Jamie Ptacek joined CETI in November 2023 as Communications Manager. Jamie graduated from Bowdoin College in 2017, where she studied Climate Science and received departmental honors for her thesis exploring deep-sea bamboo corals as climate, ocean chemistry, and ocean geometry archives. She published this study, in collaboration with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department, in Earth and Planetary Sciences Letters.

After publishing her paper, Jamie decided that she did not belong in the lab so she began working to bridge the gap between scientific evidence for climate change, its impacts on social and racial justice, and the societal and policy changes needed to address the urgency of these crises.

To this end, Jamie has spent the past decade working for several nonprofit organizations on campaigns to address issues at the intersection of climate change and social justice on the local, state, and national levels. She has worked as a campaign manager, organizer, and communications specialist with the Sunrise Movement, Citizen’s Climate Lobby, Futurewise, and Disability Rights Washington.

Jamie’s most recent organizing work led to the passage of 10 bills in the Washington state legislature that will address Washington’s response to climate change, housing affordability, environmental protection, transportation access, and racial equity.