Staff
​Judith Sissener, Executive Director

Drawing on thirty years of experience, Judith Sissener is a result-driven and entrepreneurial executive with extensive experience in both non-profit and for-profit organizations, in multiple sectors including environment, youth development, job creation, social equity, and healthcare. 

Judith applies big-picture, strategic thinking with hands-on implementation, to build consensus and achieve impact outcomes. Her previous leadership roles include CEO, executive director, and development director for several nonprofits such as Volunteers In Action, OIC, Global Footprint Network, and most recently Canopy. Her leadership also extended to for-profit positions as regional director of two European corporations, and as a licensed equities broker. Through her consulting work, Judith has assisted and advised numerous organizations with strategic organizational planning, board development and coaching, and fundraising. 

Volunteer positions have included the strategy and fund development committees and boards of directors of multiple organizations: YMCA, OIC, Regional Homeless Task Force, CleanTech Open, Shukuru, and PulpWorks. 

Judith earned simultaneous degrees in political science/international relations and mathematics/statistics from the University of Illinois.

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Tamra Peters, Founder and Program Director

Since shortly after the first Earth Day in 1970, Tamra Peters has been working to protect the Earth.  She was on the staff of: The Nature Conservancy as it grew from 17 employees to an international organization; the Natural Resources Defense Council as it began its campaign to stop global warming in the 1980’s; Rainforest Action Network when it launched its campaign against Mitsubishi’s rainforest destruction; and San Francisco Friends of the Urban Forest, where as Executive Director she learned about the power of people coming together to improve their neighborhoods.
 
Tamra has served on the boards of both national Earth Share and Earth Share California. She’s served as president and was a trustee for 18 years of the Strong Foundation for Environmental Values that has supported hundreds of grassroots environmental organizations. Most recently, she served for seven years on Sustainable Marin’s board.
 
Tamra considers climate change to be the most important issue of our time. So after her retirement, she started looking for what she could do.  With the help of several others, she created Resilient Neighborhoods and launched the successful pilot in the fall of 2011.  Since then she has worked full time as a volunteer, running the organization and motivating hundreds of Marin families to reduce their carbon footprints and build more resilient communities. 

In 2017, Tamra received the Co-Citizen of the Year Award from the City of San Rafael and the Green Award for Environmental Leadership from the Marin Conservation League.
 
Tamra holds an undergraduate degree from Antioch University in Business Management and Psychology and has an MA in Organizational Development from the California Institute of Integral Studies.  She has been a resident of Marin for almost 31 years.  

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Dara Rossoff-Powell, Outreach Associate
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Dara has dedicated her career to sustainability education, environmental outreach, and to implementing community based programs that make an impact. She has taught thousands of students and adults about the Bay Area ecosystem and inspired people to take actions in their daily lives to protect it. She worked with the City of Berkeley, the City of Oakland and the East Bay Regional Park District, inspiring countless students to protect the marine environment and facilitated the engagement of many hundreds of volunteers.

Previously, she engaged food service establishments and the public in strategies to reduce single-use disposables, tracking and measuring the waste prevention that occurred as a result of her work. She collaborated with eight municipal partners across the Bay Area and served as the lead trainer on program implementation. She is educated in Global Sustainability through UCLA, holds a BA from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is educated in art and marine science. She loves finding elegant solutions to complex problems and working on climate change in her own community. She lives in Marin with her husband and daughter.

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Board of Directors
Cory Bytof, Chair

Cory is the Sustainability Program Manager for the City of San Rafael. He co-authored and is responsible for implementing the City’s Climate Change Action Plan 2030, which is being used as a model by the other cities in Marin. Cory also helped form the anti-litter coalition San Rafael Clean, and as a member of the City’s Emergency Operations Center, developed and manages the City’s Emergency Volunteer Center. In addition, Cory is past-chair of the Marin Climate Energy Partnership, a consortium of local governments and public utilities working together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Marin County. Cory has a degree in Interdisciplinary Social Science from San Francisco State University. He lives in San Rafael with his wife and has one adult daughter. In his free time he writes musicals and enjoys traveling, cultural exchange, and adventures in nature.

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Robert Brown

Bob Brown has been a planning manager and director for 33 years in some of the most progressive cities in the Bay Area, including Palo Alto, Berkeley and San Mateo. He has specialized in reinvigorating downtowns into pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use/mixed-income community centers, promoting environmental protection and facilitating public involvement. He was the Community Development Director for the City of San Rafael for 13 years and acted as the City’s Sustainability Coordinator. He authored San Rafael’s Climate Change Action Plan and the BERST model green building ordinance, one of the most stringent in the nation, which has been adopted by several Marin jurisdictions and won a Leadership in Sustainability Award from the Marin Builders Association. Bob is also an adjunct faculty member at Dominican University, teaching in the Sustainable Practices Certificate Program.
 
Bob believes that government must be a catalyst in moving residents and businesses toward more sustainable lifestyles and business practices. He is a strong advocate for coordinated local action to fill the void of national leadership. He is a regular speaker at the League of California Cities, the Local Government Commission and the American Planning Association.
 
Bob holds an undergraduate degree in environmental biology from the University of Santa Clara and a Masters in Urban Planning from San Jose State University. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

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Pat Carlone, Sustainable Marin Representative
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​Pat Carlone has been a resident of West Marin for over 36 years. He is officially retired; however he is busier than ever now that he is focused on his climate activism here in Marin. In 2016, he started organizing the Marin Interfaith Climate Action (MICA) group that became the climate action component of the Marin Interfaith Council.  He is a graduate of the Environmental Forum of Marin Master Class 44 and sits on the Board of Directors of Sustainable Marin.

Since graduating from his Resilient Neighborhoods (RN) team he has gone on to take the CERT training, organize his neighborhood for Emergency Readiness, and joined the Valley Emergency Readiness Group (VERG) in his home of San Geronimo Valley.  He is an RN Coach and part of the RN Ambassador team. 

​He is formerly a high school teacher with West Contra Costa Unified School District, mathematics instructor with Contra Costa Community College, and a systems and data analyst. 

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Anne-Christine Strugnell, Chair of RN Ambassadors  
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Anne-Christine Strugnell is a Marin resident, writer, and mom who raised her two children in San Rafael. As a freelance marketing writer specializing in the high-tech industry, she spent decades writing about complex technologies in a way that helps people understand why they should care and how they could benefit. She has also written personal essays published in national magazines.
 
Anne-Christine joined a Resilient Neighborhoods team in 2016 and has been on a path to a low-waste, sustainable, and carbon-neutral household ever since. As she became even more concerned about the impacts of climate change, though, she made her biggest change yet: at the start of 2019, she stepped back from her paid work to volunteer with Resilient Neighborhoods. 

Now Anne-Christine is a Leadership Circle Donor and the Chair of the RN Ambassador team, a group of RN Climate Action Team graduates committed to expanding RN's program and community of supporters. As Chair, Anne-Christine puts her energy and skills to use writing marketing materials for RN, leading the Ambassadors to organize activities and events, and looking for opportunities to inspire people to live more sustainably. 

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Marilyn Price, Outreach Volunteer

​Marilyn Price is the founder of Trips For Kids® a nonprofit  that has opened the world of cycling to over 140,000 at-risk youth since 1988 through mountain bike rides and Earn-a-Bike programs. Currently over 70 Trips for Kids chapters operate in the United States, Canada, Africa and Israel. Marilyn brings her love of kids and bicycling, desire for a healthy environment, and indefatigable devotion to the organization.
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She is a visionary with keen entrepreneurial skills, in 1994 she started a bike thrift shop, a totally “green” business that currently supports 67% of the programs operating expenses.

​She has received much recognition including an interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf on “Schwarzkopf’s America” on Tom Brokaw’s NBC Nightly News; a full page article in Sports Illustrated Magazine, induction into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame , the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition Community Leadership Award.

As a University of Michigan alumnus, she was awarded the University of Michigan Humanitarian Service Award, the University’s most prestigious alumni honor, the Outdoor Industries Women’s Coalition Pioneering Woman Award, and most recently was named a 2015 CNN Hero. Her accomplishments are well known and generously supported by many members of the national bicycle industry.

Tamra Peters is also on the Board of Directors

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" Today, everyone wants to achieve these goals, but it always takes someone to ignite the fire under each of us. This program was effective in doing just that. "
-EcoTeam Member,
Creekside Trashbusters

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Our History

Our Vision: Marin’s residents live in a resilient community—in harmony with nature’s cycles; in accord with regional resources of water, energy and food; and in strong connection with one another and with locally rooted businesses. Marin is a community that can respond effectively, with flexibility and strength, to inevitable changes in local and global conditions.

Resilient Neighborhoods' pilot program in 2012 helped 100 Marin households, organized into 20 Climate Action Teams, lose 500,000 pounds of carbon. The program has grown from there, spreading to households and neighborhoods throughout Marin.

Tamra Peters came up with the idea for Resilient Neighborhoods in 2009. The Low Carbon Diet workbook served as the inspiration for the program. The program is localized to Marin, and builds community among participants and within neighborhoods as it spreads.

Our program partners make Resilient Neighborhoods possible. Sustainable Marin acts as our fiscal agent; Dominican University’s Green MBA students worked on the Handbook and database development; the County of Marin’s Energy Upgrade California Program staff helped with expenses and acted as Climate Action Team coaches; and the City of San Rafael’s staff contributed to all aspects of the program.