Oliver Bernstein gets the word out for the Sierra Club.

One of the first things Bernstein did when he took a job in 2004 with the Sierra Club in Austin, Texas, was go out and buy new footwear. "You just aren't taken seriously in the Texas legislature unless you're wearing cowboy boots," he explains. As the Sierra Club's U.S.-Mexico border representative, Bernstein didn't confine his work to the halls of government—he pulled on those boots to crisscross the region, working with communities on both sides of the border to organize environmental campaigns. In 2006 he became the Sierra Club's deputy press secretary for diversity programs, overseeing the club's relations with nonmainstream media: Spanish language news outlets, African American newspapers, Vietnamese and Native American radio.

"Reaching diverse groups with environmental news and information is particularly important because these communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental issues," Bernstein says. "Also, if environmental information isn't covered by the ethnic media, often their readers and listeners—largely non-English speakers—won't get the information anywhere else."

As a high school student in Miami he lobbied to stop the construction of an airport next to Everglades National Park. At Dartmouth he collaborated with other students to expand the campaign nationally and served as president of the environmental studies division of the DOC. He majored in comparative literature, studying works in Spanish and Portuguese, with a minor in public policy. "I was always interested in en- vironmental issues," says Bernstein. "At Dartmouth I became interested in writing and literature and linguistics. Now, in my current job, I use writing to help protect the environment and the health of communities."