Suggestions
Amy LaThanh
Deputy Chief of Staff, Rewiring America | #electrifyeverything ⚡⚡⚡
Amy Koch is a social media and communications strategist who believes that creating change requires prioritizing and advocating for people's needs. With a degree in Sociology from the University of San Francisco, she combines traditional marketing techniques with advocacy work to promote policies on important issues like immigration reform and criminal justice. Amy has worked as a Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Code for America, a Social Media Manager at FWD.us, a consultant at The Bold Italic, and is currently the Social Media Manager at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. She is a former office manager at FWD.us and a member of the Women in Leadership Spring Cohort at Coro Northern California.
Highlights
A couple weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency informed Rewiring America that our coalition, Power Forward Communities (together with Habitat for Humanity, United Way, Enterprise & LISC), would be receiving a $2 billion grant to help Americans electrify their household appliances as fast as the climate demands. With households contributing 42% of U.S. climate emissions, we're excited to make a huge dent in that number! Get ready for heat pumps! Induction stoves! Electric water heaters! All extremely more efficient than their old gas counterparts + healthier to boot.
We're installing our first heat pumps and heat pump water heaters in De Soto, Georgia, a town of about 116 households, of which about 80 homes have signed up for our program. After the initial excitement, I had to really sit with the grant news for a bit to process what it truly means for America.
- 🗳 This is democracy working. Every single one of you out there who voted helped make this monumental legislation come to fruition to help Americans live better, heathier lives, regardless of political party. Thank YOU!
2)👷♀️ This is society working. It's real people—friends, family, and neighbors reducing the friction, installing the appliances, and providing the materials—working to create a better and more resilient future for us and future generations. And we like to say we're creating civic joy as a side effect.
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🏛 This is government working. Government drove legislation (the Inflation Reduction Act) to bring about monumental funding toward the most pressing issue of our time. And it's trusting organizations across the United States who are already deep in the work and embedded in communities to act as stewards of these important funds.
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⚡️ This is civil servants working. The group of colleagues I work alongside, and their government counterparts, are doing the hard work day in and day out of helping to stand up infrastructure to electrify homes at scale, at the pace the climate demands. It's the most ambitious, don't-take-no-for-an-answer, just-figure-it-out, hard-working crew I've ever worked with in my entire career. And we're all in it because we care about our planet's future, our country's future, and our children's future.
I am excited for what being a steward of $2 billion means, but mostly I'm finally filled with hope; I set out to work at an organization that would play a meaningful role in addressing climate change in a practical and impactful way. And I've found that, along with incredible, hard-working colleagues, at Rewiring America.
And we're going to need a lot more help, y'all! Engineers! Community Managers! Logistics folks! Operations! Data! Policy! So if you've been wanting to make the switch to a climate-focused career and want to help create some civic joy along the way, let's just say we're about to hire up. 🌎⚡️
So excited that our team launched our personal electrification planner today! If you've ever thought about adding electric appliances to your home but didn't know where to start, you can now start with Rewiring America. We'll take you through the basics, walk you through what it takes to pre-wire your home for prep, the savings and incentives (and health improvements!) you'll have available to you, and maybe even introduce you to some electric appliances that you haven't heard of yet (hello heat pumps!). It's your one-stop-shop for electrifying your home. Check it out: https://lnkd.in/gcAHV7Sn
