Climate Connections: Our 2025 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. This year marks a momentous milestone – 10 years!
Climate Smart Missoula was born out of a spirit of community collaboration. Over our 10 years we've worked with dozens of partners, from social service agencies, to community groups, to conservation nonprofits, to local government.
And we love to recognize community members who go above and beyond with our annual Smarty Pants Awards! We presented our first awards in 2016 and 10 years in, we've honored 45(!) inspiring individuals.
From phone bankers to beer brewers to mountain event organizers to solar installers to waste reducers to innovators to health professionals, every Smarty Pants Award winner has one thing in common: they’ve brought their unique abilities to climate solutions and have stepped up and used their skills and passions in a meaningful way.
Addressing the climate crisis is the biggest team sport ever, and we never fail to be truly 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 2026.
Rising Star: Melody Irvine
This year's Rising Star award goes to Melody Irvine. Melody joined Climate Smart as an intern in Spring 2024 and has contributed to many facets of our organizational work, particularly supporting our Trees for Missoula program with tree planting, communications, and neighborhood engagement.
She aided our wildfire smoke ready efforts - tabling, postering, organizing with partners – whatever needed to be done. And this Rising Star shined most notably in her willingness and natural ability to interact with community members: Melody spent hours in the community tabling at farmers markets, the library, neighborhood gatherings, and other events, educating folks about our programmatic work.
She did all this while keeping up with a full time courseload each semester! As a social work student (and thoughtful human being), Melody possesses the intuition and ability to understand individual and community needs, which is an invaluable trait that bolstered our neighborhood tree equity efforts in particular. Melody is proactive, flexible, enthusiastic, and hard-working, as well as kind, honest, and thoughtful – qualities which we know she’ll use to further environmental justice as she seeks a future career in social work. Congratulations, Melody!
Catalyst for Change: Jeremy Flesch
Jeremy Flesch shows up. No matter the hour, the ask, the challenge. But what truly distinguishes Jeremy is not just his presence, but his unwavering commitment to climate justice and community well-being across multiple fronts in Missoula.
For years, Jeremy has contributed his time, energy, and heart to several vital community institutions, including the City of Missoula’s Energy and Climate Team, Home ReSource, the Missoula Food Bank, and Missoula County Public Schools. His service across these sectors reflects an understanding that climate action and social equity go hand in hand, and that we can multi-solve. For example, we can ensure food security and housing affordability, while also thinking about energy efficiency and reducing pollution.
And, over the last year, Jeremy has turned his commitment to climate action into a career. Paul Herendeen, Clearwater Credit Union VP of Sustainability and Jeremy’s colleague, said,
“Given the daunting task of building a home and small business energy efficiency advisory service from scratch, Jeremy dove in with characteristic enthusiasm and dedication, teaching himself building science, meeting with every contractor who would answer the phone, meeting with clients, and still finding the time to make sure his office was composting paper towels. Thanks to his hard work, Clearwater has now launched their Home Energy Advisor service in Missoula, and Jeremy is working on taking it to the whole state of Montana.”
Through all he does, Jeremy catalyzes. He brings people together, from those working in energy policy and waste reduction, to education and business. He fosters multi-solving solutions; builds connections between climate action, social justice, and the improvement of day-to-day community life; and through his efforts, Jeremy accelerates positive change and inspires others to show up, step in, and stay involved.
For his tireless service, his bridge-building across sectors, his transition from volunteer to professional climate-action advocate, and his quiet but powerful leadership, we are honored to recognize Jeremy Flesch as a Catalyst for Change in our community.
Masters in the Fine Art of Community Building: Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan
We cannot quite remember when we first met Elisabeth - we just started seeing her everywhere, especially where there were opportunities to advocate for clean air, kids’ health, and climate solutions. She is a freelance science writer by trade, a mom, and volunteer with Climate Smart Missoula and Families for a Livable Climate.
Elisabeth is incredibly dedicated to ensuring kids breathe safe in school. A few years ago, she was instrumental in bringing partners together to ensure Missoula County Public Schools said yes to free commercial grade HEPA air filters for each classroom. She then realized a barrier for schools was that the teachers and custodians didn’t know when and how to use these air cleaners. So, she made a plan to find engaged parents at each elementary school and then developed communications so these are actually used.
She also helped plant dozens of trees at Sentinel High School this fall and is working to get much-needed shade trees planted at Russell School, where her children attend. Last year, she spearheaded the effort to plant trees at Bellevue Park, applying for a neighborhood grant from the City of Missoula. Now, she’s working to secure additional funding for irrigation, which would allow many more trees to thrive!
And that is not all. She and her husband Norman are dedicated to reducing climate pollution -- they walk the walk. They’ve completed many electrification projects, opening their home as part of our 2024 “Electrified Homes” tour and telling their story on our Electrify Missoula website.
Elisabeth is generous with her smile and her time, she’s a joy to partner with, and her fierce dedication and advocacy makes this Masters in the Fine Art of Community Building Award so well-deserved.
Doctorate of Dedication: Len Broberg
Len could have been forgiven for taking it easy after a long, successful teaching career at UM. Instead, he doubled down on community advocacy. During his 28-year tenure as a professor in the Environmental Studies department at UM, Len brought his background in science and law to teaching about complex conservation issues in the field as well as the classroom, serving on community and regional boards and in leadership roles with the Montana Chapter of the Sierra Club, while mentoring hundreds of students.
Since his retirement in 2022, Len has been deeply involved in work on housing affordability, co-chairing Common Good Missoula’s Housing Equity Action Team (HEAT team for short). As the City has undergone its massive code update effort, Len has kept up every step of the way, advocating for policies that balance climate, housing, affordability AND accessibility. He’s navigated this labyrinthine and technical process with the mind of a lawyer and the heart of a teacher, earning the respect of City staff and corralling cats for countless HEAT team meetings and public comment sessions.
Len is well deserving of this award for so many reasons, not least of which we’re pretty sure he is the only person who’s not a City planner who’s read the entire three hundred and sixty-nine pages of the City’s new draft Unified Development Code!
In all of his volunteer work, Len’s leadership has been humble and persistent, showing his dedication to equity in his tireless advocacy for accessibility and visitability in the code, and through co-facilitating the Wrestling with the Truth of Colonization training. His dry sense of humor puts others at ease and makes him just plain fun to work with. Lisa Davey, Common Good Missoula lead organizer, says,
“Len is the kind of leader every movement hopes for and few are lucky enough to have. Len has helped turn vision into durable victories. Beyond policy, he has modeled something even rarer: a way of confronting the truths of colonization with strength rather than fragility, humility rather than defensiveness. His impact reaches far beyond any single campaign – and our community is stronger because of it.”
These Smarty Pants recipients help build a climate-smart Missoula - and beyond - every day. Read the full award write ups here.
Reflecting on 2025, 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.
Together with these inspiring individuals and so many others, we are ready to hit the ground running in 2026, 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 twice per month. Learn more about what we do, sign up for our e-newsletter, or support our work at missoulaclimate.org.