Dave Rosenfeld
Executive Director

Dave is OSPIRG’s Executive Director.  Prior to joining OSPIRG,  Dave worked as the Student PIRGs’ National Program Director, working with the students and staff of the student PIRG chapters around the country to develop and execute effective, cutting-edge, student-led social change campaigns around a variety of public interest issues.  

Among others, Dave led the PIRG New Voters Project, which has helped over 700,000 young voters register to vote since 2004; directed Powershift 2007, then the largest national student global warming conference in the U.S.; and launched a five -year campaign to reform college textbook market that have been the basis of dozens of state and federal legislative efforts to tackle the problem, as well as over 500 news stories including: the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report and the Los Angeles Times.  

From 1999 to 2004, he served as California PIRG’s statewide Organizing Director, supervising staff and campaigns at the organization’s seven campus chapters, helping California students register tens of thousands of students to vote and pass groundbreaking statewide legislation to expand California’s investment in clean, renewable energy. 

Mr. Rosenfeld began his career with the PIRGs in 1991 as a student leader with the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group.  Dave is a proud native of New Jersey and equally proud product of public schools, including Rutgers University, where he graduated in 1995.  He currently lives in Southeast Portland with his wife, Merriah Fairchild and his daughter, Sarai Rose.

Gary Kalman
Federal Office Director

Gary supervises all of the activities of OSPIRG's Washington, DC office, which OSPIRG shares with the other PIRGs around the country in order to allow us to promote solutions at the federal level.  Prior to his current position, Gary led the advocacy and research for OSPIRG’s Federal Democracy Program where he specialized in campaign finance, government accountability and election reform. During that time, he was a leading voice in fighting rollbacks to the nation’s campaign finance standards and promoting reform of the Congressional ethics and lobbying standards. Mr. Kalman is the author of several reports on money and politics and has testified before Congress, presented at national conferences and has been quoted in and appeared on national and local media including The Washington Post, USA Today, Fox News and MSNBC.
 
Prior to joining U.S. PIRG, Mr. Kalman worked with a team of producers to develop the nationally syndicated NPR program, Justice Talking. In a partnership with the New York Times, NPR and the University of Pennsylvania, he led the development and design of Justice Learning, an award-winning Internet-based civics program recognized at the 2006 Webby Awards.  He is a co-editor of The U.S. Constitution: What is Says, What it Means (Oxford University Press). A graduate of Clark University, Mr. Kalman has also served as Deputy Director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, a political campaign consultant and as an instructor at LaSalle University where he lectured on nonprofit advocacy and development.

Laura Etherton
Health Policy Advocate

Laura brings 15 years of public interest advocacy experience, having led OSPIRG’s efforts to reduce prescription drug costs through expansion of a purchasing pool, the Oregon Prescription Drug Program. She also led OSPIRG’s efforts to enact payday loan consumer protections at the local and state levels, and authored the 2006 study Predatory Lending in Lane County. Laura joined OSPIRG staff in 1995 as campus organizer, and served as Administrative Director beginning in 1996. As Field Director from 2001-2005, Laura led the organization’s efforts to stop the rollbacks of the nation’s landmark environmental standards, including fighting proposals to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and defending the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to protect nearly 2 million acres of national forests in Oregon.

In the past five years, Laura has emerged as one of the state’s leading health reform advocates. She has authored and contributed to a number of widely read reports on health care costs, generated statewide media attention, and played a leading role in the development and passage of Oregon’s homegrown health reform last June. Laura serves on numerous Oregon committees and workgroups regarding implementation of health care reform. She was vice-chair of the Exchange Workgroup of the Oregon Health Fund Board Finance Committee, and currently co-chairs the Oregon Office of Health Policy and Research Workgroup around Administrative Simplification. Laura received her B.A. from Macalester College.

Jon Bartholomew
Advocate

Jon Bartholomew works for OSPIRG as an Advocate on budget transparency, consumer protection, tax policy, corporate accountability and democracy issues. Previously he was the Associate Director of Media and Democracy for Common Cause based in Portland, Maine. In that role he directed national and state chapter activity for Common Cause on media reform issues. He served on the boards of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections and the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition.

Prior to this, he was the Communications Director for the Maine Citizen Leadership Fund and the Dirigo Alliance in Maine. He also worked for three years for Citizen Action of New York leading their Clean Money/Clean Elections campaign and staffing the Coalition for After-School Funding. While living in Washington State, he was a field organizer for Planned Parenthood of Western Washington for three years, and earned his Masters of Public Administration from the University of Washington. He has been involved in many political campaigns through the years, both for candidates and on ballot measures.

Jenn Lavelle
Field Organizer

In her first year with OSPIRG, Jenn recruited over 300 small business owners across Oregon in support of health care reform, traveling across the state and through downtown business districts from Lincoln City and Newport to Oregon City and Salem, speaking with small business owners and local leaders about their health care struggles. 

Jenn has also worked closely with Eugene leaders like Mayor Piercy and Representative Nathanson to generate media coverage of high speed rail funding.  Jenn received her B.A. from Muhlenberg College.

Ed Mierzwinski
Federal Consumer Program Director

Ed Mierzwinski has been a consumer advocate in OSPIRG’s Washington, D.C.-based federal since 1989. He often testifies before both Congress and state legislatures and has authored or co-authored numerous major reports on a wide range of consumer issues including cable television rates, telecommunications reform, banking, financial services and identity theft and product safety issues including toy and playground safety. He often speaks before conferences and associations, especially against the growing threat of federal preemption of stronger state consumer and health and safety laws. He comments on these and a variety of other important consumer issues in his blog: www.uspirg.org/html/consumer

Mr. Mierzwinski is often quoted in the national press, has been a guest on numerous shows including NBC Today, ABC Good Morning America, ABC Nightline, CNN Crossfire and NPR Talk of the Nation, and has been profiled in the New York Times.

He is a 2003 recipient of Privacy International’s “Brandeis Award” for privacy protection efforts and a 2006 recipient of the Consumer Federation of America’s “Esther Peterson Consumer Service Award.”

He is a founding member of the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue and represents OSPIRG on the TACD Steering Committee. He edited the 1993 edition of AARP's "Your Credit," a guidebook focused on the credit needs of older women. From 1993-95, he served on the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council. He is a past member of the boards of two large consumer-owned cooperative businesses, Northeast Co-ops, a food wholesaler, and the University of Connecticut Bookstore Co-op. From 1981 through 1988, he was Executive Director of Connecticut PIRG, where he helped pass the nation’s first new car lemon law. Mr. Mierzwinski is a graduate of the University of Connecticut (BA, MS).

John Krieger
Federal Transit Advocate

John Krieger is a staff attorney advocating for responsible and transparent federal budget policies that prioritize the public interest. Based in Washington, D.C., Mr. Krieger works with policy makers to make the case for eliminating waste and fraud in the government contracting process and to reform the federal approach to transportation funding.

Mr. Krieger has testified as an expert witness before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. He has organized and spoken at numerous press conferences and legislative briefings with members of Congress, including the Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Mayor of Washington, DC.  He has been quoted by the New York Times, Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, CNN and National Public Radio. He is also a featured contributor to the National Journal's expert blog on federal transportation policy.

Prior to joining OSPIRG, Mr. Krieger received a Master's in International Law from American University's Washington College of Law, where he specialized in comparative constitutional law and international protection of human rights. Mr. Krieger earned his law degree from the University of Richmond while serving as an associate editor of the Journal of Law and Public Interest and working as a counselor at the Richmond Children's Law Center focusing on alternative adjudication for non-violent juvenile drug offenders.

Mr. Krieger graduated with honors from Flagler College in 2002 with a degree in public relations. While attending Flagler, he served for two years as president of the Student Government Association and teamed with a local advocacy group to form Project Greater Good, a volunteer student-building project that provided transitional housing for the homeless.

Lisa Gilbert
Federal Democracy Advocate

Lisa Gilbert works in Washington, D.C., as an advocate for government transparency and integrity, fighting against big money politics, and working to make elections more fair and accessible to all. She develops policy, promotes research to policymakers and the public and writes on an agenda of fair and honest government and participatory democracy.

Prior to joining OSPIRG, Ms. Gilbert worked with the Fund for the Public Interest. She spent two years as a campaign director running large citizen outreach campaigns in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Wash., Chicago, Ill., and New York, N.Y., to pass legislation on social justice and environmental issue campaigns for organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, Sierra Club and Environment Washington. She then worked for three years as the national trainer for the Fund, where she worked to improve fundraising metrics, increase campaign product, and test new models of running grassroots outreach campaigns.  Ms. Gilbert received a B.A. from Colgate University, (Philosophy with Honors), in 2003.

Nicole Allen
Affordable Textbooks Advocate

Nicole spearheads all of the research, partnership development, public education and outreach, and advocacy associated with this project.  In this capacity, she has accomplished a great deal.  She led OSPIRG’s effort to promote policies that require textbook publishers to disclose the price of textbooks to faculty, consulting with policymakers in Oregon and in Congress, and is credited with Congress’ passage of a national textbooks law.  She worked with faculty, OSPIRG and other Student PIRG volunteers to organize over 2000 professors from 400 colleges to commit to ordering free, Open Textbooks rather than expensive commercial textbooks.  She is the author of several reports including, Course Correction, that exposes “e-books” as a major consumer rip-off.  

Nicole’s work has been cited in the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and other major news outlets.  Prior to assuming this role, Ms. Allen was WASHPIRG’s Campus Organizer at the University of Washington-Seattle, during which time she built and led a statewide coalition of student and faculty leaders to pass a new law requiring publishers to disclose all of their prices and products to faculty immediately upon contact with the professor.  Ms. Allen graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a degree in Philosophy.  

Rich Williams
Federal Higher Education Advocate

Rich works on behalf of OSPIRG and the Student PIRG organizations around the country to promote solutions to the rising cost of a college education. He conducts research, promotes solutions to the media, helps students develop effective campus campaigns, and advises officials from the White House, Congress and the Department of Education on education policy.  Rich’s expertise is in federal higher education policy including student aid, grants, loans and federal aid policy.

A 2008 graduate of Northern Arizona University, he was in student government for four years and spearheaded a project on campus working with faculty to implement strategies to lower textbook costs. As a Board Member of the Arizona Students’ Association, the statewide student representing body, he worked directly with members of the Arizona Board of Regents to promote the public college system in the Arizona state legislature. Rich worked with many Arizona legislators on programs that effect students.