Rhiana Gunn-Wright

Rhiana Gunn-Wright is the Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute. Before joining Roosevelt, Gunn-Wright was the policy director for New Consensus, charged with developing and promoting the Green New Deal. Previously she served as the policy director for Abdul El-Sayed’s 2018 Michigan gubernatorial campaign. A 2013 Rhodes Scholar, Gunn-Wright has also worked as the policy analyst for the Detroit Health Department, was a Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow of Women and Public Policy at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and served on the policy team for former First Lady Michelle Obama. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 2011 with majors in African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.

Other sessions: The Road to Recovery: Progressive Economic Policy in a Post-Trump, Post-COVID America

Lauren Maunus

Lauren Maunus, 22, is Sunrise Movement’s Legislative Manager. She grew up in south Florida where intensifying, climate change-fueled hurricanes threaten her community every year. Before moving to DC, Lauren was part of Sunrise’s 2018 electoral program in Michigan and a hub coordinator across Rhode Island. Now, she works to “organize” Congress and translate the power of the movement for a Green New Deal into meaningful legislation for her generation.

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Sam Ricketts

Sam Ricketts is a co-founder and senior policy advisor for Evergreen Action, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Previously, he led climate policy and strategy as climate director for Governor Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign. In prior roles Ricketts was the first executive director of the Congressional Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition (SEEC), and worked in the Washington State Governor’s Office, Democratic Governors Association, Working Families Party, and in several federal and state campaigns. Ricketts is a graduate of Syracuse University and a native of Seattle, Washington. He currently resides in Washington, DC with his wife and toddler-aged son.

my website

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Anthony Rogers-Wright

Selected as one of the Grist.org 50 People You’ll Be Talking About in 2016, Anthony K. Rogers-Wright has over ten years of policy analysis, community organizing and outreach/advocacy experience. While serving as a policy analyst for various environmental consulting firms in California and Colorado, he specialized in land use, Clean Air Act and environmental justice compliance. He has used his organizing and outreach experience to advocate for a variety of social justice campaigns including environmental justice, affordable health care access, income inequality and civil rights for LGBT citizens. In 2012, Anthony led the effort to make Colorado Health Insurance Cooperative the first health insurance provider in the State’s history to remove transgender health exclusions from all of their policies.

In 2016, he acted as a surrogate and policy advisor for the Sanders presidential campaign and testified on the need for increased action on climate justice to the DNC Platform Committee. He’s written numerous articles discussing the axiomatic nexus between the climate crisis and social justice, and spoken of this issue at universities throughout the United States and in Europe.

Anthony earned his undergraduate degrees in Environmental Science and Policy and Jazz Composition as well as his Graduate Degree in Community Development, Environmental Science and Public Policy.  He is blessed to be the father of his energetic, entertaining and VERY loquacious three-year old son, Zahir Cielo (aka “Bean”).

Other sessions: Designs on Democracy: Using Graphic Design to Reframe the Story and Win, Climate President: Organizing for Climate Justice through Transformative Executive Action, Climate Change and COVID-19: What the Pandemic Teaches Us About Preparing for Disaster

my website