With more than three decades of experience, Dan has been at the forefront of designing and winning groundbreaking environmental policies and legislative campaigns. Over his career, he has crafted successful strategies, built broad coalitions, persuaded policymakers, raised millions of dollars, developed powerful messaging, and recruited, trained and managed hundreds of staff members.

In 2002, he conceived the annual Oceans Day event — which grew into the largest single-day Capitol gathering focused on ocean conservation, bringing together 250+ participants around California. In the same year, he helped design and pass the landmark Million Solar Roofs campaign (SB 1), working with the Schwarzenegger administration to both win and implement the law; the milestone of the millionth solar roof was celebrated in November 2019.

Dan also masterminded the strategy to ban single-use plastic bags in California: he supported the passage of SB 270 (Padilla) and won two pivotal ballot measures in 2016 (Yes on 67, No on 65) that prevented industry efforts to roll back the law.

He led the successful legislative campaign for SB 100, signed into law on September 10 2018 by Governor Jerry Brown, which sets a goal for California to generate 100% of its electricity from carbon-free resources by 2045.  Earlier in his career he also played key roles in California’s clean-energy milestones — the 20% clean energy goal in 2002, the 33% target in 2008, and the 50% target in 2015.

As co-founder of the OffshoreWindNow coalition (with Eddie Ahn and Jeff Hunerlach), Dan helped lead the campaign for AB 525 (Chiu) and worked closely with the California Energy Commission to set ambitious offshore wind goals; the coalition also played a key role in passing AB 1373 (Garcia) for centralized procurement of long lead-time clean energy resources under California law. 

In the toxics realm, he led campaigns to ban phthalates in children’s toys and bisphenol A in canned food. He helped design and drive the “Green Chemistry” initiative and organized the Healthy Schools program to track pesticide use in schools and protect vulnerable students.