Diane edits the ECA Massachusetts newsletter and assists with other chapter communications. She joined ECA in 2019 after attending the Climate Strike and deciding it was time to become a serious climate activist. Diane brings a lifelong passion for environmental issues and diverse skills honed in parenting and a varied career path.
Her environmental activism was sparked in the 1970s when she read Frances Moore Lappé’s landmark book, Diet for a Small Planet. Diane became a vegetarian, began volunteering for environmental groups, and as a young lawyer in Minneapolis handled pro bono legal work for the Sierra Club. While raising her daughter in Lexington, Massachusetts, Diane divided her time between work as an attorney for a small Boston law firm and community environmental involvement. She helped develop a nature education program at her daughter’s school and organized a neighborhood campaign against the use of dangerous pesticides and herbicides.
Diane ultimately left the practice of law and put her environmental work on pause to combine her legal, research and writing skills with interests in history and genealogy. She authored award-winning books and articles about colonial New England and historical court records, and in 2009 became a professional genealogist. She is not quite retired and juggles her genealogy business and climate work from her home office in Arlington.