Staff

Linda Sheehan, Executive Director

Ms. Sheehan brings 20 years of environmental law and policy experience to her work as Executive Director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance.  Over the past 15 years, Ms. Sheehan has focused on protecting and enhancing the health of California’s waterways and its world-renowned coast and ocean, implementing programs to ensure clean coastal waters with healthy flows and to safeguard marine ecosystems.  She has achieved notable success in protecting the health of coastal waters by advancing legislation and policies to reduce polluted runoff, curtail sewage spills, increase coastal water quality monitoring, heighten enforcement of water laws, and make state water data readily available to all.  For her efforts in “fight[ing] pollution of the Pacific and the streams and rivers that flow into it,” Ms. Sheehan was recognized as a 2009 “California Coastal Hero” by Sunset magazine and the California Coastal Commission.  Ms. Sheehan holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; an M.P.P. from the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, where she was a Berkeley Policy Fellow; and a J.D. from the University  of California's Boalt Hall School of Law.

Sara Aminzadeh, Programs Manager

Sara Aminzadeh oversees various programs to improve the health of the state's coastal and marine ecosystems, including CCKA's evolving climate change adaptation initiative.  Sara comes to CCKA with a wide range of relevant experience in field work, legislative advocacy, communications and media relations, and legal research and analysis.  She gained an appreciation for thriving ecosystems in Southern California, logging hours at the Santa Barbara Aquarium's touch tanks, tracking endangered foxes on Santa Cruz Island, and removing non-native species from Goleta Slough.  Sara also brings a robust body of climate change knowledge and experience to CCKA, having developed climate change coursework for UCSB's Institute for Computational Earth Studies and performed legal analysis for the Center for International Environmental Law.  Her student note, "A Moral Imperative: The Human Rights Impacts of Climate Change," was published by the Hastings International and Comparative Law Review and selected as a top student paper by the law school faculty.  Sara holds a B.A. in environmental studies and political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Tom Lyons, Program Coordinator and Cartographic Analyst

Tom Lyons works on various initiatives supporting the sound management of marine and freshwater ecosystems in California. He promotes public access to news and transparency of information on water management, using Geographic Information Systems to present them in a way that all Californians can understand. Tom also presents workshops for CCKA that inform citizens, fishermen and women, and public interest groups on how to get involved in California’s process for cleaning up severely polluted waterways. Tom has several years of experience researching alternative fisheries management strategies in the US and in Africa. He has worked with the West African Marine Ecoregion of the World Wildlife Fund to develop management plans for a network of Marine Protected Areas for artisanal fisheries in Senegal. His research on introducing co-management strategies to the management of marine recreational fisheries in Rhode Island has inspired managers and anglers alike to rethink the role of resource users in the management process. Tom holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Brown University.

Madeleine Perkins, Intern

Madeleine Perkins assists with updating of CCKA’s website to ensure that timely, accurate information is sent out to the public and decisionmakers.  She is a life-long student of and advocate for a healthy environment, especially clean water and healthy food, issues she writes about regularly for publication. Madeleine helped design, implement and report on a water quality sampling program in the famed Henry’s Fork watershed in Idaho, along with Marine Ventures and Henry’s Fork Foundation.  Madeleine interned in 2009 for the BioSITE program at the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose, where she mentored third through fifth grade students in hands-on water quality testing and understanding of the health of the nearby Guadalupe River.  Madeleine is currently a senior at Laurel Springs High School in Ojai, California, and hopes to study socio-environmental science and policy in college.