Ethan’s current focus is on leveraging the largest one-time public investment in decarbonization in U.S. history, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), to reduce people’s energy costs, revitalize the public sector, and repair climate and communities. As a Florida Policy Institute policy fellow, he will analyze the impact of the IRA on Florida’s public sector and its economy and communities. Ethan also works with a network of organizing groups in the Gulf South called Organizing Resilience, which is using IRA resources to boost local economies, divest from fossil fuel industries, and develop climate-resilient communities. 

From 2013 to 2023, Ethan worked at the Ford Foundation, designing and leading a unique cross-departmental funding approach to combine unrestricted five-year funding with dedicated resources for multi-issue state policy change campaigns. This approach aligned several of the Foundation’s national priority areas around a shared approach in specific places. Ethan funded efforts focused on increasing social investment, restoring/expanding rights to immigrants, returning citizens, and low-income people, and piloting public options. Most of his work was concentrated in six states: New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Louisiana, Texas, and Florida. 

Before joining philanthropy, Ethan worked in Pennsylvania and Ohio on the 2008 and 2012 campaigns to elect President Obama. He also worked to unionize low-wage workers in Miami, Florida, as an organizer for the international trade union Unite Here, which represents food service, hotel, and gaming employees. He also worked at Project Renewal, Inc., a nonprofit social service provider, where he worked as a non-attorney civil legal advocate to protect public benefits for low-income New Yorkers. 

Ethan is originally from Wilkes-Barre, PA, and graduated from Westminster College with a Bachelor of Arts in international politics. He serves on the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund and Color of Change Political Action Committee Boards. He has published writing on the relationship between philanthropy and community organizing in The Journal of Community Psychology. He and his husband live in Gainesville, Florida, where they are new foster parents.