WISPIRG's Dan Kohler (Jan Pelton)

As some of you know, I am taking on a new role with WISPIRG, replacing Jennifer Giegerich as our State Director. I am thrilled to take on this new position, after having worked as WISPIRG’s Organizing Director since 2003. I want to introduce myself, but first thank Jen, on behalf of WISPIRG’s staff and most importantly our 9,000 members, for her amazing work. 

I grew up in Minnesota, but fell in love with Wisconsin after having crossed the border to attend UW Eau Claire. After five years of working with PIRGs on the east coast, I was thrilled to move back to Wisconsin in the summer of 2003 to be the WISPIRG Organizing Director. I have not only enjoyed building up WISPIRG’s university-based civic engagement programs, but have enjoyed being able to cross country ski, bike, and fly fish in Wisconsin again. And being a Vikings fan, I also got the chance to brush up on my self-defense skills.

As our Organizing Director for the last three years, I helped to implement our New Voters Project where we successfully registered 142,000 first time voters in the 2004 election. I also enjoyed working with our volunteers to get the University of Wisconsin-Madison to commit to a plan to reduce their global warming emissions and developing a recycling program in Milwaukee.

As WISPIRG’s State Director, I hope to build on our recent programmatic and policy successes. I was proud to be a part of WISPIRG’s successful organizational and community effort to move Wisconsin away from dirty fossil fuels and towards energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy like wind and solar. That was a great victory, but there is still much more to be done to wean our state off fossil fuels. I’m excited to be planning and setting priorities for the upcoming year. You’ll be hearing more about those plans soon and hopefully the results that follow. I can’t wait.