Bringing the transformative power of digital campaigning to the climate movement

ABOUT DCC

The Digital Climate Coalition (DCC) is a network of communications organizations committed to winning the climate crisis through a digital first approach. We work closely with partner organizations to identify the right-sized digital support they need to tell their story more effectively. Whether it’s accessing new tools and technology to manage constituents, using data analytics to develop new audiences, or learning how to harness digital organizing to reach your community via trainings, we’ll work with partner organizations to develop and build their digital capacity. 
Whether it is regarding the pandemic, the insurrection on our capitol, or disinformation about our elections, digital platforms are increasingly where the general public makes sense of the world, or fall prey to efforts to divide us. In the climate fight so far, our investments in digital tactics and strategy are vastly outmatched by opponents who delay, distract and sabotage the necessary will to act. While they spend billions, we spend millions. Frontline advocates are often under-resourced and siloed from broader digital campaigns. 
 
By uniting eight highly effective field-supporting organizations, the DCC levels the playing field through storytelling, sharing, and rapid learning. We don’t need to match polluters and climate deniers  dollar for dollar. The DCC believes our movement has the knowledge, tools, and resources we need to end the climate crisis. We are building the mechanisms to share, coordinate, amplify and leverage  our collective power and wisdom. 

COALITION MEMBERS & PARTNERS

Check out the incredible work of our coalition members!

Our coalition is designed to work in tandem with Communicating Our Power, an effort put forth by a coalition of frontline coordinating organizations including CLIMATE JUSTICE ALLIANCE, CENTER FOR STORY-BASED STRATEGY, and THE SOLUTIONS PROJECT

Meet The Coalition Staff

Cristian Sanchez

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Cristian Sanchez

Deputy Data Director

Cristian Sanchez is the Deputy Data Director at the Digital Climate Coalition where he leads the effort to harness data and insights from across the coalition and its partners to benefit the climate movement broadly. Bringing equity and empathy to data, he spends most of his day working towards answering the question: “what is working and why?”

He began his career in energy as a mechanical engineer in Houston in 2015 where he took data from the world’s largest land-based drilling company to make energy production safer and more efficient.

In 2020, he took his analytical skills and blended them into organizing with a pro-climate congressional candidate in Iowa where he built a volunteer base that consisted of over 90 individuals, the largest volunteer network on record for his area.

He co-organized with leaders of BIPOC organizations including NAACP, LULAC, Iowa Democratic Black Caucus, and No Justice No Peace. This effort was largely due to his commitment to amplify and center BIPOC voices in the environmental justice movement.

In 2022, he looks forward to using his data analytics and engineering skillset to accelerate action on climate change with a focus on providing pro-bono data work for small-scale activist organizations.

Kate McKenney

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Kate McKenney

Interim Executive Director

Kate is one of nation’s leading experts on digital and climate communications. She has a deep history of using data to innovate and learn from users to build better advocacy campaigns. She develops new opportunities for audience engagement via messaging guidance and campaign strategy. She loves using data science, research and programmatic analysis to ensure that campaigns and strategies are grounded in the audiences they are trying to advocate. Kate also loves digging into data architecture and building digital engagement ecosystems that drive advocacy and listen to the feedback organizations receive from their supporters.
 

Kate brings a master’s degree in Conservation Biology, focused on how to communicate to communities about environmental issues. She brings more
than a decade of effective senior leadership experience, having led
digital, web, and CRM development at many nonprofit organizations including NRDC, Free Press and consulted at other large national advocacy organizations. Kate’s passion is for climate advocacy, but has been known to take breaks to make cheese and ski with her kids in western Massachusetts.

Vanessa Zaehring

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Vanessa Zaehring

Chief of Staff

Vanessa Zaehring is the Chief of Staff at the Digital Climate Coalition. Educated at Mount Holyoke College specializing in Anthropology and Economics, Vanessa finds purpose and connection in everything she commits to. From farming to social work, from labor negotiations to scented candle production, she quickly and clearly hears echoes from past generations to envision how our actions of today ripple into the future. She joined the DCC after 7 years building and running operations at RepresentUs & RepresentUs Education Fund, a national, cross-partisan democracy reform organization. Her experience at RepresentUs as a first time COO greatly influenced her concepts of leadership and how culture, people, policy, and procedure can knit together to create coherence and flow or burnout and chaos. She believes decentralized decision making and authority is fundamental to combating burnout culture and knows integrating justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion into every fabric of work and life is the only way out of the darkness engulfing the world right now. She joined the DCC and Partnership Project because they know it too.

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