Jesse Strecker

Jesse is a student at the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. His research is at the nexus of climate policy, labor economics, and equity, focusing on the political economy of efforts to address climate change. By looking at how different strategies to transition to a low-carbon economy create different political alignments, his works seeks to find policy approaches that can forge new alliances between environmental advocates, workers, and environmental justice organizations. As a researcher at the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s Green Economy Program, he worked on a state-commissioned study examining how California climate policy can be structured to ensure that workers, low-income communities, and people of color share in the benefits of the transition to a low-carbon economy. Before coming to Berkeley, Jesse spent nearly a decade working as a labor and community organizer. He served as the Executive Director of the Rhode Island chapter of Jobs with Justice, a state-wide coalition of over 50 labor, community, student, and environmental organizations. In that role, he led advocacy campaigns that won six major legislative victories on issues ranging from access to housing to re-entry of formerly incarcerated people, economic development, and environmental policy. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in Anthropology focused on Latin American Studies.