Rebecca Martin has more than 20 years of experience building effective campaigns and projects through coalition-building and collaborative strategies with targeted communications.

A native of Maine, Rebecca settled in the Hudson Valley with her family in 2003. As a skilled organizer, she launched KingstonCitizens.org with her neighbors to better understand the inner workings of local government. Since then, Martin has mounted hundreds of different initiatives and projects, including leading a regional coalition of partners to fight Niagara Bottling Company’s attempt to purchase a significant share of the City of Kingston’s municipal water supply. She assembled a team of unique partners, strategic planners, and community organizers to educate and engage the public, forcing the company to withdraw its proposal after five months of public scrutiny. Rebecca followed that success by leading a Water Powers Referendum campaign to amend Kingston’s City Charter. The amendment passed by a landslide and it continues to give the public a layer of protection for how its water is sold outside of Kingston city limits.

Rebecca served as Executive Director of the Kingston Land Trust. Under her leadership, the urban land trust was touted as a “National Model” by the Land Trust Alliance for the organization’s work to develop programming that brought community members closer to the City’s open spaces.These programs include the non-profit group’s Urban Agriculture initiatives, Kingston’s Rail Trail Committee and the Kingston Greenline, and protection of African-American history and burial grounds in the City of Kingston.

As Campaign Manager and Director of Community Partnerships for Hudson Riverkeeper, New York State’s Clean Water Advocate, Rebecca built a geographic grassroots organizing platform, co-created the youth-led Water Justice Lab and helped to establish the Hudson 7, the first drinking water Intermunicipal council on the Hudson River. This council was formed by seven municipalities in Ulster and Dutchess Counties to protect the Hudson River as a drinking water source for more than 100,000 people.