Revolutionary by Nature

Linda’s passion for a healthy natural world began in childhood. Told in elementary school there was nothing to be done about pollution in a beloved local creek, she launched environmental advocacy work that has lasted a lifetime.

She worked her way through MIT, studying chemical engineering, and followed up with degrees in public policy and law at U.C. Berkeley. With these multi-disciplinary tools in hand, she built skills in policy consulting in Massachusetts, and environmental compliance at a San Francisco law firm.

When an opportunity arose to move to the nonprofit advocacy world, Linda excitedly moved to Ocean Conservancy and later California Coastkeeper Alliance, where she led and built organizations that took on pollution and conservation challenges. For this work, the state of California recognized her as a “California Coastal Hero.”

Seeking to dig more deeply into the roots of environmental challenges, Linda shifted to studying and implementing solutions grounded in human rights and the rights of nature. She co-founded Earth Law Center, the world’s first nonprofit dedicated to advancing nature’s rights, and was its first Executive Director. While there, she worked to enact nature’s rights in law, develop international nature’s rights tribunals, develop and teach “Earth Law” in legal and master’s programs, launch comprehensive reports on “co-violations” of nature’s rights and human rights, and bring the rights-based movement to the United Nations General Assembly.

Linda then expanded on these rights-based initiatives at the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. While ensuring the smooth functioning of the organization as Senior Counsel, she developed new climate solutions through collaborative impact investing, advanced modern economic models that better support human and environmental well-being, and continued to support the nature’s rights movement. She later applied her skills as a consultant on behalf of foundation, state agency, and nonprofit clients, providing analysis and targeted recommendations on philanthropic strategies, climate change, water management, sustainability, conservation, and advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Linda now supports thriving California waterways and forests, and advances nature’s rights more generally, as Executive Director of Environment Now. She remains profoundly committed to developing and implementing lasting, effective solutions to the socio-ecological stressors we and the earth face together.