Who We Are

Our Collaboration: Ride and Drive Clean

Ride and Drive Clean is a collaboration of nonprofit organizations, agencies, cities, schools, and businesses with a goal of greatly reducing carbon emissions by advancing the adoption of electric vehicles.

Through scaled community engagement programs, we inspire people to replace internal combustion vehicles with electric vehicles, e-bikes, and other forms of zero-carbon transportation. Ride and Drive Clean launched in 2018.

Backbone Organization

Cool the Earth, a grassroots non-profit organization, is the architect of Ride and Drive Clean, a collaboration that launched in 2018.

As the backbone for the collaboration, Cool the Earth engages in deep partnerships with a variety of organizations including non-profits, towns and cities, sustainability offices, CCAs and municipal utilities, government agencies and local businesses.

Our Mission

Cool the Earth seeks to educate and engage individuals in fighting climate change by motivating them to take significant climate actions to reduce their personal carbon footprint. Collectively, these actions will have a meaningful impact on mitigating the climate crisis, which disproportionately affects the health and well-being of black, indigenous and people of color.

Board Bios

Cool the Earth is largely a volunteer organization and is fortunate to have an experienced, dedicated and deeply committed board of directors.

Lawrie Mott, Chair of the Board

Lawrie Mott, formerly an environmental health scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, currently works to stem the climate crisis. To address sustainable agriculture, educational equity, children’s environmental health, and independent media for social change, Lawrie has served on many government advisory committees and nonprofit boards, including, Envision Education, Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, Resource Media, and the U.S. EPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee. Lawrie wrote a final chapter for the new 2018 edition of Cadillac Desert. She received her BA from University of California Santa Cruz and her MS from Yale.

Mary Bryan, Board Secretary

Mary Matteson Bryan, P.E., is an independent consultant with over 25 years of experience working in the energy efficiency field. Mary’s experience ranges from energy audit and analysis of large municipal agencies, to utility energy efficiency program design, development and implementation, to emerging technology research and assessment. She has provided technical and program development consulting services to numerous local, state, and national energy efficiency programs, extending from local school districts to the Department of Energy. Mary graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering and earned a Master of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. She is a registered Professional Mechanical Engineer in the State of California.

Carleen Cullen, Member of the Board

Carleen Cullen, Founder and Executive Director of Cool the Earth and Drive Clean Bay Area, focuses on scaled behavior change programs to motivate carbon reduction. Cool the Earth, a school-to-home program has reached over 250,000 families. In 2018, Carleen founded Drive Clean Bay Area, a collaborative campaign to rapidly accelerate the switch to zero-emission vehicles. She is honored to have served as policy advisor for clean transportation to then Governor-elect Gavin Newsom. Prior to her climate work, she helped launch and grow an information technology startup, Ovid Technologies. She helped take the company public and later sell the business. Carleen is the recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Award for Public Service, a frequent speaker on Climate One, a graduate of Climate Reality and she has a certificate in Community-based Social Marketing. She holds a BA from Loyola Marymount University.

April Dean, Member of the Board

April Dean has supported Cool the Earth and its mission since its inception and has a long standing interest in energy efficiency and electric vehicles. A biomedical engineer by training (B.S. UCLA, M.S. UC Davis), April started and later sold her medical device automation company and went on to become vice president of research and development for the acquiring company. Since retiring from business, she has worked on increasing adoption of EV’s within the community, and is plotting a new venture in aquaponic food production.

Bitsa Freeman, Member of the Board

A 4th generation Marin native, Bitsa is a Green Certified and top producing Realtor of luxury homes in her community. Bitsa has been giving back to Marin for years. She was a Kentfield School Board Trustee, and currently serves as Vice President and Fire Safety Chair of Kent Woodlands Property Owners Association, board member of Kentfield Planning and Advisory Board and President of Business Executives Association of Marin. Bitsa was an early adopter and enthusiastic supporter of energy efficient, innovative and transformative building and lifestyle choices. Joining the board as well as dedicating 1% of the net proceeds of her real estate business to Cool The Earth was a conscious decision to support local efforts with individual actions that can fundamentally affect climate change. Bitsa feels this mission aligns perfectly with her motto to “Act Locally, Think Globally”.

Advisors

Jeff Cullen, Co-Founder & Vice President of Cool the Earth, has a business degree in Marketing and Management. Jeff went to work for Kraft-General Foods to learn about brand marketing and advertising for such brands as Maxwell House Coffee and Jell-O. Jeff moved on to Wall Street with JP Morgan to gain broader experience in business finance. Rounding out his career, Jeff became Vice-President at MediaMark Research Inc. (MRI), an advertising research company, where he focused on sales management and new media development. A graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, with a BS in Marketing and Management. Jeff also has over 10 years experience serving as a board member for Western Houston Equities.

Bruce Bell as a member of Cool the Earth Advisory Board provides his expertise as both a Lyft driver and as an expert on charging at multi-family housing. He has been a member or the Advisory Board since 2017. He is a retired systems development manager for Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo. Bruce is actively involved with Marin environmental education organizations such as the Environmental Forum of Marin and Resilient Neighborhoods.

Robert Frankus is a Salesforce Architect helping Drive Clean with their digital transformation to reach consumers more effectively about the benefits of electric vehicles. He has implemented the consumer database and integration with digital communication channels. Robert has over 20 years experience with analytics and implementing enterprise software to solve complex business problems working at various companies such as IBM, NICE and most recently Salesforce.