CHAPTER LEADERS
Susan Eastwood (She/Her)
Chapter Chair, Term: 2024-2025
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Susan Eastwood is a long time member of Sierra Club CT. She serves as Chapter Chair and is a member of the Political and Legislative Committees. In her hometown, she founded and Chairs the Ashford Clean Energy Task Force and has served on the Planning and Zoning Commission, Zoning Board of Appeals, and the Board of Finance. After working with domestic violence projects for many years, she was appointed to the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women. Her main focus now is fighting to slow the impacts of climate change. She was active in the successful fight to stop the proposed gas plant in Killingly and is working with the CT Zero Waste Coalition to find sustainable solutions to our waste crisis.​
Tanya Bourgoin (She/Her)
Wildlife Committee Chair, Term: 2025-2026
Tanya was born and bred in CT and is a lifelong resident of the state, with the exception of a few years spent in Colorado attending Colorado State University. She started her first conservation advocacy organization in elementary school. After receiving a pin maker for Christmas, she recruited her friends to form a group to sell the pins, baked goods and branded pencils and donated the proceeds to national wildlife causes. In high school, she and a few close friends founded a school-wide organization to promote diversity, tolerance and inclusion long before most people were thinking about such issues. At the age of 6, she helped her grandmother raise an orphaned baby squirrel, and in 1998 she attained her wildlife rehabilitation certification. Tanya is the President of the Friends of Machimoodus and Sunrise State Parks which she co-founded in 2016. In September of 2022, she was proud to be elected to the board of Friends of CT State Parks. Most recently she was appointed to serve on her town's Sustainability Team. In November of 2023, Tanya was elected to the board of selectmen for the Town of East Haddam. She is honored to serve her town in an official capacity and proud to represent the residents of her community. She has been a DJ on WCNI Radio, a non-commercial listener-supported station in New London for the past 15 years, serving as the fundraising director from 2015 until this past March. When she’s not in a meeting, she likes to be outdoors with her husband, dogs, ducks and goats.
Kate Donnelly (She/Her)
ExComm Member, Term: 2025-2026
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Kate is a life-long grassroots activist for peace and social justice. Her environmental awareness began at the first Earth Day celebration in 1970. She participated in many campaigns over the years from the anti-nuclear power movement to the recent campaign against the Killingly fracked gas power plant, and against the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota. She is co-founder and chair of the Hampton Green Energy Committee, member of the Windham/Willimantic NAACP Environmental Justice Committee, and No More Dirty Power in Killingly. Kate has been a partner in Donnelly/Colt Progressive Resources for 47 years, providing the movement with organizing materials such as buttons, posters, and stickers. She was First Selectman in Hampton, worked as an organizer for Neighbor to Neighbor and Solarize CT campaigns. She lives in Hampton and has three adult children. She believes that intersectional organizing is the only way to guarantee a future for our environment and for a peaceful and just society for all.
Henry Foushee
ExComm Member, Term: 2024-2025
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Henry Foushee is a high school senior from Westport. He has volunteered for the Sierra Club since 2023. He is part of the Save Remington Woods campaign, where he works to expand the campaign's visibility. In addition, he is co-chair of the chapter Conservation Committee, has researched New Haven's street trees with the Yale School of the Environment, and spoke on a panel at the 2024 CLCC Conference. In his free time, Henry enjoys rowing, math, and performing with his school improv comedy troupe, Peaches.
Jeff Gross (He/Him)
Chapter Vice Chair, Term: 2024-2025
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Jeff Gross is a life-long adherent to sustainable living practices, but only found Sierra Club in 2016, when he volunteered to lead the new program now known as Clean Transportation for All. As is the case with some of the Sierra Club priorities, including wind and solar energy, the Transportation's campaign work at the levels of legislation and public awareness is being reinforced by market forces.
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Sydney Collins
ExComm Member,Term: 2025-2026
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Sydney Collins is the Sustainability Coordinator for Regional Campuses & Environmental Justice at UConn. She is a queer, neurodivergent climate advocate based in New Haven, CT. She graduated from UConn in 2023 and gained experience in municipal government as an AmeriCorps VISTA in Buffalo, NY where she organized community engagement initiatives with green infrastructure and climate vulnerability planning. During her time at UConn, she served as Sustainability Coordinator and Student Services Director at the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) where she supported programming and university advocacy around student needs and climate action.
Sydney deepened her understanding of climate justice and liberation as a UConn@COP fellow at COP27 in Egypt, and she is committed to amplifying climate justice and addressing the roots of climate change tied to systems of oppression. She is interested in the intersections between climate justice and recovery, growing up in a community affected by alcoholism and substance misuse. Currently, she is active in the Sunrise Movement's New Haven chapter and involved in the @StopProjectMaple campaign against fossil fuel expansion in the Northeast. In her free time, Sydney enjoys bicycling, yoga, holding space for recovery, and hip-hop dancing.
Stephen Lewis (He/Him)
Chair of the Hartford Group
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Steve Lewis is an avid environmentalist who gained his appreciation for nature and conservation as a Boy Scout and has carried that passion on into adulthood. As a Scouting leader, he was awarded a significant conservation award for his work on monarch butterfly conservation. Along the way he also became a Leave No Trace Master Educator and teaches Outdoor Ethics which are rooted in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. In addition to his Scouting involvement, Steve is a Connecticut Audubon Master Naturalist who loves birding and teaches naturalist history and climate change in their Master Naturalist program in multiple Connecticut Audubon locations. Steve worked in the Connecticut General Assembly for over a decade and brings his policy and legislative process experience to the CT Sierra Club Legislative Committee. Steve helped South Windsor host its first Drive Electric Week event and worked with the town on model EV charger zoning regulations. His work with the town on behalf of the Sierra Club helped the town earn Sustainable CT Silver Status.
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Brian Martin (He/Him)
ExComm Member, Term: 2025 -2026
A resident of the city for the past 13 years, Brian Martin has a heart for Hartford. His passion stems from the fact that Hartford is nearly 18 square miles, and though replete with innumerable religious institutions, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies, people and entire families continue to fall through the cracks. Brian has always had a love for nature. Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, he lamented the fact that he had limited access to the great outdoors. Summers were spent in North Carolina, where he could explore with abandon. And that’s what he wants for Hartford youth: The benefits of learning to recognize and appreciate the nature in their own neighborhoods and connecting them with programs that take them beyond the confines of the city. Currently, Brian is completing his undergraduate studies at Trinity College, and works on campus in the Career & Life Design Center as the Career Programming Intern. Additionally, through the local nonprofit, Hartford Communities That Care, Brian works at New Visions Alternative School as the Youth Empowerment Coach. And he serves as Community Organizer for the national nonprofit, Trust For Public Land.
Ryann McCabe
ExComm Member, Term: 2025-2026
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Ryann, a lifelong Connecticut resident, is passionate about environmental justice and making our cities and suburbs more sustainable and climate resilient. She began her journey with the Sierra Club as a volunteer with the Remington Woods Campaign and now also serves as Co-Chair of the Conservation Committee and as a member of the Legislative Committee. She’s also trained as an Outings Leader.
Beyond her work with the Sierra Club, Ryann is an active member of Aspetuck Land Trust and The Connecticut League of Conservation Voters. A former educator, Ryann loves helping others learn about native plants and suburban wildlife conservation. Her home is part of both the Pollinator Pathway and the Aspetuck Land Trust’s Green Corridor. In her free time, Ryann enjoys trying new outdoor activities, making art, and reading in her hammock.
Tenaya Taylor (They/Them)
ExComm Member
Term: 2024 -2025
Tenaya Taylor is a Capital Community College graduate, rapper, artist, business owner, writer, executive director, and founder at Nonprofit Accountability Group (NAG). NAG is an inclusive arts and social justice organization dedicated to grassroots movement building. Tenaya's work in Greater Hartford includes housing families facing eviction, creating 3 community gardens,100 paid internships for young people in Hartford ages 13-30, two little free food pantries, and a statewide mutual aid network for frontline communities impacted by climate change, the housing crisis, and environmental racism. Tenaya has been an advocate for intersectional solutions on housing reform, clean energy, and abortion access at the Connecticut State Capital and Hartford City Hall.
Eric Whittall (He/Him)
Shoreline Group Representative
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Growing Up in CT I developed an early love for the outdoors on family camping trips in the Adirondacks and White Mountains. Pursuing my love of the wild spaces of Nature while living in Colorado and California I began exploring our National Parks. I have now visited 41 National Parks, 34 National Monuments, am a supporter of the National Parks Foundation, and have been a speaker at Earth Day celebrations in the past. However, in my travels across the U.S. I have been struck by the increasing ravages of climate change on a very personal level, having narrowly escaped catastrophe in the midst of forest fire, lightning strike, and flooding. These and other climatological events are becoming far too common. I believe that advocacy for preserving life on our planet in all its forms is essential, now more than ever, before it is too late. It is only together that we can make a difference! I am a clinical psychologist, having worked in various hospitals and finally in private practice. I live in Guilford with my significant other and animals, and enjoy hiking, kayaking, and re-building stone walls.
Diane Crawford (She/Her)
Chapter Treasurer
Diane Crawford is the Connecticut Chapter's treasurer.
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CHAPTER STAFF
Samantha Dynowski (She/Her)
State Director
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Samantha joined Sierra Club Connecticut as the State Director in August 2018. Samantha works alongside Sierra Club Connecticut's dedicated volunteers organizing activists to fight climate change, reduce pollution, protect wildlife, and eliminate threats to air, water and land. Prior to joining the Sierra Club, Samantha was Director of Advocacy and Outreach at the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance. She grew up in Wethersfield and West Hartford, and graduated from UCONN. When not advocating for a livable planet, Samantha can be found hiking, gardening, cooking and pursuing her best life. ​
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Jhoni Ada
Organizer
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Jhoni Ada joined the Sierra Club Connecticut as a Community Outreach Coordinator in May 2020. Jhoni works with Chapter staff and volunteers to promote chapter priorities. Jhoni also works in the city of Bridgeport with Green Village Initiative, teaching youth about urban agriculture, leadership, and action. Prior to this, Jhoni worked at UCONN as the Administrative Lead for the Digital Media and Design Department. She has done community organizing work in the South Bronx and approaches the ecological justice work she is doing in Bridgeport with rigor. When Jhoni isn't dreaming of innovative ways to empower communities, she is binge-watching Netflix series, trying new recipes, visiting new trails, and farming.
Alycia Jenkins
Organizer
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Alycia D. Jenkins is an organizer at the Connecticut Chapter; she is also an emerging scholar, a freelance teaching/performing artist, poet, writer, and activist. Alycia is a Trinity College graduate who currently resides in Hartford, Connecticut where she has lived for the past eleven and a half years. She is a proud African American feminist who believes in the power of liberation of Black and American Descendants of slavery families. Alycia advocates to change the world one city at a time by way of environmental justice.
Julianna Larue
Organizer
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Julianna Larue is an organizer at the Connecticut Chapter focusing on Sierra Club's legislative efforts. Julianna has always had a passion for the environment, beginning her journey by organizing beach clean-ups as a child and writing personal notes to her neighbors to stop littering. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science with a Concentration in Compliance and Sustainability from Southern New Hampshire University, complemented by minors in Political Science and Biology and Culture. During her time at SNHU, she was President of the Environmental Club, interned for the 2020 Bernie Sanders Campaign, served as a Sustainability Representative, and advocated for gender and racial equity at the Women's Center. A nature enthusiast, she enjoys hiking, kayaking, and beach outings, and spends her free time training for powerlifting competitions. She also loves to spend time with her rescue dog Ruby and volunteers/ fosters for a local rescue.
