Collin Rees is a senior campaigner with Oil Change International, a research and campaigning organization working to stop the fossil fuel industry and support communities fighting for a just transition. Prior to Oil Change, he helped build the student fossil fuel divestment movement at 350.org and trained youth with the Energy Action Coalition (predecessor to the Power Shift Network). Collin was a delegate and member of leadership in SustainUS for many years, attending the COP 19, COP 20, and COP 21 United Nations climate talks and helping co-found the World Bank Delegation program. He also co-founded and ran campaigns for Energy Justice Summer, a SustainUS program that brought together youth to fight fracking in rural Pennsylvania alongside longtime community members.
Outside of work, Collin spends much of his time organizing locally for racial, climate, and economic justice and empowering communities to tell their stories, take direct action, and grow their power. He has chased terrible politicians all over the country wearing funny outfits, spent his childhood on a farm in the Midwest, worked on climate policy in the Obama White House, and received a B.S. in Mechanical and Materials Sciences and Engineering with a minor in Astrophysics from Harvard University. He’s a recent transplant to Aucocisco Territory in so-called Portland, ME, where he enjoys long bike rides by the ocean and skiing adventures in the mountains.