Board Members
Co-founder and Board Chair
Organizational Staff
Jen is the founder and was the President of Aurora Lights from 1998 to 2012. Jen received her B.A. in English with Honors from the University of Virginia and her Masters in Forestry from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Jen...
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Mary is a folklorist, ethnographer, and writer. Since the early 1990s her work focused on the cultural dimensions of ecological crisis in the southern West Virginia coalfields. As a folklife specialist with the American Folklife Center, Library...
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Paul is a photographer and educator, passionately committed to further the goals of human rights, social justice, and environmental responsibility. A native West Virginian (born, raised and still living in Fayette County), he discovered photography...
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Staff Members
President and Website Coordinator
Organizational Staff
Charles received his B.A. in Journalism from the University of South Florida. Charles started out creating a new multi-media section of the website to focus on the area around the Edwight mine and Marsh Fork Elementary School. After much excellent...
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CFO and historian
Organizational Staff
Danielle is the CFO and historian for Aurora Lights. She has a BS in Biology as well as an Executive MBA in Project Management. Danielle is the financial manager for all of our projects. She also worked at Gamesa Wind for 5 years on wind...
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Honest Appalachia Co-coordinator
Project Staff
Honest Appalachia is Aurora Lights’ whistleblower website project. Jimmy received a B.A. in Urban Studies with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. Jimmy is a freelance journalist, and has written for a variety of news...
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Project Staff
Ivan Stiefel, 2008 Brower Youth Award recipient and former literature teacher at World Class Kayak Academy, works to inform high school teachers and college professors in West Virginia about the Journey Up Coal River website to see if they are...
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Volunteer
Nick received his B.S. from Salem International University in 2005 and participated in the summer trip to Ecuador. He currently volunteers to support our sustainability classes and educational partnership with Morgantown Learning Academy, where he...
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Technical director
Jeff Bosley is the technical director for our second MTR benefit CD, Still Moving Mountains: The Journey Home. Jeff and Jen worked closely together since 2002 to produce the first Moving Mountains CD and have collaborated on community concerts as...
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Community & Educational Outreach
Project Staff
Laura Steepleton helps to coordinate both community and educational outreach. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies from Florida Gulf Coast University, where she focused on environmental education. A committed educator, Laura...
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Current Interns
Scholar-Activist Alliance volunteer
Project Volunteer
Cathy is helping to develop Aurora Lights' Scholar-Activist Alliance, which seeks to engage students in research that is relevant and timely for community organizations working in the Appalachian coalfields. As part of this effort, she is...
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