Betsy López-Wagner

Betsy López-Wagner has worked alongside attorneys, lobbyists, and coalition partners to safeguard the health of communities, protect clean air and water, fight arctic drilling, and protect the ocean’s resources. She's co-devised strategies alongside grassroots activists to ensure their power is seen, heard, and felt from regional to national and international levels by developing a culture of storytelling that elevates authentic personal narratives to emotionally connect with audiences and inspire action.

Betsy's committed to supporting the growth of an inclusive conservation movement to strengthen state, national and international-level priorities to protect our environment, democracy, and above all, people—especially those on the frontlines of an increasingly warming planet, rising ocean, and climate and social injustices.

She is Principal at López-Wagner Strategies, an equitable communications agency comprised of a multilingual team of visionaries, strategists and climate justice advocates. Together, they work with mission-driven individuals, organizations, and companies to develop—and execute—equitable and inclusive strategies to enhance their communications abilities to strengthen collective impact for social good. She is also the strategic communications partner for ALRAS Digital, a digital strategies group.

Betsy’s expertise is in environmental, bilingual and equitable communications, media relations and campaigns, as well as inclusive grantmaking with a racial justice lens. She is a mentor, coach, trainer, storyteller and DEI practitioner.

In April 2021, she was appointed and confirmed to one of 15 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration seats on the Office of National Marine Sanctuary's (ONMS) Business Advisory Council. She is on the Board of Directors for The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and She is an advisory group member for Heartwired to Love the Ocean, a project of Wonder: Strategies for Good and Goodwin Simon Strategic Research. She is also actively involved in grassroots level organizing, community projects and supporting organizations working for social good. Her work is motivated by the community she was born and grew up in, a neighborhood outside of Chicago surrounded by industrial facilities.

During her tenure at David and Lucile Packard Foundation she led Ocean Communications on the most pressing issues in global ocean conservation. She advised and introduced opportunities to move over $2.5 million dollars to new grantees representing organizations led by people of color and women of color, and focused on ocean-climate journalism, and was one of three co-founders of the Foundation’s first affinity and employee resource groups. She served as Communications Director for LCV’s Chispa and was the first Bilingual Press Secretary (Spanish) at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm. Prior to her work in the nonprofit sector, Betsy worked for media outlets in Illinois, California and was an award-winning journalist and freelance writer. Nearly two decades ago, her work in Public Affairs began at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. She is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago and has a leadership certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University.

She and her husband, a stay-at-home parent, gardener, environmental education advocate, are the parents of a six-year-old lepidopterist and climate activist. Together they farm and their family hosts Amigos for Monarchs, an annual pollinator project led by their young child. It provides native milkweed seed kits to loved ones and perfect strangers across the nation every spring.