And the 2023 Sentinel Award Winners Are…

Gillian Graber
​Harrison City, Pennsylvania

Gillian (she/her) is the executive director and co-founder of Protect Penn-Trafford (Protect PT), a grassroots community-based nonprofit established in 2014 to protect residents of Pennsylvania’s Westmoreland and Allegheny counties from the impacts of fossil fuel activity. As a mother of two, Gillian is passionate about keeping children safe from the impacts of fracking.

Debra Ramirez​
Lake Charles, Louisiana

Debra (she/her) is an activist and founding member of Mossville Environmental Action Now. Her environmental activism began in the 1980s after Condea Vista (SASOL) announced that ethylene dichloride (EDC), a suspected human carcinogen used in the production of PVC, leaked into the groundwater beneath the neighboring Mossville community.

Sarah Martik​
Canonsburg, Pennsylvania

Sarah (she/her) is the executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice (CCJ), where she began working as a community organizer in 2017. Sarah’s work has spanned a variety of issues and geographies, from organizing in her hometown on a zoning ordinance fight, to helping pull together the regional People Over Petro Coalition, and advocating for a strong, legally-binding global plastics treaty with Break Free From Plastic. Sarah is motivated to stay in this work for her nieces and nephews, and her fur-baby, Lucy.

Maury Johnson​
Greenville, West Virginia

Maury (he/him) is a member of the Board of Directors of Preserve Monroe (WV) and WV Co-Chair of the Protect Our Water & Heritage Rights (POWHR) Coalition. Maury, a southern West Virginia landowner whose organic farm has been impacted by the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), has been fighting the MVP and other harmful projects across West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina for over eight years.

anaïs peterson​
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

anaïs (no pronouns) is a petrochemicals campaigner with Earthworks. anaïs’s work at Earthworks focuses on delaying and defeating petrochemical and crude oil export facilities proposed for Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast and the proposed petrochemical buildout in the Ohio River Valley where anaïs has lived for the past eight years.