Climate Connections: 2024 Smarty Pants winners inspire change
Amy Cilimburg, Abby Huseth, Shanti Devins, and Susan Teitelman
Every December, our team at Climate Smart Missoula gathers with our community to celebrate another year of local climate action and recognize folks who have stepped up as climate leaders with our famed Smarty Pants Awards.
Reflecting on 2024 - the hottest year on record (again), with its topsy-turvy weather and politics - the way forward sometimes feels daunting. Yet our North Star remains constant: our community. And when we look around, right here in Missoula we see people shining their own lights, bringing others in, taking action, and illuminating the path for all of us.
Addressing the climate crisis is the biggest team sport ever, and we never fail to be inspired and bolstered by this collective energy. Read on to learn more about this year’s Smarty Pants awardees, and we hope they also inspire you to step forward in new ways in 2025.
Catalyst for Change: Keith Fichtner
There are few instances in the climate movement where a single dollar can have a significant impact - unless we’re talking about that dollar as an investment. Every dollar sitting in our bank accounts can be leveraged at least 10 times by the financial institution holding it. In other words, our $100 can become a $10,000 loan – and a lot of that money is currently lent to fossil-fuel interests. Retirement accounts and other investments are equally exponential, but building a conscientious portfolio can be complicated.
Enter Keith Fichtner, a financial advisor with Edward Jones. Keith began working with Families for a Livable Climate in 2021 to put on workshops for everyday folks, offering education around their options for sustainable investing – no matter their income level. Sarah Lundquist, the executive director of Families for a Livable Climate, said: “Keith is unique in his advocacy of socially responsible investing - most advisers immediately brush it off, but he knows it is possible and is so great about working with clients to help align investments with values.”
Keith helps people move their investments out of fossil fuels and into organizations that champion causes important to them, from climate solutions to fair labor practices. He goes above and beyond to ensure the portfolios he builds contain investments that actually do what they say they do and are not just greenwashing.
To date, Keith’s work with businesses, nonprofits and individuals has resulted in $21 million being divested from fossil fuels. Keith has been a true catalyst for change, transforming single dollars into impressive positive investments.
Masters in the Fine Art of Community Building: Climate Ride Team
Climate Ride is a nonprofit that organizes people-powered adventures around the world with a goal of creating a greener world – and 60% of their team happens to live in Missoula: Hannah Matthews, Mackenzie Cole and Patrick Colleran. This year, these three are receiving our “Masters in the Fine Art of Community Building” award.
Hannah, Mackenzie and Patrick, alongside their organization, made a commitment to offset their organization’s operational emissions by investing in a local project through Climate Smart Missoula’s Footprint Fund. Several years ago, Homeword, a Missoula-based affordable housing nonprofit, installed solar panels at their Orchard Gardens property.
Recently, after noticing that their energy costs had suddenly increased, they discovered that two of the four solar inverters had stopped working. It was a conundrum: they couldn’t afford replacing the inverters … or overpaying for electricity. Climate Smart Missoula connected Homeword with Climate Ride, and this spring Climate Ride helped purchase two new solar inverters and the solar was turned back on.
As Patrick said, “When three nonprofits can come together to fund a project like this … with limited budgets, too, I think there’s a lot of room for voluntary projects like this from for-profit organizations.”
Climate Ride has also committed to hosting a bike ride each fall in Missoula to benefit local nonprofits, and launched their new “Tail Winds” program which allows their clients to directly support projects like the one at Orchard Gardens. The Climate Ride team didn’t have to do any of these things; and they didn’t have to do them here. But they leaned into this place and in doing so, brought Missoulians together around positive climate action.
Doctorate of Drive and Determination: Elena Evans
This new award this year goes to a busy mom of 2 with a full-time job, who was willing to step up in a big way. Elena has a long history of leadership in Montana as the former Executive Director of the Montana Association of Conservation Districts and currently as an Environmental Health Manager for Missoula County. As a geologist, she's leveraged these positions to protect our most precious resource: clean water. And she oversees the Air Quality program, helping bring essential resources to that cornerstone of climate resilience. She's done this work quietly, mostly in the background, and without much recognition from those who benefit from her daily effort.
This year, she came out of hiding and picked a tough fight with our current Public Service Commission over their failure to deliver reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy to utility customers across Montana. She and her supporters gathered over 7,000 signatures to get on the ballot, raised over $100,000, and earned the trust of an unusually high number of people on both sides of the aisle across western Montana.
In PSC District 4, which stretches across seven counties from Ravalli to Lincoln, more than 3,000 voters cast their ballots for both President-elect Trump and Elena, a nonpartisan candidate running against an incumbent Republican in a gerrymandered district. Elena came within 10 points of winning, the closest margin of the three PSC races on the ballot.
The most effective leaders tend to be work horses rather than show horses, and Elena is a real leader. She does the right thing and the hard thing even when the odds are long and the rewards are slim. Best of all, she doesn't quit when she loses. She keeps on fighting, always with a smile. We need leaders like her now more than ever.
Doctorate of Dedication: Jen Robohm
Back in 2018, Amy got an email from Jen:
Amy, I’m done sitting on the sidelines. This last governmental report is just too much. What are ways that I can get involved with your group? …. One thought I had was becoming some sort of ‘champion’ at my workplace …
And from here, this accomplished professional began to orient her life and work at the intersection of climate and mental health. What one passionate, tenacious person can do!
Jen is a PhD psychotherapist who directed the University of Montana's Clinical Psychology Center for over a decade before joining the faculty of the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana, where she trains young family physicians.
She also has a small private practice and teaches undergraduates at UM. In all of this she prioritizes and weaves together mental health and climate issues and solutions, making space to understand, feel, and talk. This is crucial work.
Jen’s dedication runs deep. She is on the Board of Montana Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate, has helped us over many years, participating in Climate Ready Missoula summits and as an active member of our Wildfire Smoke, Heat and Health Working Group.
Most impressively, she saw the need to broaden the climate and health conversation beyond health and medical students. Two years ago Jen stepped up to create a new UM Davidson Honors College class, Climate Change, Mental Health and Resilience. The first year was so popular that she’s back again this year.
Jen is also a fantastic mom, and like many of this, care for the next generation inspires her to show up and move mountains. She is well deserving of this award!
Shining Star: Gwen Lankford & Rising Star: Cecelia Spencer
We’ve been lucky to know and work with Gwen for many years, particulary since 2020 when she joined our board of directors. A communications professional by trade, she has used her skills within many different contexts, from working closely with the Salish and Kootenai tribes as they developed their groundbreaking climate plan, to her current job as communications director for the Montana ACLU, to serving on the boards of numerous Missoula organizations.
Gwen has a gift for articulating the big picture, helping ground us and remind us of the values we aspire to: not just preserving a safe climate, but building a community that truly cares for one another and the place we call home in a reciprocal way. She is generous in sharing her indigenous cultural lens, as a person of Salish descent whose ancestors have been in this place since time immemorial, bringing this deep sense of generational perspective to her work. Her wisdom comes from the heart, and she brings a genuineness that people connect with and are inspired by.
We’ve also seen Cecelia in action more recently, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! Like her mom, Cecelia has a gift for clear, heartfelt communication. At the same time, she is bringing her own unique perspective to her climate work as a young woman growing up in a very different climate reality than previous generations.
These two have shared their wisdom as part of Climate Advocacy Day at the Montana State Capitol in Helena, as part of Montana Public Radio’s excellent Grounding podcast this fall, and Cecelia also joined a panel discussion on Climate and Mental health during climate solutions week, where she added so much to a rich and meaningful conversation; she is wise and grounded beyond her years.
We are incredibly lucky to have these two in our community, and we’d all do well to follow Cecelia’s advice from the Grounding podcast: “Put on your pants, get up and go do something! Don’t worry about making mistakes. Do what you can and be brave.”
These Smarty Pants recipients help build a climate-smart Missoula - and beyond - every day, and we are all better off for the ways they share their light. Together with all of these inspiring individuals and so many others, we are ready to hit the ground running in 2025, and we hope you, too, will join us.
Amy Cilimburg, Abby Huseth, Shanti Devins, and Susan Teitelman are the staff of Climate Smart Missoula. Climate Smart Missoula brings this Climate Connections column to you two Fridays of every month. Learn more about our work and sign up for our e-newsletter at missoulaclimate.org.