Sierra Club President
Elected National President of the Sierra Club at age 23, making Werbach the youngest president in the organization's history. During his tenure, he lowered the average member age from 47 to 37 and protected over 1.7 million acres of wilderness.
To be elected president of the Sierra Club at 23 was an extraordinary privilege and, in equal measure, a humbling education. David Brower, the legendary conservationist who was 60 years my senior and had led the club through some of its most consequential battles, ran the campaign on my behalf. That gesture of confidence from someone of Brower's stature remains one of the most meaningful things that has happened in my professional life.
The organization I was privileged to serve had roughly 600,000 members and a $44 million annual budget. It was, and remains, one of the most important environmental institutions in American history. But by the mid-1990s, the Sierra Club was also grappling with a demographic challenge. The average member was 47 years old. The movement's center of gravity was wilderness preservation, a cause of genuine importance, but one that was not connecting with younger Americans or the broader mainstream. Climate change was accelerating, and the organization's strategies were not yet calibrated to meet that scale of crisis.
The campaign for the presidency was built on a straightforward premise: that the Sierra Club could honor its heritage while evolving to engage a new generation. Some longtime members were understandably skeptical about entrusting the presidency to someone so young. The credibility came from the Sierra Student Coalition, which had grown to 30,000 members, and from the work on the California Desert Protection Act, where student organizers had played a decisive role.