Mary Anne Hitt

Mary Anne Hitt is Senior Director of Climate Imperative, a foundation supporting work to cut emissions this decade at the scale needed to confront climate change. She oversees their US programs and helps lead the foundation. Hitt has over 25 years of experience building and leading effective campaigns and organizations. She was previously with the Sierra Club for 12 years, where she was the National Director of Campaigns and served for a decade as director of the Beyond Coal Campaign, recognized as one of the most successful environmental campaigns in history. She has also been the executive director of grassroots organizations including Appalachian Voices.

Hitt has made numerous national media appearances and was listed in 2015 as one of the POLITICO 50, POLITICO’s list of the top thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics. She is a contributor to the climate anthologies "All We Can Save" and "Not Too Late," and Patagonia’s book "Tools for Grassroots Activists." She is a Public Voices fellow of the OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

She received her B.A. from the University of Tennessee and her M.S. from the University of Montana. She grew up in the mountains of east Tennessee and now lives in West Virginia with her family.