Board of Directors

Alexandra Leumer

President

Alexandra Leumer is an environmental attorney and has served on the Board of Directors for the Environmental Law Foundation since 2011. She was the Director of Public Policy for the Western States at ChargePoint, where she led engagement on state, local, and federal policies to accelerate transportation electrification and increase access to EV charging. Prior to joining ChargePoint the Conservancy, Ms. Leumer was a climate policy analyst at The Nature Conservancy where she helped develop policy and projects focused on nature-based adaptation to climate change, with her main focus on the intersection of climate change and ecosystem conservation. Ms. Leumer holds a J.D. from Golden Gate University and a B.A. in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

James Wheaton

Secretary/Treasurer

James Wheaton is Legal Director and Secretary/Treasurer of the Board of the Environmental Law Foundation and Senior Counsel for the First Amendment Project. He teaches Journalism Law at the Graduate Schools of Journalism at both Stanford and UC Berkeley.

He has been honored for his work with awards by California Lawyer as Attorney of the Year, the Daily Journal as one of its Top 100 Lawyers in California, the Playboy Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists Northern California Chapter, and the Ecology Law Quarterly.

His political work includes writing and running or chairing campaigns for statewide initiatives in the last 25 years on topics such as insurance regulation, campaign finance and political reform, marijuana legalization, old growth forestry, consumer privacy, and litigation reform.

As a volunteer he is an advisor to the California State Bar’s Environment Section Executive Committee and chaired its Yosemite Environmental Institute. He is a trustee of River Network, and past-President of Friends of the River. He has served as a City of Oakland Public Ethics Commissioner, as Executive Director of California Common Cause, and as chair of the Society of Professional Journalists (NorCal) FOI Committee.

He is a graduate of Brown University and Berkeley Law School. He is a white water rafter and kayaker, trains whitewater guides, skippers a sailboat on San Francisco Bay, and canoes. He has recently retired from seven years of coaching Little League baseball, and still umpires. He has been noted for his work in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, California Lawyer, Playboy, Outside, and Rolling Stone magazines.

Maya Kuttan

Board Member

Maya Kuttan joined the ELF Board in 2021. Maya has over ten years of experience as an attorney and media specialist. Currently she serves in those roles for SciBac, a biotech startup working on solutions for antibiotic resistance and the National Education Foundation, a nonprofit using a systems approach coupled with adaptive online courses to solve the education divide. Maya has provided regulatory counseling, enforcement, litigation support, and rulemaking for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and municipalities, agencies, and nonprofits with Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP. She earned a J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law and a B.A. from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Maya has garnered awards for both her media and legal work. She is excited to serve on the ELF Board and support its environmental justice mission.