Lynsy Smithson-Stanley comes to SNF Agora as a political science Ph.D. with a focus on American politics. She’s particularly interested on how organizational culture, advocacy strategies, data, coalition formation and other factors inform the extent environmental groups do — or do not — create political power for climate solutions. A journalist, she came to the climate space in 2011 after working as a health and environmental reporter in Michigan and her home state, Missouri. She directed media strategy and special projects for Climate Nexus, a nonprofit dedicated to strategic communications around climate change and clean energy. In 2014, she joined the National Audubon Society as director of climate communications and strategy. Her work activating bird-lovers around the climate threat included developing a research program to engage conservatives, building grassroots advocacy infrastructure and overseeing the organization’s transition to modern data and data management systems. For the past two years, her consulting projects ranged from the Climate Advocacy Lab’s first-ever Climate Engagement Data Table to partnerships applying social science findings to advocacy strategies for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. With the Center for Climate Integrity, she created evidence-driven campaigns to help advocates hold Big Oil companies accountable for climate costs. She has undergraduate degrees in journalism and humanities from the University of Missouri and a master’s in mass communication research from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
