Rev. Susan Hendershot
President
Rev. Susan Hendershot has served as president of Interfaith Power & Light since 2018. She was raised in a blue-collar family outside of Cleveland, Ohio, before attending Bethany College in West Virginia where she graduated with honors with a B.A. in Religious Studies. Rev. Hendershot went on to graduate school at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia where she received her Master of Divinity degree from Candler School of Theology. After graduate school, she moved to Iowa, where she was ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and served as a pastor in local congregations, focusing on social justice. Rev. Hendershot also led faith-based nonprofit organizations and served as the first Heartland Field Organizer for the ONE Campaign on global poverty. Just prior to her current role, she served as the Executive Director at Iowa Interfaith Power & Light, one of the state affiliates in the Interfaith Power & Light network. Currently, Rev. Hendershot serves as co-chair of the Executive Committee for the RE-AMP Steering Committee, a network of over 140 climate, energy, and environmental organizations throughout the Midwest. Rev. Hendershot believes that climate change is a moral issue, disproportionately impacting those who are most vulnerable in our world. She gets her motivation and inspiration from her two sons.
Susan Stephenson
Executive Director
Susan oversees The Regeneration Project and its Interfaith Power & Light campaign. Susan has 20 years of experience developing and implementing issue-advocacy and electoral campaigns for environmental and other public interest organizations. Prior to joining The Regeneration Project, she served as vice president of the Oakland-based campaign consulting firm The Next Generation. Beginning in 1999, she organized and coordinated the California Global Warming Campaign, which implemented a proactive strategy resulting in several landmark legislative victories. She has been involved with California Interfaith Power & Light since its inception in 2000. Susan received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of North Carolina. When not at work she can be spotted hiking in the East Bay hills or attending a local music festival. If you have a media inquiry, email Susan here. If you are on a deadline within 24 hours (weekdays), please call (510) 444-4891.
Sarah Berg
Development Director
Sarah is the Development Director for the Regeneration Project’s Interfaith Power & Light Campaign. She has nine years of experience working in non-profits and previously as the Development Coordinator at a Latin American solidarity organization, SHARE El Salvador. Sarah got her start in interfaith organizing during her year with the Lutheran Volunteer Corps where she worked with the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice of the East Bay. She is the leader of her congregation’s “Love our Neighbor Hub” where she organizes her congregation around environmental issues and workers’ rights. She received a B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Spanish from Iowa State University. In her free time, Sarah enjoys bicycling around the hills of Berkeley and Oakland.
Bill Bradlee
National Organizing Director and Affiliate Liaison
Bill supports all of IPL’s state affiliates and federal advocacy campaigns as national organizing director. Previously, he served as The Regeneration Project’s managing director from July 2004 until March 2007. Bill has two decades of experience in the nonprofit world. In 2007, he and a climate scientist spent much of the year bicycling across the U.S. giving talks and doing media outreach around global warming. Bill previously worked for The League of Conservation Voters and The Union of Concerned Scientists. He completed his Master of Environmental Studies degree at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA.
Ashaki Scott
Office Manager and Programs Assistant
In her roles, Ashaki oversees the day-to-day office administration, provides board support, assists with our state affiliates, and coordinates event planning and logistics. She has a BS in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning from U.C. Davis. Ashaki previously worked as a Program Manager for Climate Careers at Rising Sun Center for Opportunity, and her first job was the Science Instructor at the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC), where she served for four years. Additionally, she served as a small group leader within her college fellowship during undergraduate, and has a special passion to empower collegiate ministries to take bold action in the fight for environmental justice. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, outreach, and loves discovering new memes.
Sarah Paulos
Community Engagement and Programs Manager
Sarah is the Community Engagement and Programs Manager for Interfaith Power & Light. She was awakened to climate action with the proposal to build a huge coal-fired power plant in her community in Iowa. Her response was to create the Cool Congregations program to help members of her home congregation reduce their energy use and care for our common home. Cool Congregations is now a program of IPL.Prior to IPL Sarah served for twelve years as the Program and Outreach Coordinator for Iowa IPL training green teams in Iowa and sixteen other states to conduct the Cool Congregations program. She developed additional educational programs including Food, Faith, Climate: Connecting the Dots, The Good Life Redefined addressing how our “stuff” contributes to climate change, Faith for Energy Equity on environmental justice, and Common Good, on advocacy. Sarah also served as Faith Caucus coordinator for RE-AMP, and trained as a secondary teacher with degrees from Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. She is inspired to do this work by her three daughters.
Jonathan Lacock-Nisly
Federal Policy Associate
Jonathan represents Interfaith Power & Light in Washington, DC as our Federal Policy Associate, and also serves as Director of Faithful Advocacy for Interfaith Power & Light (DC.MD.NoVA), where he oversees organizing and advocacy for DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia religious communities. Jonathan comes to this work after several years as an affordable housing advocate with MANNA, Inc, where he saw firsthand the strain that shifting weather patterns is putting on our communities. He is a graduate of Eastern Mennonite University with a degree in Peacebuilding and Development, and a member of the 8th Day Faith Community in Washington, DC.
Monet Monaghan
Business Manager
Monet has 15 years of experience in financial management for for-profit and nonprofit organizations and has been a Certified Public Accountant in the State of California since 1990. She has a BS degree in Business Administration from San Francisco State University. She has nearly completed a Masters degree in Geography/Resource Management also from San Francisco State University. While away from work, Monet enjoys hiking, tennis, and spending time with her family.
Gerald Bernstein
Renewable Energy/Special Projects
Gerald is the volunteer coordinating a variety of Renewable Energy products and projects at IPL as well as supporting CIPL with clean energy job development. He spent over 25 years providing business consulting services to companies in the transportation and energy industries, followed by 10 years with the California Community College system with responsibility for developing student and incumbent worker training programs in transportation and renewable energy. He has a BS in Aeronautics (RPI) and an MS in Engineering Management (Stanford). His favorite leisure activity is hiking and photographing diverse forest biomes.
Dr. Cynthia Cudaback
Science Advisor
Dr. Cudaback grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, which nurtured an early love of the ocean. She obtained a BA in Physics from U.C. Berkeley and a PhD in geophysics from the University of Washington. Along the way, she served a few years in the NOAA Corps of commissioned officers, which operates NOAA’s vessels. She has held positions at U.C. San Diego, U.C. Santa Barbara, and North Carolina State University. Dr. Cudaback has taught at every level, from preschool through graduate school, and loves to incorporate storytelling into her teaching.
Tiffany Hartung
Field Director
Tiffany works to connect IPL’s federal policy advocacy efforts across the network, with state affiliates and IPL supporters. She joined IPL in 2020 with two decades of advocacy, campaign, and coalition management experience in the environmental, clean energy, and climate space. Tiffany served as IPL’s 2020 Faith Climate Justice Campaign director. Previously, Tiffany worked with the North Carolina Chapter of The Nature Conservancy to build broader support for climate action with conservatives and to promote low-impact utility-scale solar development through responsible siting and design. She also served as the coalition manager for the Maryland Climate Coalition helping to expand the state’s clean energy and climate policies and maintain Maryland’s position as a leader on climate. She managed the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign work in Michigan, working to ensure that the state’s future electric needs were met in the cleanest, smartest, and most affordable ways. She has deep roots in organizing and bringing together community stakeholders. She’s based in Western North Carolina.
