Carbon Capture + Minnesota’s Carbon Free Future

Jeff Broberg is a Rochester-area professional geologist and consultant focused on natural resource, energy, water and land-use issues of the Upper Mississippi Valley. A Minneapolis native, Jeff and his wife Erica moved to Lafayette, Louisiana where he worked as a petroleum geologist specializing in deep and high pressure/high temperature petroleum prospects before coming back to Minnesota.

Jeff has been a leader and frequent contributor on natural resource and land-use issues in southeastern Minnesota for 25 years. He commits his free time to trout fishing, canoeing the Bluffland Rivers and Mississippi backwaters, and to nonprofit organizations including the Cascade Meadows Wetlands and Environmental Science Center, the Minnesota Trout Association, and the National Trout Center in Preston, and is a founding director of the Minnesota Well Owners Association.

Jeremy Fisher, Ph.D., joined Sierra Club in 2018, and works with Sierra Club’s litigation teams, campaign teams, and federal teams to develop new energy and climate policies, tun litigation, and build federal programs. He wears a lot of hats. Jeremy earned his doctorate in Geology at Brown University where he studied climate impacts on ecosystems from satellite data. After a postdoctoral career studying storm damage on forests, Jeremy stumbled into energy policy and never looked back. Prior to Sierra Club, Jeremy worked at Synapse Energy for a decade, where he provided expert analysis for state and federal regulators and had the opportunity to work with public advocates in electricity system matters in nearly every state. During his tenure as a consultant, Jeremy developed EPA’s Avoided Emissions and Generation Tool (AVERT), testified in litigated planning and rate cases around the country, and built planning and policy tools for public advocates.

Peg Furshong joined CURE in August of 2012.  She provides a variety of program support across CURE’s work with a focus on constituent engagement, leading CURE’s Water Democracy program work, and organizing the carbon pipeline resistance on the ground in local communities and with landowners.  As an educator throughout most of her professional career, Peg has worked with young adults in higher education – facilitating programs in leadership, civic engagement, sustainability, and diversity. Born and raised in Montana, she came to Minnesota with a love for nature and the values of the natural world.  Peg holds a Master of Science degree in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in Information, Process & Communication (IPC) from Montana State University-Billings.

Dr. Emily Grubert is Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy, and, concurrently, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on justice-oriented deep decarbonization and decision support tools related to large infrastructure systems, with emphasis on evaluation of dynamic life cycle socioenvironmental impacts and the effects of different value systems on decision pathways. Grubert holds a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford and previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Carbon Management at the US Department of Energy.

Zhawanowikwe, Maryanna Harstad, is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and a descendent of the Blackfeet Nation. She worked for 30 years for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources as a planner, a forester, and a monitor on utility corridor projects. In 2021, as part of the Line 3 Water Walk, she traveled the length of that pipeline corridor as it was constructed across northern Minnesota from Lake Superior to North Dakota. She is an ordinary person who is trying to strengthen her knowledge of culture and traditions by learning Ojibwemowin, and practicing seasonal activities such as gathering wild rice, and making maple sugar.

Hudson Kingston, joined CURE in 2023 with a background in environmental law, public health law, and consumer protection. He brings experience partnering with tribes, local nonprofits, low-income advocates, environmental and social justice groups, and local/state/territorial/federal public employees. Over the course of his career, he has worked in both the Midwest and Washington D.C. on litigation and policy related to climate change, water pollution impacts of mining, pesticide regulation, the environmental and health impacts of e-cigarettes, public records and government transparency, and environmental injustices perpetuated by the administrative state. Hudson attended Carleton College, received his J.D. from the University of Iowa School of Law, as well as Master of Laws degrees in human rights and international law from New York University and the National University of Singapore. A born and raised Minnesotan, Hudson lives in the home his grandparents built in the woods outside Ely, MN, where he spends his free time baking bread, chopping down balsams, and running.

Dr. Michelle Montgomery (enrolled Haliwa Saponi/descendant Eastern Band Cherokee) is an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies and Ethnic, Gender, and Labor Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She is also the Assistant Director for the Office of Undergraduate Education, and the Cohort Director for Muckleshoot Programs in the School of Education. Dr. Montgomery’s community engaged scholarship through the Indigenous Speaker Series focuses on Indigenizing and decolonizing the climate justice narrative, environmental ethics connected to Indigenous Peoples’ identities, and eco-critical race theory to eliminate racial and environmental oppression.

Sarah joined CURE in the fall of 2021. Sarah graduated from Vermont Law School with both a J.D. and a Master of Environmental Law and Policy. She is passionate about protecting the environment and believes that to successfully do so we must change our existing policies and attitudes about nature. Sarah has clerked for the Minnesota Court of Appeals and worked on projects concerning tribal rights and land management efforts, mining in northern Minnesota, and surface water use in New England. Sarah also holds degrees in sociology and journalism from the University of Minnesota. In her free time, Sarah likes bird watching, gardening, and spending time with friends and family.

Carolyn Raffensperger is Executive Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network. In 1982, she left a career as an archaeologist in the Southwestern United States to join the environmental movement. As an environmental lawyer, she specializes in the fundamental changes in law and policy necessary to protect public health and the environment. She is best known for her work on the precautionary principle and developing a legal framework to assert the rights of future generations to a habitable planet. Carolyn is co-editor of Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy (2006) and Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle (1999).

Maggie Schuppert joined CURE at the end of 2021 to help build CURE’s capacity for strategic communications, campaigns, and advocacy. Before moving to Minnesota in 2015, she lived in Washington D.C. and northern Thailand, working at the intersection of the human rights and environmental movements supporting communities that have been adversely impacted by large-scale energy and development infrastructure projects. Bringing this commitment to environmental rights, justice, and accountability to her organizing work in Minnesota, Maggie has built strong roots and relationships with MN’s environmental justice community which includes serving on the steering committee for the MN Frontline Community Protection coalition. Maggie has an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University, an MA from the University of Essex (UK), and a postgraduate certificate in Evaluation Studies from the University of Minnesota.

Sara is a lawyer and climate policy strategist. She joined CURE in the summer of 2022 as a Minnesota Rural Democracy Project and Democracy and Climate Pledge Organizer.

Between 2017 and 2022, Sara served as the Advocacy Director at the Minnesota Environmental Partnership. There she worked with other coalitions on climate, energy, water, soil health, pollinator, mining, and transit issues. Sara previously worked as a policy assistant to Susan Gaertner at the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

Sara grew up in Nebraska. She went to St. Olaf College where she met her husband Doug. Sara plays the cello, likes to sing in large groups, and enjoys cooking with her family.