Dr. Angelo A. Williams
The Observer
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in The OBSERVER’s series examining the departures of Black leaders from the Sierra Club and the Sierra Club Foundation. The first installment documented a pattern of exits from board and staff roles between 2023 and 2025. The second featured an interview with Aaron Mair, the Sierra Club’s first Black president, who described the departures as part of a deeper struggle over governance and power. This installment examines a lawsuit filed Jan. 29, 2026, in Alameda County Superior Court by former Sierra Club Foundation director Pedro Henriques da Silva, whose allegations place that pattern before a court for the first time. READ MORE
A former Sierra Club Foundation executive has sued the Oakland-based nonprofit and two top officials, alleging that one of the country’s most prominent environmental organizations preached racial justice publicly while practicing something very different internally.
In a complaint filed in Alameda County, former director Pedro Henriques da Silva names the Sierra Club Foundation, Executive Director Dan Chu, Chief Legal Officer Katherine Lewis and several unnamed defendants, asserting 13 causes of action that include discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, invasion of privacy, defamation and negligent hiring, supervision and retention, while also demanding a jury trial.
The OBSERVER reached out to the Sierra Club and Sierra Club Foundation for comment, but the organization had not responded by publication time.
Da Silva, 29, was hired in May 2023 to lead “Shifting Trillions,” a climate-finance initiative designed to move major institutions away from fossil-fuel investments and toward climate solutions.
According to the complaint, he took a 40 percent pay cut, stepped down from the foundation’s board and accepted the role after being promised a sizable team and strong institutional backing. He alleges that support never arrived. Instead, he says he largely built the initiative alone and, by 2024, had helped drive changes affecting more than $7.2 trillion in assets under management and advisement — far beyond the program’s original target.
The complaint also identifies Henry Holmes, a former director of compliance at the foundation, as part of the same pattern. Holmes, described in the filing as a “highly capable professional,” is alleged to have been belittled by Chu in internal meetings and pressured toward retirement despite strong performance. After Holmes left, da Silva became the only Black employee in a public-facing role at the foundation — a fact the complaint frames not as coincidence but as the endpoint of a deliberate institutional pattern.
The lawsuit argues that the conflict began when da Silva started challenging what he saw as racial inequities inside the foundation. He alleges that he raised concerns about the absence of Black women on the board, objected when the Fearless Fund litigation was invoked to justify backing away from Black-led managers, and criticized the decision to pass over a more qualified Black woman for chief legal officer in favor of a White candidate.
The complaint also alleges that during a May 2024 trip to Monterey, Chu told da Silva he was helping “drum up harassment complaints” against then-Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous to try to get him removed. The Associated Press separately reported that Jealous, the organization’s first Black leader, later was removed and has described his ouster as racial retaliation.
At the center of the suit is the investigation that led to da Silva’s firing. According to both the complaint and the AP, he was locked out of work systems in late January 2025, placed on leave and accused of misconduct involving everyday workplace interactions. Those interactions, as described in the AP report, included recommending an Octavia Butler novel, sharing music by Etta James and Outkast, sending after-hours messages and taking a work walk through a park with a subordinate. Da Silva alleges that the process was retaliatory from the outset and controlled by officials he previously had criticized on racial-equity grounds.
The complaint further alleges that the outside investigator concluded da Silva had not engaged in unlawful harassment or discrimination, but that the foundation then shifted to a vague “respect and sensitivity” standard to justify termination anyway. Da Silva also claims that after he refused to sign a nondisclosure and release agreement, the reasons given for his firing changed depending on the audience. In one of the suit’s most serious allegations, former board chair Robin Mann is accused of later telling former board members by email that da Silva had been terminated “for cause” after an independent investigation, which he says falsely damaged his professional reputation.
The Sierra Club Foundation disputes the allegations. In a statement to the AP, a spokesperson said the decision to terminate da Silva was made carefully, that his claims were not the reason for his firing, and that the organization considers the allegations meritless and intends to fight them in court. That point matters. The complaint is a plaintiff’s version of events, not a judicial finding, and the foundation will have the opportunity to respond in court.
Still, the case lands in a wider moment of reckoning for environmental and philanthropic institutions. The AP reported that after George Floyd’s murder, the Sierra Club increased its public emphasis on environmental justice, apologized for founder John Muir’s racist views and pledged more diverse hiring. The lawsuit now tests whether such commitments were matched internally. It also arrives as nonprofit leaders warn that backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts may make Black leadership even more precarious across the sector.
For California’s environmental movement, the implications are larger than one employment case. Da Silva’s complaint argues that progressive institutions can become fluent in the language of justice while remaining unwilling to confront what happens inside their own walls. Whether he can prove that in court remains to be seen. What is already on the record — in court filings, board election tallies, termination letters and the accounts of the men who lived it — is that the Sierra Club’s struggle over who holds power is also a struggle over whose communities get protected, whose water gets cleaned and whose neighborhoods stop being treated as sacrifice zones.
This article was reprinted with permission from The Observer.