Sierra Club Snags Big Ten’s Top Lawyer After Leadership Shake-Up

Sierra Club has hired Erica McKinley as its chief legal officer after the environmental group moved to replace most of its senior management within the last year.

McKinley most recently served as the top in-house lawyer for the Big Ten collegiate athletic conference. The Big Ten hired McKinley last year from her role as general counsel for the University of Mississippi.

She takes the top lawyer for a 130-year-old nonprofit that has been a party to enviromental cases that have reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Sierra Club announced last August that its longtime executive director Michael Brune would step down at year’s end. Politico reported that Brune’s resignation after 11 years preceded a June 2021 report by an outside consulting firm that detailed claims of workplace discrimination and harassment.

The internal reckoning touched on the controversial past of the Sierra Club’s founder John Muir and also involved allegations about abusive senior staffers and volunteers related to race, sex, and gender, according to The Intercept.

McKinley didn’t respond to a request for comment about the role she assumed in April. Sierra Club spokesman Adam Bingman confirmed McKinley’s hire.

The New York Times reported earlier this year on the Sierra Club’s transition, one that has led to the appointment of an acting executive director with Ramón Cruz, the president of its board, assuming much of its leadership duties. The executive leadership page of the Sierra Club’s website remains blank.

In April, the Sierra Club suspended the leadership of its Colorado chapter for four years, citing a monthslong review by the national organization that described a “harmful” management culture.

The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Law is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.

In-House Changes

The Sierra Club parted ways last year with its former general counsel Philip Eager. Associate general counsel Juliette Hirt has served as acting legal chief for the organization since April 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile. She didn’t respond to a request for comment about McKinley’s hire.

The Sierra Club’s most recent federal tax filing for 2019 shows that it paid roughly $351,000 that year to Brune; nearly $196,000 to Eager; and more than $250,000 to the organization’s former legal director Patrick Gallagher, who retired in 2021 after leading its litigation team for two decades.

The Sierra Club is the latest high-profile, mission-focused organization to make changes to its legal leadership in the aftermath of internal scandal.

Mercy Corps, a humanitarian aid organization, announced last year its hire of a new general counsel following claims of sexual abuse levied against its late co-founder.

The Wounded Warrior Project brought back a former in-house lawyer as its legal chief in 2020 after receiving scrutiny over its spending habits.

And in 2019, the American Red Cross recruited a legal and ethics leader from Walmart Inc. after coming under fire in years prior for its accounting over donations.

Environmental Hires

Other environmental groups have also been adding legal help.

Greenpeace promoted in-house veteran Kristin Casper last year to be general counsel for its international coordinating arm.

The Environmental Defense Fund tapped C.M. Tokë Vandervoort, a former deputy general counsel at Under Armour Inc., last year to be the top lawyer for the group.

The Bezos Earth Fund, a philanthropic organization started in 2020 with a $10 billion donation by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, announced Feb. 25 its hire of general counsel Douglas Varley, a former partner and president of the law firm Caplin & Drysdale in Washington.

Earthjustice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit initially known as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund until adopting its current name in 1997, hired a new general counsel last month in Conchita Lozano-Batista.

Earthjustice, formed in 1971 by former volunteer lawyers with the Sierra Club who licensed the latter organization’s name, has remained a separate group that also frequently pursues its environmental goals in court.

Big Ten Turnover

The Big Ten announced March 28 its addition of McKinley’s successor in former University of Oklahoma System general counsel Anil Gollahalli. He marks the third legal chief hired within three years by the Big Ten, which parted ways in early 2021 with former general counsel Tshneka Tate.

The Big Ten is led by Kevin Warren, a former Greenberg Traurig partner who joined the suburban Chicago-based conference as its commissioner in 2020 after serving as a legal and business executive for the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings.

Warren received nearly $1.2 million in total compensation from the Big Ten, one of the so-called Power Five conferences in college sports, after being hired as of Jan. 1, 2020, according to the organization’s most recent tax filing for 2019-20.

James Delany, a fellow attorney who led the Big Ten from 1989 until his retirement in 2020, was paid more than $8.5 million that same fiscal year.

The Big Ten also paid nearly $258,000 during 2019-20 to Chad Hawley, another lawyer and longtime compliance and governance executive for the conference.

The Big Ten’s press release in March touting its hire of Gollahalli as legal chief also noted Hawley’s promotion to senior vice president of policy and compliance, a role in which he works with chief of staff and deputy general counsel Adam Neumann.

All three lawyers report to Warren. Public records show that Gollahalli, a former Morgan, Lewis & Bockius associate who has been the University of Oklahoma’s top lawyer since 2008, drew an annual salary of almost $317,000 as recently as 2018.