Phoebe Sweet won her first campaign in kindergarten. She began her environmental activism by successfully lobbying her elementary school principal to cancel the school’s annual balloon release. Plastic pollution clogging our oceans threatened turtles and other marine life, even back then. Fighting for our planet, and winning, has been a through-line of her career ever since.

Phoebe capped off a decade in journalism as an environmental reporter in the Southwest, where she wrote about climate, energy and water issues.

Inspired to enact change rather than report on it, her political career began on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2010 reelection campaign, where she served as communications director for the Nevada State Democratic Party. After Reid’s against-all-odds win, she joined the Majority Leader in Washington as his speechwriter and communications adviser.

Phoebe also worked as the director of speechwriting at progressive think tank Center for American Progress, and led the energy and environment practice at a progressive strategic communications firm.

For five years she led a team of communicators, pollsters, government affairs professionals, and researchers fighting the fossil fuel industry as managing director of Campaigns and Strategies at the nonprofit public relations and communications firm Climate Nexus. There she directed innovative and creative multimillion dollar campaigns to fight the oil and gas industry and accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels. She is a leading expert in the nation on public opinion on methane gas and gas transition messaging and strategy.

Phoebe is the daughter of back-to-the-landers, and grew up in a log cabin in the Maine woods. Today the Chesapeake Bay is home, which she shares with her partner, two adorable rescue pups, and a grouchy old cat.