Our Team

Mary founded Climate Finance Action in 2020 after 18 months of climate finance work in conjunction with an investor-led campaign to decarbonize the 20 largest North American electric generating utilities and efforts to press JPMorgan to replace lead independent director Lee Raymond, the former CEO of Exxon.

Before entering the nonprofit sector, Mary worked as an analyst and consultant for over twenty years in the financial services industry. She serves on the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management (MassPRIM) Board’s Stewardship Committee and the Maryland State Retirement & Pension System (MSRPS) Climate Advisory Panel. She has an MBA from Boston University and a BA in Geology from Skidmore College. In 2022, she received the ESG Role of Directors certificate from the University of California, Berkeley.

With more than 20 years of experience in organizing, campaigning, and policymaking, Danielle is driven to build communities and opportunities that bring people together to strengthen their advocacy skills, examine their power, and harness their passion toward more just policies and systems. She is thrilled to join CFA to activate shareholder power and wield capital as a force for tackling climate change and advancing economic justice.

Prior to joining CFA, Danielle worked as the campaign director with the Union of Concerned Scientists. There, she ran impactful campaigns to activate science as a force for more evidence-based, equitable policies and democratic processes-- from environmental justice and voting rights to public health regulations. She also built the UCS Science Network, a national community of 25,000 scientists and technical experts seeking training, leadership development, and action opportunities to advocate for policy change.

Danielle also worked as the research director for the Massachusetts State Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Service, which spearheaded policy reforms for pension and healthcare coverage. She was also the national student program coordinator for Physicians for Human Rights, where she built a network of 75+ chapters and ran campaigns for early career health professionals to advocate for health and human rights policy.

She has an MSPA from the University of Massachusetts Boston and a BA in international development and social change from Clark University.

Dan Nicolai is a long-time union and community organizer whose work has focused on building power with people seeking positive change in their work sites and neighborhoods. He is excited to contribute to CFA’s critical work for climate justice and the right to a decent retirement. 

For the past 14 years he coordinated organizing campaigns in New England with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ. In these campaigns, workers in traditionally low-wage security, janitorial, and aviation service sectors won significant improvements in wages, benefits, job security, and rights on the job. Most recently, he helped launch an organizing effort by Uber and Lyft drivers, which changed Massachusetts law to create the first pathway to collective bargaining in the US rideshare sector. 

Before joining 32BJ, Dan was a union rep and researcher with SEIU in Boston and Seattle, and a proxy voting advisor for Pension & Investments Research Consultants in London. In the 1990s, he directed a Louisiana partnership of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union and local and national environmental groups, which launched campaigns for fair public services, environmental justice, and workplace health and safety.

Dan started organizing with ACORN, graduated from Macalester College and the Harvard Kennedy School, and grew up in a union household in southern Minnesota.  

Hector is a veteran labor and community organizer with over 17 years of experience building worker power and advancing justice across California and beyond. He began his activism as a UCLA student, advocating for the California and Federal DREAM Acts and co-publishing Underground Undergrads, a book highlighting the experiences of undocumented students.

After graduating, Hector joined the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, where he led political, organizing, and immigrant rights campaigns—including defeating anti-union Proposition 32 and organizing the largest anti-Walmart civil disobedience action in the company’s history.

In 2014, Hector became Southern California Field Director for the California Labor Federation, supporting labor councils from Bakersfield to San Diego in growing their capacity for organizing, political action, and strategic campaigns. His work included leading the Immigrant Organizing Project, which trained dozens of apprentice organizers, many of whom went on to leadership roles in the labor movement.

Hector has played a key role in landmark organizing victories, from securing card check neutrality for thousands of security officers in the Silicon Valley region to supporting union elections at retail and food processing worksites. He has also trained hundreds of worker and community leaders on organizing, health and safety, and workers’ rights, while securing significant grant funding to expand union outreach and education.

Today, as an Organizing Consultant, Hector brings his deep experience and passion for worker-led, community-driven change to partners committed to building a more equitable and climate-resilient future.

Natalia is a communications and digital strategy leader and advocate for intersectional climate justice. Her work experience in Indonesia, Uganda, and Kenya, combined with academic training, including a Master of Divinity in Community Development and a Master of Science in Strategic Communications with an emphasis in Technology Law and Policy, informs her approach to equity and storytelling. She is excited about the opportunity to mobilize stakeholders around the intersection of climate and publicly held capital to support an ethical transition to a more just economy.

Susan Drury is an experienced campaigner, research director, and COO. She has spent the last twenty-five years supporting and leading campaigns and organizations focused on workers’ rights, health care access, public education, and climate justice. Susan spent over fifteen years as staff and consultant at SEIU and has deep experience with the politics and finance of pension funds.

Susan has a B.A. from Carleton College and an M.Ed. from Vanderbilt University.