Veteran Hollywood publicist Melissa Sun is joining the Sierra Club to focus on harnessing celebrity involvement for major environmental campaigns.

Sun's move to the green group, announced yesterday, comes as conservationists enlist a magazine's worth of boldfaced names -- from Robert Redford to Alec Baldwin to John Cusack -- in their pushback against the $7 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline. Her previous post at Los Angeles firm Stan Rosenfield & Associates involved representing film stars such as George Clooney, Helen Mirren and Charlie Sheen.

In a statement on the move, Sierra said it "courted" Sun for a new "branding and strategy" project in the wake of this summer's $50 million donation from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to focus on anti-coal initiatives (Greenwire, July 21).

"Led by Melissa, the new program will focus on creating opportunities for meaningful engagement with the entertainment industry, helping advance the Sierra Club's efforts to protect clean air, clean water and open spaces, as well as encourage outdoor experiences," the group added.

Darryl Hannah and Margot Kidder, star of the 1980s "Superman" films, were among those arrested earlier this year while protesting the XL pipeline at a nonviolent White House sit-in that drew significant media coverage to the environmentalist campaign against the XL link. Film actor Mark Ruffalo, known for his advocacy against the hydraulic fracturing method of natural gas extraction, released an online video last week urging supporters of the Occupy Wall Street protests to attend a follow-up White House demonstration set for Sunday, where he is expected to appear.