by Jeffrey Stanley
She doesn’t leap tall buildings in a single bound but she’s not above scaling them—all in the name of saving the world. Katie Flynn-Jambeck ’90 has been involved with Greenpeace, the internationally known activist group whose members are devoted to protecting the environment even if it means placing themselves in harm’s way, for several years. Today she is the Washington, DC-based Student Organizing Manager for Greenpeace.
“We have a couple of different student programs and I supervise them,” she said. One is Project Hot Seat, in which college students put pressure on Congressional candidates to add global warming to their platforms using a technique known as bird dogging. “Bird dogging,” she explained, “is when you follow a candidate around to their speaking engagements. Everywhere a candidate goes you’re there asking questions about global warming—what’s their position, what direction will they take to address it?”
Another Greenpeace program on about 30 college campuses that Katie supervises aims to stop administrators from ordering Kimberly-Clark paper products. Kimberly-Clark, Katie said, uses fibers from North America’s ancient boreal forest to manufacture Kleenex paper products. The northern hemisphere’s boreal forest ecosystem stretches across Canada and into Alaska. “Our organizers work with student groups to come up with strategies to get their colleges to stop ordering these products.”
Katie also supervises the Greenpeace Organizing Term in which 35 students spend a semester in either Washington, D.C. or San Francisco learning how to organize actions in their hometowns as well as undergoing a degree of physical training. In addition, the students spend time in the field participating in actual protests. The semester concludes with students attending an international conference to meet like-minded Greenpeace students from around the world, the next to be held in Amsterdam. “The students return to campus stronger, more organized, and prepared to take actions locally,” said Katie.
Greenpeace isn’t for everyone. It requires a strong dedication to placing the environment before one’s self. “Yes, there can be an element of risk involved. There’s an element of risk involved in mountain climbing, too.” Ultimately any physical risks are outweighed by the potential benefits to the community and to the world. But Katie stressed that Greenpeace activists don’t all have to be prepared to climb tall structures or place themselves in immediate physical harm. The focus of the Greenpeace Organizing Term, and indeed all Greenpeace actions, is what she called creative nonviolence. “It’s not always something technical like climbing bridges, that’s only one piece of the pie. Sometimes it involves costumed groups, people singing.”
Katie was born in Minnesota but grew up in Brooklyn and Rockaway Park. “That was nice because it’s near the ocean. But it’s far away from everything else, including BFS.” She coped by learning to deal with buses and trains at a young age, and having sleepovers at friends’ homes.
At BFS, which her brothers Jesse and Huck also attended, Katie was a student from sixth through twelfth grades. She loved horses and working in stables after school. She wrote for the school newspaper, worked on the yearbook staff, and was a member of the Model UN. “It’s where I met most of the people I’ve stayed friends with most of my life,” she said.
Katie has strong memories of teacher Michele Stoddard. “She was my Spanish and history teacher.” In history, Ms. Stoddard used Howard Zinn’s iconoclastic book A People’s History of the United States instead of the school’s history textbook. “She understood how to process complicated things and bring them down to a personal, local level. She helped me with my college essay which was on debt relief in third world countries.”
Katie also remembers seeing a Greenpeace poster in a science teacher’s office. And she remembers the values at BFS that influenced her career choices. “They taught me that one can push back a bit and make changes without destroying the community itself.”
However, Katie’s career path had probably already started before she arrived at BFS. “I have wanted to work with Greenpeace since childhood. I think I went to BFS because in my family this is what we do.” Her parents, Joan Flynn and Steve Jambeck, are lifelong activists. Her father was also a videographer for NBC and used to tape many BFS performances. Today they run a documentary production company that tackles environmental and social issues.
After Brooklyn Friends, Katie received her BA from Hampshire College and then took graduate level courses in nonprofit management. She spent time back in Brooklyn working as a grant writer for the International Rescue Committee before moving to Washington to work full time for Greenpeace, which she calls her “dream job.” She lives with her partner Larry and two cats, and hopes the current generation of BFS students follow in her footsteps in their own ways. “Go for it. Push back. Make the school work for you. It’s a caring and supportive place and your life’s not always going to be like that. And check out greenpeacestudents.org!”