Biography
Jane Fleming Kleeb is an experienced grassroots organizer, manager, political strategist, and nonprofit entrepreneur. In 2010, she founded Bold Nebraska, which later became the Bold Alliance, a network of diverse coalitions in rural states of America working to protect the environment.
As Executive Director of the Young Democrats of America from 2004 to 2007, Jane implemented the first-ever national youth coordinated campaign to mobilize the youth vote and worked with an alliance of diverse groups ranging from Punk Voters to Stonewall Democrats.
As Nebraska State Director of the SEIU Change That Works Project in 2008–2010, she brought together leaders from advocacy and faith groups, doctors, farmers, ranchers, and small businesses to secure a key vote for passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Since 2017, Jane has served in a volunteer capacity as Chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. She is the author of Harvest the Vote: How Democrats Can Win Again in Rural America, published in 2020. She has a B.A. in religious studies from Stetson University and an M.A. in international training and education from American University.
Jane gained recognition for being a key figure in the successful fight to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. She said she had not set out to take on the oil industry until she learned of an imminent Keystone XL pipeline hearing in Nebraska that had farmers and ranchers worried about potential threats to their land and water.
Jane listened, amplified their voices, and persuaded them to join forces with Native American tribes and environmental activists to block the project. They called themselves the “Cowboy Indian Alliance.” Jane organized high-profile actions, like placing 12 tipis on the National Mall; building a clean energy-powered barn on the proposed pipeline route; and hosting Nebraska’s largest advocacy concert, Harvest the Hope, in a corn field with Willie Nelson and Neil Young.
For rural people, Jane explained, most everything is tied to the land: livelihoods, family histories, hopes, and aspirations. They will fight to protect it, and increasingly, they see wind and solar power as threats. She wants them to take ownership and thrive on it instead.
Breakthrough program
Jane Fleming Kleeb was selected for the Climate Breakthrough Award program in 2023.
Rural America has the land needed to build wind and solar projects that can begin to combat the climate crisis and bring energy freedom to our country. The price is right, the technology is ripe, federal incentives are in place, and some of these projects are going forward. However, an obstacle has arisen: substantial community opposition to wind and solar has resulted in the effective “zoning out” of these projects by county commissions. The opposition is based partly on disinformation, partisan political positions, cultural suspicions, resentments, and dislike for aesthetic changes to the landscape.
But more critically, many in rural America think wind and solar are yet another extractive corporation that leaves little benefits to their communities. They think wind and solar projects are going to be one more big corporation coming into their town to take land and not involve them in the decisions or the direct benefits of the project.
A demonstrated organizer, Jane wants to take on this challenge by growing local support and defusing opposition through creating a brand new economic model (i.e. a new combination of community benefit agreements and dividends) for large-scale projects that bring authentic benefits to a wide public in rural areas.
The initiative will be mobilized under the Bold Education Fund, which she leads.
“We want to center the people who are most impacted, putting more control in their hands and ensuring that they are part of the wealth creation.”
