Brenda Bafus-Williams, Administrative Assistant & Communications Specialist
It’s hard to remember which came to the WCC office first –computers or Brenda. It was that long ago. Brenda was a WCC volunteer starting in 1984, and has been on staff since 1986. While those first PCs have been replaced many times over, Brenda’s hard drive has just needed occasional updating for the ever-changing set of administrative tasks she handles. As she manages databases, newsletters and silent auctions, she has sometimes been called “the glue that holds us together.” Brenda has a degree in Botany from the Pacific Northwest, where she once tracked endangered species for the feds. Now she enjoys practicing t’ai chi, hiking in the high country, and swing dancing when a good band comes to town. Her husband Kevin is the Director of Organizing and Campaigns for the Western Organization of Resource Councils.

Emily Hornback, Community Organizer
Emily is our oil and gas specialist and provides staff support to the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance chapter and its partner group Battlement Concerned Citizens. A native Coloradan, Emily graduated from Colorado State University with a double major in Anthropology and Spanish. She spent some time working in Central and South America before returning to Maine to work for the grassroots art-activist collective, The Beehive Design Collective. She served as a social researcher, designer and public speaker for the Beehive’s “True Cost of Coal” campaign.

Matt King, Community Organizer
Bringing a strong background in anti-poverty work, Matt came to WCC in early 2015 to be our Mesa County organizer. He’s also heading up our work on public lands, uranium, clean energy and social justice. Prior to joining WCC, Matt worked for Sacred Heart Community Service in San Jose, Calif., where he was part of a team that passed a significant increase in San Jose’s minimum wage and helped launch the living wage movement nationally. He has also worked as a reporter for newspapers in California and New York. Originally from upstate New York, he’s a fan of the Yankees, the blues, redwood trees and wolves; not so much of olives.

Dave Reed, Executive Director
Dave joined WCC in early 2015, inspired by its generous mission statement and its long track record of accomplishments. Previously he held communications and development positions with the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop and Rocky Mountain Institute, and before that he had a whole other life in journalism as a beat reporter, travel writer, trade journalist and editor. He figures his varied career has uniquely prepared him for a job where his goals are to expand WCC’s membership and capacity, increase its clout and reach, and make it the leading force of progressive change in western Colorado.

Rachel Zatterstrom, Community Organizer
A fifth-generation Colorado native from Nucla, Rachel joined the staff in 2013 to head up our local foods and agriculture work. She has successfully organized members to plan and execute a statewide legislative campaign to expand Colorado’s Cottage Foods Act, and also provides staff support to the Uncompahgre Valley Association and Ridgway-Ouray Community Council chapters and to the legislative committee. Rachel holds a bachelor’s in Environmental History from Hampshire College and a master’s in Environmental Leadership from Naropa University. She is an accomplished facilitator and trainer, and dedicated to developing the leadership capacity and skills of people who want to work for positive social change in their community.

Lynda Alfred, grant writer

Carol Freeman, bookkeeper

Sol Malick, Denver legislative liaison