Our Team
The ener-G-save project is a relatively new undertaking and adventure for founder Harold Grinspoon and all of us on the team. Aside from a passion for energy efficiency and concern about climate change, none of us started this pilot project as experts in the field. We all bring different backgrounds and strengths to our work and have been very fortunate to learn so much in such a short time. We collaborate on most aspects of the project.
Uli Nagel
Uli’s professional background is varied. She was a professional Pilates instructor and has managed and marketed retreats, as well as a magazine, and her successful studio. Harold Grinspoon and Uli met through Pilates, discovered their shared interest in climate change and developed ener-G-save together. Uli works as project manager of ener-G-save. She is also the director of the Cooler Communities education project.
Uli has been a climate activist with Citizen’s Climate Lobby, the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, the Lee Greener Gateway Committee, and Living the Change Berkshires, an organization she co-founded, which has produced a number of community events bringing greater awareness to climate change.
Aside from climate change, Uli has been interested and taken trainings in organization- and team development. For her, this pilot is as much a laboratory about how to create a healthy, creative and productive team as it is about making a small contribution towards curbing carbon emissions.
Susan Olshuff
Susan mainly serves ener-G-save as a town liaison and researcher and helps develop strategy and operations. Her interest in climate change began in 1997 when she worked with a nonprofit that brought solar energy to developing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since that time, she has pursued this passion working with groups on topics from eco-villages, to product lifecycle responsibility, to greening national presidential conventions, to protecting San Francisco Bay. She served on the Lenox, MA environmental committee to bring “Green Community” status, a “Solarize” program, and a town-wide energy audit program to the town. Susan was trained by Al Gore and presented “An Inconvenient Truth” to dozens of groups in Berkshire County. She attended the COP 15 climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009 as a private citizen, blogging for her local paper.
Professionally, Susan has been a fundraiser for many nonprofit organizations, including environmental, educational, and social action groups. She has a long-time interest in spiritual pursuits, committed to living with a perspective that can hold complexity during challenging times. Her organizational skills were honed as she served as a field organizer for Western Mass during the 2012 presidential campaign season, and she even got to meet President Obama. Contact Susan at susan@ener-g-save.org.
Sherdyl Fernandez-Aubert
Sherdyl serves as the Community First Partnership energy advocate for Pittsfield. He graduated from Prescott College with a B.S. in Conservation Biology. Before joining the ener-G-save team, he worked as a research assistant in Mexico and a freelance grant writer. He has developed his outreach and organizational skills while managing wetland bird surveys in Sonora Mexico as well as working with local environmental and educational organizations to engage locals in wetlands preservation. Sherdyl is responsible for building and implementing community-based strategies and partnerships to help residents and businesses in Pittsfield achieve a more energy efficient future.
Daizha Baptiste
Daizha began working for Cooler Communities/ener-G-save in September 2021 with the role of community and administrative support. Since then she has supported the educational program and community outreach in numerous ways. This includes content generation for social media and events, administrative tasks such as website maintenance and newsletter building, and taking part in events to further raise awareness and connect with communities across the state.
Daizha’s interest in environmental justice began while pursuing an environmental science degree at Westfield State. It was there that she completed several independent research projects on how environmental burdens impact different communities. She set out to dedicate much of her career to making a difference in not only her community, but as many communities she could reach, in any capacity. With ener-G-save and Cooler Communities, she exercises her passion of raising awareness to these issues and being a part of the solution by increasing access to resources and programs that better serve the community and the planet.
Find us on Facebook