Michael Brune (born 24 August 1971) became the youngestexecutive director of theSierra Club at age 38. The board of directors hired him in January 2010, afterCarl Pope stepped down.[1]
Michael Brune graduated fromWest Chester University in 1993 with B.S. degrees in both Economics and Finance.[2]
Prior to the Sierra Club, Brune was the executive director of theRainforest Action Network for seven years. He also worked as an organizer forGreenpeace.[3]
In 1999, while working at theRainforest Action Network, Brune ran a successful campaign to getHome Depot stores to stop purchasing and selling wood fromold-growth forests.Time magazine listed this as its top environmental story of that year.[4]
Brune is a regular contributor to theHuffington Post, aprogressive website founded byArianna Huffington, as well asDaily Kos.
In 2008 he published a book calledComing Clean -- Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal.[5]
In 2014 Brune was confirmed as theHillary Institute of International Leadership's Hillary Laureate in recognition of his work onclimate change issues. He was then awarded, jointly withAmazon Watch'sAtossa Soltani, the four yearly Hillary Step prize.[6]
In August 2021 the Sierra Club announced that Brune was resigning as executive director, effective as of the end of the year.[7] Following an essay by Brune condemning Sierra Club founder John Muir as a racist,[8] many long-time members strongly questioned his version of history, resigned from the Sierra Club and removed the organization from their estate plans.[9] Similarly, assertions made by Brune during his tenure at the Rainforest Action Network and Sierra Club[10] were eventually addressed and overturned in U.S. federal court in a case labeled as the "legal fraud of the century" by theWall Street Journal.[11]