Our Team
Staff
Sarah Lundquist (She/Her)
Executive Director
director@livableclimate.org
Sarah has played a fundamental role in Families’ leadership and growth, joining as the organization’s first permanent staff member in Jan 2022 and transitioning into the Executive Director in July 2024.
From Sarah’s graduate work in the Environmental Studies program at UM focusing on city-wide zero waste policy planning, to serving as an Executive Board Member for Missoula Urban Demonstration Project (MUD), to creating and managing education programs at Home ReSource, Sarah brings a strong background of progressive nonprofit leadership. Sarah understands how critical relationships are for climate resilience, and has worked in coalition with dozens of local groups and organizations to build climate adaptation strategies and advocate for climate action.
CAssidy Green (she/her)
Communications Coordinator
cassidy@livableclimate.org
Cassidy has resided in Montana for over two decades and enjoys spending her time exploring the wilderness in the form of mountains, lakes, rivers, and camping with her partner and two boys. Cassidy is slightly obsessed with growing plants, both indoors and in her backyard garden, appreciating the natural processes of plant growth and the many benefits they provide.
Cassidy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Montana, where she studied Integrated Digital Media and Communications. Over the past 20 years, she has focused on supporting Montana's nonprofit organizations, fostering community connections to promote the betterment of our planet, resources, and inhabitants. Cassidy served on the board of the Community Food and Agriculture Coalition (CFAC).
Cassidy's fervent dedication to climate justice is the driving force to joining the Families for a Livable Climate team and to help ensure a sustainable planet for future generations.
CAITLYN LEWIS (she/her)
Events & Education Director
caitlyn@livableclimate.org
Caitlyn Lewis has always been drawn to action-oriented work and her love for the natural world has led her to environmental education and climate action. She found her way to Montana for graduate school in Communications Studies at UM and has been determined to be a part of the Missoula community ever since. Caitlyn founded Soil Cycle, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing food waste and educating about the potential that composting has to heal our planet. She has used her knowledge of living ecosystems to create a thriving flower farm, Blue Mountain Flowers, with her husband Rick. When she isn't getting her hands dirty, she is hiking around Montana, biking across Idaho, or creating art with friends.
Winona Rachel (They/Them)
Field Organizer
winonarachel@livableclimate.org
Winona Rachel, found their way to Montana for the Environmental Studies graduate program at the University of Montana. They have spent much of their time in the west working on small-scale flower and vegetable farms and doing youth outdoors programming. Originally from rural Minnesota, they were introduced to climate organizing through pipeline resistance and treaty rights work in the northern part of the state. Winona has been involved in community organizing around other issues including immigration, community safety, food sovereignty, and housing in both Minneapolis and Missoula. They are also a writing and arts workshop facilitator with The Free Verse Project in mental health and juvenile detention facilities across Montana. Winona enjoys baking bread, trail running, cross country skiing, and gardening.
Volunteer Leaders
Sydney Bollinger (she/her)
Magazine Volunteer Editor & Lead Designer
Sydney Bollinger is a writer and editor Charleston, SC. Currently, she serves as an editor and lead designer for The Changing Times. In 2020, Sydney graduated with an M.S. in Environmental Studies (Environmental Writing) from the University of Montana. As a student, she served as Senior Editor of Camas for two issues. While living in Missoula, she worked with Faith and Climate Action Montana, 350 Montana, and Extinction Rebellion. Since moving to Charleston, she's spearheaded an effort with Charleston Climate Coalition to publish a climate magazine for the Lowcountry and has covered environmental films and arts events for a variety of entertainment outlets.
Sarah Capdeville (She/Her)
Magazine Volunteer Editor
Sarah Capdeville graduated from the University of Montana with a BS in Resource Conservation and a BA in Spanish. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Always in search of wild places, she's rambled high desert, glacial basins, and boreal forests two-hundred miles north of the arctic circle.
For five seasons, she's proudly worn the title of wilderness ranger in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Welcome Creek Wilderness, and Rattlesnake Wilderness, her home of homes. She has been on the editorial team of the Chatham MFA program's literary journal The Fourth River, and is currently a nonfiction editor with The Hopper and a reader and fact-checker with Creative Nonfiction Magazine. Currently, she lives in Missoula, Montana with her partner and rescue greyhound, where she navigates chronic illness and daydreams about the crosscut saw.
Meg Smith (she/her)
Magazine Volunteer Editor
Meg Smith is a local Montanan with a deep wonder for the more-than-human world. She has a BA in English Literature and Teaching from the University of Montana and an MA in Environmental Humanities from Bath Spa University, Bath, England. When she isn't out finding new trails, she loves to write poetry, cook without recipes, and find new ways to use less.
megan thornton (she/her)
Magazine Volunteer Editor
Megan Thornton lives in the Russell neighborhood with her husband Orion and their three children, Samuel (6), Willa (4) and Ben (2), alongside human, plant and animal neighbors (squirrels, maples, deer, rolly-pollies, sunflowers, pigeons!!....). Megan feels inspired and uplifted to be part of Families For A Livable Climate, finding much needed support and connection in navigating the climate crisis and all its terrains (truth, grief, despair, anger, resilience, action). Megan drinks Sauerkraut juice every day, in hopes it might just counteract the excess caffeine and sugar in her diet.
Michael Hudson (he/him)
Clean Energy Working Group Chair
Michael is a father, husband, and psychotherapist. His love of his children and care for all the beings of the planet inspire his efforts to see our grid transition rapidly to 100 percent renewable energy.
He has spent much of his life in the backcountry, and has trained in Aikido for more than 2 decades. As a psychotherapist he has had the privilege to witness the best of humanity -- love, courage, and incredible capability in the face of deep challenges. These experiences provide the foundation for his activism.
He continues to work to understand the relationship between his ancestry of colonization and his responsibilities as a part of a landscape that has been cared for by indigenous people for millennia.
Youpa Stein (She/Her)
Plastics Working Group Co-Chair
Youpa Stein was born in Montana. She is grateful to have lived on the Flathead Reservation next to Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Forest Land since 1980. As an artist and concerned citizen, Youpa works to raise awareness about the pollution and climate impacts of plastics and the solutions to address them through giving talks, writing, creating art, and policy actions. Her work is shaped by belief in the rights of nature, the importance of ending the health and environmental justice harm caused by plastics, and the necessity and the creative potential of collaboration. She volunteers for the Beyond Plastics Speakers Bureau and is a volunteer Co-Chair of the Families for a Livable Climate Plastics Working Group.
Youpa is one of nine Montana citizen plaintiffs represented by Cottonwood Environmental Law Center who have filed a constitutional lawsuit challenging HB 407 (dubbed the “ban on bans”), a bill passed by the 2021 MT Legislature that banned citizens and local governments from passing ordinances or ballot initiatives that regulate single-use plastics. Youpa agrees with writer, farmer and activist, Wendell Berry, in his belief that the care of the earth is our most ancient and worthiest responsibility. She writes, “We have responsibilities in our kinship with the web of life that makes our lives and all lives possible. Our health depends on a healthy, regenerative, just, diverse, and vibrant earth.”
Liz Ametsbichler (She/Her)
Plastics Working Group Co-Chair
Liz Ametsbichler was born and raised in Montana. As a young adult, she left Montana to travel abroad and ended up living in Germany for many years. After returning to Montana, she attended the University of Montana and then the University of Maryland, where she earned her PhD in German Language and Literature. She taught at the University of Montana as Professor of German for 27 years. As a Montanan and world citizen, she has always cared about the environment and was instilled with a sense of stewardship and responsibility for the land. Last year (2023), she discovered the Plastic Working Group of Families for a Livable Climate and volunteered to be a Co-Chair of the Working Group.
Education has always been an integral part of her life, as has her belief in social and environmental justice. She believes that raising awareness about plastics and the harm that they cause in the health of all living beings on this planet and the planet itself is of utmost urgency. This belief led her to become one of nine Montana citizen plaintiffs, represented by Cottonwood Environmental Law Center (Bozeman), who has filed a constitutional lawsuit challenging HB 401 -- the "ban on bans" bill passed by the Montana legislature in 2021.
Tassia tkatschenko (she/her)
Common Good Missoula Working Group Chair
A local Missoulian, Tassia attributes her love for the natural world, and her life in activism, to her mother Nancy Dunne. With a BA in Psychology, and nursing degree from the University of Montana, Tassia serves 12-18 year olds who require psychiatric care within a hospital setting. Tassia’s climate activism is intrinsically connected to her dedication to her home, and the health of its future generations. She is grateful to the land, and strives to live in service to her.
Mike Wood (He/Him)
Sustainable Investing Working Group Chair
Mike grew up in upstate New York, where he spent his early childhood playing in the creeks and woods in between fields of corn and cabbage. Later, he spent his time sailing and canoeing on the many lakes of the area and hiking in the Adirondack Mountains. After College, Mike moved to Missoula (1991) and earned an MS in Resource Conservation from UM, followed by a JD with an emphasis in Indian and environmental law.
After several years of environmental law practice in Missoula, Mike switched paths to head up a fledgling Leadership Development program, located within the UM College of Forestry and Conservation and designed primarily around developing US Forest Service and National Park Service employees. Fascinated by leadership development and its potential for individuals and organizations, Mike earned a PhD in Sustainability Education from Prescott College in 2011. In 2014, he founded High Ridge Leadership, a company he and his wife Raquel continue to own and operate, offering leadership development programs and workshops to organizations across the western US.
While Mike’s life has taken many turns, the one consistent element across the arc of his childhood and career to date is an absolute love affair with being outdoors and promoting healthier relationships between humans and the natural world. Mike and his wife Raquel live and play in and around Missoula (or wherever they can get outside). He is an avid trail runner, skier, and general outdoor enthusiast who is happy to be volunteering with the wonderful, dedicated folks at Families for a Livable Climate!
Board of Directors
WINONA BATEMAN (SHE/HER)
Board Member
Winona Bateman is the founder of Families for a Livable Climate. Winona is interested in bridging the yawning gap between the urgent need for bold climate policies and the pervasive silence surrounding climate change. She sees storytelling as a key way to make connections across differences, create meaning in our lives, and envision an equitable and thriving future. From 2021 to 2022, Winona served as the U.S. representative for the International Climate Parent Fellowship through Parents for Future Global and Our Kids' Climate. She lives with her husband and daughter, and enjoys growing and preserving food, observing animals and insects, and otherwise learning from our living world.
Kareen Erbe (she/her)
Board Member
Kareen Erbe, owner of Broken Ground, is a garden design consultant and educator. For over a decade, she has helped people in cold climates grow their own food so they can eat healthier, live more sustainably, and become more self-reliant. Kareen is certified in permaculture design, a whole-systems approach to land management and sustainable living and believes growing your own food and bolstering local food systems is one of the most actionable steps to address the climate crisis. She is on the faculty of the Permaculture Women’s Guild and the Green Path Herb School, as well as the lead instructor for the Permaculture Design Course at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute. Kareen and her husband live on a suburban homestead in Bozeman, Montana, with their dog Beni, a greenhouse, pond, vegetable gardens, a food forest of fruit trees and berry bushes, and a flock of chickens.
Krissy Ferriter (she/her)
Board Member
Krissy Ferriter grew up in New England and spent over 15 years working around the United States and in Canada for conservation organizations. Since 2019 Krissy has managed wilderness and wildlands volunteer programs for the Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation. She is passionate about exploring the backcountry with her husband and two young children from their home in Lolo, Montana. Krissy feels strongly that climate disruption is not just an environmental issue, and that every action matters when it comes to addressing our collective future. She is grateful for the opportunity to be part of the FLC community!
Alysha Goheen (she/her)
Board President; Clean Energy Working Group Co-Chair
Alysha Goheen was lucky to grow up in the Bitterroot woods and always has the forest in her heart. She has enjoyed working the last two decades in nonprofits serving and advocating for women and children. Alysha is blessed to be the mother of two bright lights, Sylvie and Gigi. Their futures and the futures of all children and living beings on our planet is what motivates her to step into this new-to-her world of climate action. In her free time, Alysha most enjoys backpacking with her girls and her furry dog-friend, Tucker.
Maria Hamm (she/her)
Board Member
Maria Hamm is a public health professional, interested in the intersection of climate change and public health. Her career focus area has mainly been working with youth, facilitating adolescent health programs and being an advocate for healthy youth development. She received her masters in public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she focused her studies on climate change and public health. Her final capstone project was developing a youth service learning program, with a focus on health and climate change. She is excited to be on the FLC board and support the great work going on in Montana. When not working you can find Maria out on the trails!
Isaac Kantor (he/him)
Board Member
Isaac Kantor was born and raised in Missoula, Montana. He lives in the mountains just outside of town with his wife, their three children, and a small menagerie of dogs, chickens, and sheep. In their spare time, the family enjoys Montana’s outdoors, including backpacking, floating rivers, skiing, and running. Isaac works as an attorney representing people, small businesses, and nonprofits. He has cared deeply about climate change and its effects since childhood.
Interested in Joining the Board?
If you are interested in joining our statewide Board of Directors, we’d love to hear from you!
Please contact our director, Sarah Lundquist, for more information. Contact at: director@livableclimate.org