CUB Welcomes Sarah Wochele, Policy Associate
Posted on January 26, 2024 by Charlotte Shuff
Tags, General Interest
CUB is excited to welcome Sarah Wochele as our new Policy Associate. She comes to this work with a background in community organizing, policy research, and social work. Sarah entered environmental justice advocacy in 2019 via the Sunrise Movement while working at her local community garden.
Before joining CUB, Sarah was a community organizer working with mining-impacted communities in Nevada to meaningfully address the various adverse social, ecological, cultural, and spiritual impacts of the hardrock mining industry.
From this work, Sarah brings an understanding of the need to break down the technical and political gatekeeping extractive industries benefit from. She understands that changing energy sources alone will not address the layers of injustice associated with business as usual.
As a Policy Associate with CUB, Sarah is committed to working with impacted communities and other advocates to help bridge the gaps that often exist between decision-makers, organizers, and impacted communities when it comes to policy-making.
Sarah was born and raised along the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania. She is the great-granddaughter and granddaughter of hardworking Polish immigrants who labored in PA coal mines, coke plants, factories & the HVAC industry. Her family has lived the multi-generational toxic legacies of laboring for extractive and pollutive industries–which often meant terminal diagnoses, premature death, and legacies interrupted too soon. These realities sharpen the lenses through which she views environmental justice.
Since entering EJ advocacy, Sarah has worked to ensure extractive industries are responsible to their workers, the communities they operate within, and those they impact downstream. With a background in community organizing, policy research, and social work, she is dedicated to helping build a truly just global energy transition across the entire energy supply chain and policy nexus.
A bookworm since she learned to read, her favorite books as of late are The Overstory by Richard Powers and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Sarah continues to be inspired by adrienne maree brown, Pema Chödrön, Mary Oliver, and the various birth and death doulas who teach us all what it means to hold space for another. She is forever indebted and grateful to her community along the Susquehanna in Lewisburg, PA for being her first political home and sangha. Lastly and maybe most importantly, she and her beloved partner are devoted and doting cat parents to two floofs.
Join us in welcoming Sarah!
01/25/24 | 0 Comments | CUB Welcomes Sarah Wochele, Policy Associate