HOME > ABOUT > OUR TEAM

Our Team

We are community energy enthusiasts, citizen activists and student leaders. We see energy efficiency as the first step toward relocalizing our energy economies. We have created CEF to support our communities in the process of building people-powered solutions to the energy crisis and climate change.

Cooperative Energy Futures is comprised of a Board of Directors and a Coordination Team, which handles the day-to-day operations of the cooperative. Our entire organization is volunteer at this point; if you are interested in joining us, check out our Get Involved page. Learn about our team:

Board of Directors

Timothy Den-Herder Thomas | Chair

Timothy DenHerder-Thomas is the current Chair of the Cooperative Energy Futures Board and does strategic planning and partnership development for the Coordination Team. Timothy is a senior Environmental Studies major at Macalester College in St. Paul MN. In 2006, Timothy helped found, and then served as an initial Board Member of, the Clean Energy Revolving Fund, which supports self-financing sustainability projects at Macalester College. From there, Timothy pursued research in residential energy efficiency that was the driving force behind forming Cooperative Energy Futures, and has facilitated the formation and operations of the cooperative, its volunteers, and a variety of different strategic directions throughout 2008. He has served as a visionary and convener for statewide and national inter-campus energy-saving competitions, a Minnesota state network of student sustainability groups, and the Summer of Solutions. Timothy now serves on the Steering Committee of the Energy Action Coalition and on the Executive Committee of the Sierra Student coalition. He is a Young People For Fellow, a Morris K. Udall Scholar, a Goldman Sachs Global Leader, and a recent recipient of the 2008 Brower Youth Award. Timothy also loves long-distance back-packing, transformative approaches to life, thought, and inter-relationship, and network-based approaches to social change.

Lissa Pawlich | Vice Chair

Melissa (Lissa) Pawlich is the Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs) coordinator for the University of Minnesota’s Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships program. Lissa has spent over 10 years working on energy-related issues. She began working with community organizations looking for dispersed generation solutions in 2002 and in 2003 joined the Regional Partnerships to help them launch CERTs. In 2009 she become one of Cooperative Energy Future’s founding board members – a proud role as she is both a Macalester alum and an ardent believer in clean energy as catalyst for and mechanism to create more
inter-connected, robust and sustainable communities.

Craig Laughlin | Executive Secetary

Craig Laughlin has been structuring financing for companies that go public through the reverse acquisition process since 1985. He founded SRC Funding, Inc. in 1991 as a vehicle to apply his knowledge to assist socially responsible companies with capital formation issues. Craig has served on the boards of directors of numerous public companies, most recently Dotronix, Inc. where he managed the spin off its legacy business so that it could become a public shell company, which subsequently acquired numerous wind energy assets and became Wind Energy America, Inc. He is a member of the American Council on Renewable Energy, the American Solar Energy Society, and is the alumni representative on the board of directors of the Clean Energy Revolving Fund at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Joel Henley | Treasurer

John Harrington

John Harrington has more than thirty years public and private sector experience in program development and project management and implementation. He is currently serving as a Program Officer for the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, focused on the Green Communities Initiative. He is also the LEED for Homes Advocate for the Minnesota Chapter of the USGBC. He has previously served as Senior Project Coordinator in Minneapolis, specializing in brownfield redevelopment and neighborhood-focused Transit Oriented Development; was Vice President of an environmental planning firm, responsible for the socio-economic and land use impact analyses of a number of environmental assessments and impact statements; and served as special assistant to the Chair of the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council. Prior to that he managed the Twin Cities Metro Council’s water pollution control program where he was responsible for ensuring consistency between local comprehensive land use plans and regional sewer system plans and programs. John began his career at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston Massachusetts where he served as Director of Environmental Planning and manager of the area-wide water quality management program. He is a graduate of Boston College and is certified as a Housing Development Finance Professional from the National Development Council.

Kristen Eide-Tollefson

Kristen is a long time energy activist and community organizer. She has served as an organizational development partner on the CEF coordination team which brought CEF from a common vision to a full fledged 308B Minnesota Cooperative in February, 2009. Kristen was a co-founder of CURE, a community group which advocates for local energy solutions. CURE was an organizing force in the first “Sharing the Load” conference in St. Cloud in 2001, and an active member of the SEED coalition of Minnesota Project from 1997-2006. Kristen has participated extensively, as a public advocate, in proceedings before the Public Utilities Commission and has served appointments to various state and legislative advisory and stakeholder groups. In 2006, Kristen graduated from the Humphrey Institute with a Master's degree in "Public Engagement in Energy Policy, Planning and Infrastructure Development." She is an enthusiastic social entrepreneur and a proud founding board member of Cooperative Energy Futures.

Coordination Team

Brianna Besch
Natalie Camplair
Reginald Doku
Christina Getaz
Ruby Levine
Margo Worman

Partners through the Summer of Solutions 2010

Ethan Buckner
Elana Bulman
Brian Elder
Makenzie Henk
Melissa Legge
William Raedy
Mary Shindler
Casey Wojtalewicz