Contrary to what you may have heard, Anne Woiwode is no tree hugger. As the state director of the Sierra Club, Michigan chapter, Woiwode has been subjected to almost every granola-crunching, hemp-wearing cliché in the book, and even she was dubious of the organization’s hippie-dippie reputation in the beginning.

“I was a little skeptical [about joining] at first, because I thought of the Sierra Club as tree huggers, but I learned that it really was a very active way for people to participate in implementing policy,” Woiwode says. “I really didn’t get focused on environmental issues until after being an activist, and I’ve always cared about protections for the outdoors, but it wasn’t really until I began to understand the importance of how a group like Sierra Club does its work that I got interested in these kinds of issues.”

Growing up near West Chester, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia, Woiwode developed a thirst for political activism early on, thanks to a politically active family that encouraged an awareness of community involvement. Her mother, inspired by a volunteer stint with the Planned Parenthood chapter in Wilmington, Delaware, founded Chester County’s own chapter, and her father served as the local township supervisor for seven years.

After graduating from college with a degree in politics – that’s “politics,” not “political science” – Woiwode sought out a position with the then-fledgling advocacy group ACORN, and spent a year working as the only organizer in South Dakota’s fourth largest city: a tiny town of only 14,000 people. It was an experience that shaped her outlook on activism, and gave her many of the essential community organizing skills that would come into play in her work with the Sierra Club.

“I was doing canvassing, organizing, policy research, all the media stuff. It was intensive, sort of trial-by-fire. It didn’t last a terribly long time, but I learned a great deal, and actually held on to the mimeographed organizing manual that ACORN had, so that sort of set me off to a lifetime direction. I think I’d grown up and gone to school thinking about theory, and thinking about the sort of bigger pictures, and really learned about the engagement, participation that getting out there involved as a result of getting into direct organizing after that.”

In 1980, Woiwode’s husband – a Detroit native – took a position back in Michigan, and the family packed up with their newborn son and set forth to make a new home in the Wolverine State. To combat a growing restlessness, she began volunteering with the local branch of the Sierra Club, and, 28 years later, now holds the reins as the state director of the Michigan chapter.

It’s been a long, uphill battle, filled with smokestacks, landfills, and the bad guys who profit from them, but under Woiwode’s determined leadership and watchful gaze, the Sierra Club has prospered tremendously. (Tree-mendously?) Snarling in the face of some of the most intimidating opponents out there – chemical giants, industrial polluters, and corrupt politicians spring to mind – Woiwode, time and time again, has proved herself a formidable force to be reckoned with. With her at the helm of the Sierra Club, the organization has been at the forefront of countless battles to keep smog out of Michigan’s skies and to protect the Great Lakes from dangerous pollution and the effects of global warming. One prominent success that stands out for Woiwode is the passage of a bill that defined parts of Michigan’s vast National Forests as wilderness – a bill that was signed into law by Ronald Reagan and met with approval in spite of a definite lack of initial, Congressional support.

Currently, the Sierra Club is gearing up to meet with one of its greatest challenges yet: global warming, with Michigan right at the center. The threat of eight dirty coal plants being built large at exactly the time when other states are creating jobs by moving in the direction of 21st century energy, but if anybody is up to the task of taking the bad guys down, it’s Woiwode. At least one legal challenge has already been already brought up by the organization against a plant proposed in Holland, and Woiwode, coupled with a coalition of environmental groups called Clean Energy Now, has maintained a persistent call on Governor Granholm to put the brakes on more outdated coal technology in Michigan, and instead move our state forward into the future of clean energy and the good-paying jobs that go with it. Success was granted when, during Granholm's 2009 State of the State address, the governor announced that seven of Michigan's eight coal plant proposals would be forced to go back to the drawing board and consider clean energy first.

All this is a continuation on an issue that, as Woiwode puts it, never really receives the luxury of being put on the backburner. “As we move forward in an increasingly crowded world with global warming and other issues predominating, our ability to survive will be dependent on our ability to live within the confines of the world as it exists, and we cannot pretend that we are disconnected from it,” Woiwode says. “An awful lot of the environmental issues connect directly with our ability to be human, and then they connect as well to this whole range of issues; not just our ability to survive, but also issues of equity.”

Mere tree hugger? Definitely not. Smartest kid in the class? Without a doubt.