Our Team
Staff and Volunteer Staff
Our staff is primarily volunteer, individuals passionate about the urgency of addressing Climate Change.
Lev Freedman
Founder, Executive Director
Lev is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, youth mentor, impact investor, and more. In 2002, Lev started an online fundraising company and has been involved with helping hundreds of people and groups raise money. In 2008, his company built a crowdfunding platform that helped schools and non-profits utilize a new method of fundraising. Lev has also served as an advisor and a board member to a number of non-profit organizations in Austin, Texas. The Treevolution is the next step for Lev in using his crowdfunding and non-profit experience to help address the world’s most urgent challenge – climate change.
Carrie Chess
Carrie brings over a decade of experience in political communications and policymaking in the science and technology arena to the Treevolution. She served on Capitol Hill as a senior policy advisor to Members of Congress serving on the House Science and Technology Committee, and the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. Carrie has also worked as a strategic communications and policy advisor to non-profits and New Space companies.
Destiny O’Dempsey
Destiny O’Dempsey is a Project Manager and Community Organizer with passion for bringing people together and stewarding projects and movements that create positive impact for humanity.
Advisory Team
Peter Fiekowski
Founder – Healthy Climate Proejct
Peter Fiekowski is the founder of the Healthy Climate Project. He is a physicist and futurist with 27 patents and 30 years experience working on poverty and climate issues. Peter currently leads the Citizens Climate Lobby’s Healthy Climate Group and founded their 100-year Plan Group. He also serves on the board of RePower Capital, an innovative renewables financing company, and is president of a company providing critical software for computer chip production. Peter lives in Los Altos, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley.
Jim Golin
President, Board of Directors – Rainforest Action Network
James Gollin co-founded the investment management company Pacific Partners in New York and managed securities investments, real estate, and other projects. He is a founding member of the Social Venture Network of socially responsible business-people. As President of the Board of Rainforest Action Network, Mr. Gollin has helped oversee successful corporate campaigns against leading forestry, financial, and other companies. He also helps coordinate RAN’s micro-grant programs supporting small, primarily indigenous-led, on-the-ground forest protection groups.
Chris Searles
Founder, Biointegrity
Chris Searles is an entrepreneur, community builder, advocate, and musician. He started BioIntegrity.net in 2014 to empower today’s most globally beneficial solutions to address climate change through the preservation of intact tropical forests. Chris’ extensive research into climate change and the overall impact of tropical forests has been a tremendous resource for the Treevolution. His white paper can be found here.
Nancy Zamierowski
Founder, Yellow Seed
Nancy Zamierowski is the founder of Yellow Seed, a community marketplace for cacao growers, service intermediaries, and buyers to connect and trade with one another. Nancy feels at home in the Amazon where she developed a passion for unique rainforest edibles and improving the lives of the communities who depend on forest resources. Her work at CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture) and a design background are the foundations of Yellow Seed.
Alex Peterffy
Founder, Living Forest Project
Alex has a deep love and awe for rainforests and all of the beings who call them home. She is the founder of the Living Forest Project, an evolving and collaborative effort dedicated to defending rainforests by supporting indigenous rights and sharing wisdom and stories from the forest. She is also a member of Threshold foundation’s Climate Strategies, a funding circle dedicated to addressing the causes of climate change.
Unify
Unify organizes global synchronized social action campaigns in thousands of cities around the world on Earth Day, Peace Day, World Water Day, and more. The Treevolution has partnered with Unify to advise with online campaign launches and social media strategy. They are our first launch partner and sharing The Treevolution with their 1.6 Million Facebook fans.
Our Tree Partners
Long-Term and immediate needs projects.
These organizations have proven funding and action models that we trust. They are able to effectively utilize grants to implement our goals of preservation, conservation, and reforestation.
Rainforest Trust
Rainforest Trust helps protect threatened tropical forests and endangered wildlife by partnering with local and community organizations in and around vulnerable areas. Their unique, cost-effective conservation model for protecting endangered species has been implemented successfully for over 25 years.
Eden Projects
Eden Projects reduces extreme poverty and restores healthy forests in Haiti, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Nepal by employing local villagers to plant millions of trees every year. Video >
Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch is a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. They partner with indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability and the preservation of the Amazon’s ecological systems.
More Tree Partners to come soon!
Together we CAN do something about climate change.
How we use donations
We are very proud of the process we created to include those who have decades of experience in researching and carrying out rainforest preservation and reforestation. As a result, our team is highly diverse with a wide range of experience.
Our Tree Partners come through the strong vetting and recommendations of a number of networks who have been focused on Climate and Rainforests for decades. Individual members of our Advisory team are members of these networks and have access to deep levels of due diligence and research to ensure we make the best decisions on where to spend the funds we raise.
We allow members of the Advisory Team to suggest potential partnership opportunities. Many of these groups have already received grants from organizations that our Advisory Team members have worked with, which has allowed them to watch how they have operated and grown over many years. Advisory Team members submit their suggestions along with their own research and due diligence. From there, the entire Advisory Team works together to assess and discuss how these groups further our mission; from there, a voting process takes place to determine which organizations will receive financial support.
We stand behind our team’s experience and process, which allows us to ensure we are doing the best we possibly can with the donations we receive.
