Who We Are

Co-Founder

Kendra Holton is a climate organizer, energy educator, and systems-minded nonprofit leader focused on practical, place-based decarbonization and community resilience.

As co-founder of DeCarbon DeKalb, Kendra leads work that helps neighbors understand energy systems, rising utility costs, and climate impacts as they show up locally and respond together in ways that are grounded and doable. Her work centers on public-facing climate education, community dialogue, and projects that translate abstract energy transitions into lived understanding and local action.

Kendra’s approach is rooted in a core belief: effective climate action doesn’t begin with fear or shame—it begins with clarity, trust, and a sense of agency. Rather than positioning climate change as a distant crisis, she focuses on what’s happening here: in homes, power bills, land use, and local institutions, and how communities can respond collectively with care and competence.

Her perspective is informed by her work in climate tech as Manager of Campaigns and Events for Voltus, a leading demand response provider. In that role, Kendra worked across all nine North American energy markets building a deep, practical understanding of how grid stress, peak demand, market rules, and electrification pressures actually function, and how those forces translate into costs, constraints, and opportunities for communities on the ground. This experience shapes her focus on energy literacy and local action: helping neighbors understand the systems behind their power bills and participate meaningfully in the energy transition, rather than being acted upon by it.

In parallel, Kendra is the c0-founder of Headwaters Community Farm & Academy, a nature-based K–8 microschool centered on food systems, outdoor learning, and whole-child education. Across both organizations, her leadership is guided by the same throughline: designing institutions that are humane, adaptive, and rooted in care for people and place.

Her work is informed by decades of training in somatic movement and human behavior, including direct study of the Williamson Physical Technique. This background shapes how she facilitates dialogue, leads, and holds complex, emotionally charged topics, bringing steadiness, accessibility, and relational depth to public climate work.

Kendra lives and works in northern Illinois, where she is committed to helping communities navigate climate change with honesty, creativity, and collective care.