By: Juliette Quenioux

April 29, 2024

Diane MacEachern (M.S. Environmental Communications, ‘77) has devoted her career to challenging climate change’s status quo through both legislative and educational initiatives. Her experiences have ranged from serving as the National Communications Director for the Sierra Club to co-founding her own public interest advocacy firm, Vanguard Communications. She has continuously set the standards of what long-term climate change mitigation should look like, starting with orchestrating the EPA’s first stakeholder outreach initiative through her work at Vanguard.

MacEachern’s impact at Vanguard included creating the 2-million-acre Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah–just one major legislative accomplishment stemming from her advocacy efforts. She has also heavily pushed to keep oil drilling out of “America’s Serengeti,” the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a project that was born from the Exxon Oil Spill Settlement. Her work at Vanguard Communications looked to best leverage legislative advocacy to secure these major environmental protections. However, MacEachern was frustrated with the political gridlock of shifting legislative agendas and felt that her efforts were being forced to a grinding halt. 

Seeking new avenues to continue her advocacy efforts, she left Vanguard and uncovered a powerful tool: consumer spending. Thus, the Big Green Purse was born–a movement inspiring women to shift their spending for environmental good. BGP also holds strong partnerships with the EPA’s Energy Star program, and helps consumers take advantage of energy legislation like the Biden Infrastructure Law. Her fourth book, Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World, lays out this blueprint for wielding consumer clout for positive marketplace change.

Through her work in shifting the culture around consumer behavior, MacEachern has learned to always question her assumptions: “Often, [assumptions] don’t reflect the entire scope of the factors at play…it is critical to understand where people (particularly voters) are coming from and what information and options they need (not what you THINK they need) to make protecting the environment a priority.”

MacEachern also maintains that her two years at SEAS not only helped her land her first job, but that the people within SEAS “helped shape [her] worldview.” She reflects that SEAS enabled her to refine her knowledge on communications and organizing, as well as pick up a knowledge base of the natural world. She fondly looks back on her wildlife biology class and her time in the lab identifying wildlife characteristics, such as birds in flight, as one such moment that shaped her relationship with nature. 

This relationship with nature is one that guides her; it serves as an important reminder that “Creation is at stake.” She is perpetually inspired by how many young people embrace protecting the planet, and her dedication to progressing the sustainability movement shines through in her contributions to high-impact initiatives. She is excited to tackle environmental protection’s biggest obstacles next, including advocating for true campaign finance reform, a step she finds crucial to electing pro-environmental legislators at all levels–local, county, state, and national.