Jon Hinck

Jon Hinck (born January 9, 1954) is an American environmentalist, lawyer and politician.

After graduating from Bernards High School in 1972, he worked his way through the University of Pennsylvania as a taxicab driver, projectionist and theater usher.

He graduated with a dual major in English and History.

While an undergraduate, he co-founded a jazz club called the New Foxhole Café in West Philadelphia.

In 1976, Hinck spent six months teaching English language at the Iran-America Society in Isfahan, Iran.

He traveled in the Middle East from Turkey through Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India.

In 1977, Hinck moved to Seattle, Washington, where he worked in the local movie business, managing a landmark movie theater and buying and booking films.

He subsequently became involved with the Greenpeace movement, co-founded the national organization known as Greenpeace USA, and served as National Campaign Director.

In November 1978, Hinck took a job in Seattle working for a monthly newspaper published by the environmental organization Greenpeace, then based in Vancouver, B.C. The next year, Hinck was hired as the Media and Campaign Director for Greenpeace Seattle.

In late 1979, he represented that office at a meeting of the U.S.-based branches of Greenpeace and joined in the creation of the new national affiliate, Greenpeace USA.

In the years that followed, Hinck was instrumental in building Greenpeace USA into one of the nation's largest and most influential environmental groups.

He led Greenpeace campaigns on a range of issues related to preserving clean air and water, protecting the marine environment, and encouraging development of clean energy.

From 1979 to 1981 Hinck played a leading role in efforts by Greenpeace Seattle and Greenpeace Vancouver to prevent oil pollution on the Northwest Coast.

The Greenpeace campaign achieved a ban on oil supertankers in Puget Sound and an end to plans to construct the Northern Tier Pipeline.

Hinck led Greenpeace in some of its earliest work on controlling toxic pollution.

In 1982, Hinck and Greenpeace exposed the dangerous practices of the Western Processing Company, a waste-handling firm.

The company, located in Kent, Washington, had surreptitiously buried thousands of barrels of dangerous toxic compounds on company grounds.

Greenpeace pressure eventually led to federal EPA enforcement proceedings.

The site was placed on the federal Superfund list and was eventually completely cleaned up with money from WPC and its clients, including Boeing.

In 1983 Hinck assumed Greenpeace USA's key leadership position of Campaign Director.

In that capacity, Hinck worked with Greenpeace Canada to confront a Russian whaling operation on the Siberian coast in the North Pacific.

In 1990, Hinck earned a J.D. degree from the UC Berkeley School of Law.

Hinck was associate editor of the California Law Review where he also published The Republic of Palau and the United States: Self-Determination Becomes the Price of Free Association.

In 1991, Hinck married Juliet Browne, whom he had met in law school.

Browne is a partner at Verrill Dana law firm, where she is chair of the firm's Environmental Law Group.

She is also a trustee of Unity College in Unity, Maine.

After law school, Hinck initially practiced law with Morrison & Foerster, then California's largest law firm.

At MoFo, Hinck represented defendants in securities fraud class actions such as In re VeriFone Sec. Lit., Civ.

No. C-90-2705-VRW (N.D. Cal.) He then practiced with Lieff Cabraser, a class-action law firm.

Hinck worked on consumer and environmental class actions and served as plaintiffs' class counsel in the massive maritime environmental tort case In re Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.

In 1993, both Hinck and his wife Juliet Browne took positions as Assistant Attorneys General in Palau, a United Nations trusteeship in the Western Pacific.

Hinck successfully litigated a series of cases that in 1994 enabled the Republic of Palau to become a sovereign nation.

Hinck also successfully prosecuted criminal cases including one where he gained the conviction of legislators for trafficking in dangerous narcotics.

In 1995 he was designated Acting Attorney General for the new nation.

In 1998, working with Lewis Saul & Associates, which has offices in Washington DC and Portland, Maine, Hinck filed the first statewide case in the country against oil companies over groundwater contamination in Maine caused by the gasoline additive MTBE.

Subsequently, Hinck helped to organize cases nationwide for recovery from MTBE pollution.

From 2006 to 2012 he served as a member of the Maine House of Representatives, representing House District 118, part of Portland, Maine.

From 2013 through 2016, Hinck held an at-large seat on the Portland, Maine City Council.

Hinck was born in Sacramento, California, and spent most of his childhood in the Liberty Corner section of Bernards Township, New Jersey and also lived in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

He was an honor student, an Eagle Scout and a varsity athlete.