Jim Kleissler learned about environmental issues first-hand as a youngster visiting his grandparents in New Jersey and watching sewage washing in on the shore.

Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette

Jim Kleissler Residence: Wilkinsburg In the news: Takes over next Monday as the executive director of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice Quote: "We [the Merton Center] help facilitate [the projects under its rooms] and the people working on them so they can get more results and more attention." Education: Completing bachelor's degree in liberal arts at Clarion University of Pittsburgh. Family: Wife, Rachel Martin

He became an active environmentalist several years later when he began engineering classes at Drexel University in Philadelphia and had several student engineering jobs that he found conflicted with his developing ethics and values.

"One job was with Martin Marietta -- it's now Lockheed Martin," Kleissler said. "At that time it was the world's largest nuclear weapons manufacturer. That's when I decided I wanted to go in a different direction and be an active citizen." The year was 1994, when he was in the fourth year of a five-year program.

He turned to working on numerous social justice issues, especially those dealing with the environment. Now, after working more than a decade -- most of it full time to preserve the Allegheny Forest through the Allegheny Defense Project -- he's once again going to serve a broader group of issues, as the new executive director of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice.

The Merton Center, located in Garfield, is a resource and organizing center for more than 30 activist projects ranging from AIDS in Africa to Book 'Em, which sends books to prisoners, to the Anti-War Committee, to greenlots, which helps residents of struggling communities reclaim and reuse open space.

"It's a very attractive job on many levels," said Kleissler, who officially starts the post next Monday. "One part is the opportunity to work on a lot of issues that matter to me outside of the forestry issue. The issues that the center works on appeal to me on a personal and moral level." He will continue to work with the Allegheny Defense Project on a volunteer basis.

Kleissler replaces Tim Vining, who is moving to the University of Pittsburgh to teach and complete doctoral studies in sociology and who served on the committee that hired his successor.

"We had close to 50 resumes and we interviewed six individuals," Vining said. "They were highly qualified applicants.

"We settled with Jim because he has experience. He is very young -- 33. But he has experience as an executive director of a membership-based nonprofit [the Allegheny Defense Project].

"He understands the connections of various social justice issues, which is important at the Merton Center, because we are a resource center for people who want to move into a large progressive movement.

"TMC needs a director who can take leadership in building a membership larger than the Merton Center. We think it's important, for example, that those against war and those supporting transit funding recognize the connection."

In his college days, the Canford, N.J., native championed antiwar protests and efforts to make Philadelphia more "bike-friendly" after his decision to be an active citizen. He co-founded the Allegheny Defense Project to help protect the land from further timbering and gas and oil drilling.

"That whole year [1994], I visited the forest one weekend every month until I came to fall in love with the forest," he said. "I had a weeklong backpacking trip and all that.

"I left Drexel later in 1994, right in the middle of that experience. Then I decided to resume school late in 1995."

He enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh's Bradford campus -- located in the Allegheny Forest -- in 1995. Then he transferred to Clarion University, also in the forest, the following year. His commitment to the Allegheny Defense Project grew and became a full-time job in 1999.

Kleissler's, moved to Pittsburgh came in January, a few months after his wife, Rachel Martin, took a job here organizing for the Sierra Club. "She did the weekend commute for a while, and you know how hard that is," he said. "I decided to move here. I handed over my position and started looking for something full time that was compatible [with his ethics]."

The Merton Center and Kleissler could be a perfect fit.