To celebrate 50 years of educating girls at Albuquerque Academy, Alumni Council member Ted Alcorn ’01 is telling the stories of women alumni.
By Ted Alcorn ’01
Lena Moffitt ’01, who directs one of the country’s leading environmentalist organizations, traces the roots of her advocacy to a box of yellowing newspaper clippings.
She discovered them a couple of years ago – letters to the editor from throughout her childhood that her parents had published in The Albuquerque Journal. A school teacher and a construction worker by profession, her mom and dad were also natural activists in their personal lives, and the letters attested to their perpetual campaigning for fairness and justice; they chided lawmakers for allowing companies to pollute the state’s water, called for increased funding for girls’ soccer teams, defended public school students’ right to dye their hair.
“That made a huge impression on me,” said Lena. “The power of one person to make a difference, if they use their voice – and particularly if they can inspire more people to join them in that effort.”
Lena came late to the Academy, in ninth grade. Her classmates had already bonded in middle school, and she was awed by the arts and athletic facilities, but the new environment didn’t intimidate her. “I was probably a little bit more headstrong than I should have been,” she laughed.
Looking back now, there were clear turning points. One was Karen Beamish’s environmental science class, where Lena first learned about climate change. “She taught us the fundamentals of the science and the crisis that was coming,” including locally in the Jemez Mountains, which were ravaged by wildfires that year. “She connected the dots for me in a way that changed the entire trajectory of my life,” Lena said.
The school’s experiential education program also marked her deeply. Exploring the Philmont Scout Ranch and winter camping in the Gila Wilderness, she fell in love with the outdoors. And toughing out the cold and miles of trail beneath a heavy backpack, she learned she had “the personal wherewithal to do hard things.”
After earning a degree in environmental biology, Lena got an assistantship at a lab as a stepping stone toward a doctorate. The scientists were studying Zapus princeps, the Western jumping mouse, to inform zoning decisions in Denver that might put the city’s growth on a collision course with the animal’s habitat. “[The mice] were either going to be preserved or wiped off the face of the map by what a few city council members decided,” Lena recalled.
Lena doesn’t describe herself as a patient person – “I like to move really quickly” – but she also saw how the city’s leaders were sure to act before her research was complete. “I could write a thesis on the genetic differentiation between these two populations of mice, which would take seven years, and we might find meaningful results – but in the meantime, the entire population could be gone.” What she really wanted to do, she realized, was to talk with those decision-makers, to organize their constituents, and to fight for a better world she knew was possible: she wanted to be an advocate.
Fifteen years, a graduate degree, and a half-dozen jobs later, that’s exactly what she does. As head of the multimillion-dollar organization Evergreen Action, she helps elected officials with the nuts and bolts of their climate policies so they can pass legislation that actually delivers on their vision.
Over that time, the environmental movement has grown along with her. “We are in a place that, 10 years ago, I could have only dreamed about,” Lena said, crediting environmental justice campaigners and youth climate activists such as Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement with helping bring millions of people into the movement.
She takes heart in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which promotes clean energy, though cautions it was just a first step. “We have a very narrow window of opportunity to avoid the worst of the climate crisis and the next few years are absolutely critical to ensure that we bend that arc of emissions toward preserving a livable planet.”
Her three-year-old daughter Charlie is already taking after her, particularly in her strongly held opinions. For Lena, motherhood has reinforced the stakes of her work and provided an opportunity to pass down lessons her mom conferred on her. “Some of my kids’ first experiences with me have also been at rallies and protests and going down to the White House and showing them how to use their voices,” she said.
“Nothing would make me prouder as a mom than if my kids also became advocates.”
