to HeatSmart Tompkins, Lisa worked as a community organizer with the climate organization Mothers Out Front where she built and supported multiple local organizing teams around New York State. As a community organizer, she recruited and trained volunteers and helped them to shape, execute, and win local climate campaigns. She also collaborated with allies on multiple statewide campaigns and mobilizations. Within Mothers Out Front, she helped to architect and launch a multi-state “Beyond Gas” campaign.
A long-time member of the Renewable Heat Now campaign team, Lisa has been at the forefront of advocacy for building energy efficiency and heat pump adoption policy at the state level where she advocated effectively for bringing affordable, equitable building electrification to scale through education and outreach, messaging, lobbying and building grassroots pressure on elected officials and state agencies.
Lisa’s long-standing interest in climate change began decades ago when she wrote her first high school research paper on global warming. In graduate school, her research focused on changes in soil biogeochemistry due to climate and desertification. It wasn’t until moving to NY’s Southern Tier and buying a home that was leased to a gas company, that she became directly involved in climate and energy advocacy. Lisa holds an M.S. in Earth Science from Dartmouth College and a B.A. in Geology from Claremont McKenna College (via Pomona College).
Anshul Gupta
Senior Policy Analyst
Alarmed by the slow response to the rapidly worsening climate crisis at all levels of government, Anshul Gupta joined the NYCP team in April 2023 after taking early retirement from his role as a Principal Research Staff Member at IBM, where his research focused on high-performance computing, and recently included energy, materials, and decarbonization, in which he has multiple publications as well as one issued and two pending patents. He is a trained Climate Reality leader and volunteers on the leadership team of the NYS Climate Reality Chapters Coalition.
As a clean-energy enthusiast, Anshul has been an early adopter of EVs, rooftop PV, and a geothermal heat pump in his all-electric home. He has been active in climate advocacy since 2020, starting with his participation in the successful campaign to stop a crude oil pipeline through southwest Memphis, followed by participating in The Climate Reality Project’s efforts for the passage of the federal Inflation Reduction Act and stopping the Mountain Valley Pipeline, etc. Since the beginning of 2022, he has been an active member of the Renewable Heat Now campaign for a just, affordable, and timely decarbonization of New York’s buildings.
Anshul is a Board member of Hudson Valley Youth Robotics and an advisory committee member of Environmental Leaders of Color. He has worked with FIRST LEGO League teams on several projects with environmental and climate themes that have won awards, publications, and even a patent. These include working with Pepsi Research on reduced plastic bottles, a thermal management system to protect dogs trapped in hot cars, reducing freshwater pollution from road salt, and generating power on a future Mars colony.
Melissa Iachetta
Program Manager
Melissa graduated from SUNY New Paltz in 2015 where she majored in Geography and minored in Environmental Studies. While in attendance she was the Campus Recycling Coordinator and organized large-scale events such as Reuse 2 Reduce, an end-of-year move-out program, which in her final year of managing diverted six tons of material from the waste stream. After graduation, Melissa worked with RAMTeCH Software Solutions on-site for Central Hudson Gas and Electric in the Electric GIS department. She managed a team of 12 technicians in the United States (and a few more off-shore in India) as their Project Coordinator. While working in her Geography realm for the next 5 years, Melissa continued to follow her environmental passions on the side. She joined the Climate Smart Kingston Commission in 2018 and is now in her second term. Also in 2018, she accepted a part-time job with NYCP as an Outreach Representative. In this role, she helped plan a Waste Conference with the Ulster County Environment Management Council, organized a Climate Solutions Summit with NYCP and facilitates Kingston’s Repair Cafes. Most recently she has been a cohost of a series of meetings to guide Hudson Valley municipalities through Scenic Hudson’s Solar Mapping tool. Melissa is the new Program Manager at NYCP and is excited to bring her management background, event planning and passion to the campaign to help lead the NYCP team.
Brynn Fuller-Becker
Communications & Advocacy Manager
Cal Trumann
Education & Careers Coordinator
Diana Michaelson
Junior Clean Power Fellow
Diana Michaelson is currently a freshman at Cornell University majoring in Public Policy at Cornell’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. In her summer before sophomore year of high school, Diana became a trained Climate Reality Leader and connected to the LA Climate Reality Project Chapter and their youth committee, who had recently launched the International Green Schools Campaign. Inspired to take action in her own community, Diana founded the Long Beach Green Schools Campaign in the fall of 2020 with the goal of transitioning Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD)–the 4th largest school district in California–off of fossil fuels. After over two years of building a grassroots campaign and meeting with parents, teachers, students, facilities staff, local council members, state representatives, energy experts, and school board members, Board Policy 3510.1 was unanimously approved by the LBUSD Board of Education. This Board Policy commits LBUSD to reducing energy and water consumption, and maximizing the use of renewable and clean energy technologies, while also maintaining a Climate Crisis and Sustainability Taskforce to ensure that the school district remains accountable to its goals. Diana is beyond excited to join New Yorkers for Clean Power as a Junior Clean Power Fellow and continue her environmental advocacy work.
Tom Konrad
Clean Energy Coach
Tom Konrad, PhD, CFA, is a portfolio manager, financial analyst, and freelance writer specializing in renewable energy and energy efficiency, to review energy updates and state programs with community members. He also serves as the Chair on the Marbletown Environmental Conservation Commission, and has joined the NYCP as our first Clean Energy Coach!
You can schedule a time to talk with Tom for free – click the button below for more information and to schedule a meeting.
Samrat Pathania
Clean Energy Coach
After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the National Institute of Technology, in Jamshedpur (India) and working for several years as a software engineer, Samrat became a teacher and currently teaches physics, mathematics, and software programming courses at Wallkill High School. Samrat is a former chair and coordinator of the New Paltz Climate Action Coalition. He is also a Climate Reality Leader and currently serves as co-chair of the Hudson Valley/Catskills chapter of the Climate Reality Project.
You can schedule a time to talk with Samrat for free – click the button below for more information and to schedule a meeting.
Steve Wehr
Clean Energy Coach
Steve Wehr is a retired IBM senior engineer and electric vehicle enthusiast. Since he bought his first EV in 2019, he has written several papers, given classes and presentations on EVs and charging, and been published by Sustainable Hudson Valley. Steve spends all day reading about electric vehicles, charging, renewable energy, and battery technology, so you don’t have to.
You can schedule a time to talk with Steve for free – click the button below for more information and to schedule a meeting.