JENNIFER SOMERS

Jennifer Somers is the Executive Director of the Collectrify: A Frontline-Led Energy Fund.  In this capacity, she works in partnership with community practitioners and philanthropic partners to foster shared learning and resource frontline organizations to lead the way on the development of strategies to decarbonize their communities. Rooted in the Principles for A Just Transition, Jennifer serves Collectrify’s Vision for 2030: that we all live in communities that are healthy, affordable, and self-sustaining because residents on the frontlines of the climate crisis have livable housing, pollution-free renewable clean energy and equitable economic opportunity driven by deep democracy.  

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Jennifer has over twenty-five years of experience leading and co-creating strategies at the intersection of energy, climate, health and justice. As an organizer and project manager for community-based organizations, Jennifer had led initiatives focused on environmental justice, economic development, and energy efficient and healthy affordable housing for MAAC Project, Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, and Local Initiatives Support Corporation. In one of her most visible roles, she served as a Senior Policy Advisor for the U.S. Department of Energy, leading the budgeting, management and implementation of federal stimulus dollars that helped to facilitate the weatherization and energy efficiency upgrades of over one million homes for limited-wealth families in three years. 

 

​Jennifer holds a bachelor's degree in Economics and Spanish from Fairfield University and a master’s from Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a returned volunteer with Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Jennifer has served as the co-chair of the GREEN working group for The Funder’s Network where she sparked the development of the Systems Transformation Learning Series for philanthropy.  She has also served on the board of directors for Build It Green and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC).