Local Hero: Sigrid Wright

Originally published in Blue Dot Living, July 2023

A champion for community-based climate action shares a series of happy moments at the Community Environmental Council.

In 1995 Sigrid Wright was living in Washington, D.C., doing nonprofit environmental work, when she visited Santa Barbara on a scouting mission for a new place to live. She showed up at the Community Environmental Council (CEC). “It was the one and only environmental organization that I knew existed in Santa Barbara,” she says.

CEC is also one of the oldest, founded in 1970 in response to the environmental disaster brought on by the oil derrick blowout that profoundly damaged the ecosystem of the Central Coast and gave birth to the environmental movement.

Wright recalls that first visit to CEC as cosmic. “I asked if I could meet with the communications director, because that was my field. He was nice enough to come downstairs and meet me without an appointment. He looked at my resume, and he looked at me, and he said, ‘I’m very impressed. I just got permission an hour ago to hire an assistant. So, when can you start?’”

Wright has worked at CEC for the past twenty-eight years, the last eight as CEO/Executive Director, and she is widely acknowledged for her communication skills, strategic leadership, and long-term vision for solutions to the climate crisis. CEC was recognized as a 2020 California Non-profit of the Year and a City of Santa Barbara Climate Hero. In 2022, Wright herself was awarded Congressional Women of the Year, with a presentation by Assemblyman Salud Carbajal during Earth Day — a renowned event, also inspired by the oil spill — which flowered under Wright’s ten years of management.

To read this feature in its entirety, visit Blue Dot Living Santa Barbara.