Rep Lee Oxenham

Personal Biography
3rd term in the NH House
Represents Cornish, Grantham, Plainfield, and Springfield
As a student of international politics and economics Lee pursued her studies at research universities and institutes in Italy, Canada, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and the United States. She received her BA with Honors from Swarthmore College, and her MA from Johns Hopkins University Paul Nitze School of International Studies (S.A.I.S.). In the 1980s Lee became a “citizen diplomat,” taking students from American campuses to the Soviet Union; reviving the sister city relationship between the Ukrainian port city of Odessa and Baltimore, MD; and initiating contacts between the Big Apple Circus and the Moscow Circus.
Lee spent close to a decade at the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council (NAS/NRC) where she became the Soviet affairs specialist for the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences. As a NRC Study Director she oversaw projects focused on the Soviet economy and ethnic nationalism, and in the wake of the Soviet collapse she worked on issues ranging from democratization to the disposition of excess weapons’ plutonium. After leaving the NAS/NRC, Lee returned to academic pursuits, completing her career as Liberal Arts chair at Lebanon College.
Miscellaneous Information:
Lee has been a committed environmentalist since she read Silent Spring as a child. An early visit to Yosemite created a lifelong supporter of the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action and the Audubon Society. In the early 2000s, as Executive Director of Patapsco Riverkeeper, part of Robert Kennedy’s Waterkeeper Alliance, Lee undertook legal action that compelled Constellation Energy to install scrubbers on its notorious Brandon Shores coal-fired power plant and cleaned up toxic pollution from numerous sources to the Chesapeake Bay.
Lee is a member of the Meriden Bird Club, the United Valley Interfaith Project, the Plainfield Energy Committee and the Meriden Congregational Church. She is passionate about defending wilderness and combatting the climate crisis. She enjoys hiking, sailing, kayaking, and birding.