Sierra Club Executive Director On Leave; Another Exec Left After Disclosure That He Was Working As A Crypto Lobbyist

One of the nation’s largest, oldest and most influential environmental groups is in turmoil at a particularly critical time, as the federal government rolls back landmark environmental protections that advocates fought for decades to achieve. The Sierra Club is among the organizations trying to hold the line. But its executive director, Ben Jealous, was placed on leave by its board earlier this month, following mounting complaints about ineffective leadership and a no-confidence vote by the union representing nearly half of its staff. Its chief strategy officer left earlier this year after rank-and-file staff found out he was also working as a lobbyist for a crypto currency company, part of an energy-intensive industry complicating efforts to constrain climate change.

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Among the events this year upsetting staffers: Kevin Harris, who served in multiple positions at the organization since 2022, culminating in a post as chief strategy officer, internal communications show, was at the same time a registered lobbyist for Crypto.com, according to federal lobbying disclosure documents. The first such disclosure was dated mid-2022. The most recent salary disclosure from Sierra Club showed he earned just over $240,000 at the nonprofit in 2023.

The Progressive Workers Union said in a statement to Inside Climate News that it is “concerned that during his time working for both Sierra Club and Crypto.com, Harris may have been actively lobbying against bills which Sierra Club supported targeted at regulating the crypto industry and its associated environmental impacts due to the clear conflicting interests of the two organizations.” Those business commitments, which Parrish did not detail, were reviewed by the organization’s legal team and were deemed not to conflict with Sierra Club’s mission, he wrote.

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Sierra Club has widely critiqued the crypto industry as an energy-intensive drain on resources. “Since the rapid influx of large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations to the United States following China’s prohibition on such facilities, Sierra Club has been monitoring both the carbon and cost impacts of these operations on the power grid with growing alarm,” the organization said on its website in a description of a 2024 legal fight involving the industry.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25072025/sierra-club-puts-executive-director-ben-jealous-on-leave/