I wanted to marry my interests in law and political advocacy

Matt Casale
Director, Environment Campaigns

After law school, I was really interested in environmental law and public health. I wanted to find a way to marry my interest in the law with my political interest in advocacy. PIRG ended up being the perfect place to make that happen. I work with our state office staff to implement our national campaigns in their states. For example, we’re working to make every American school bus electric by 2030 with our Electric Buses, Healthy Kids campaign. 

In the past year, we have already helped get electric school bus pilot programs running in Massachusetts, Minnesota and California. And recently, the mayors of Los Angeles and Seattle, along with 10 other mayors from around the world, committed to purchasing only all-electric transit buses. In LA alone this will lead to the replacement of more than 2,000 dirty diesel buses by 2025. 

Today, there are a lot of people out there telling you not to have hope, but if we look at how far we’ve come and the technology that we have now, it really does give me hope that this is possible. If we get out there and if we do what needs to be done, we can make a difference.