An environmental attorney, civil rights advocate, and community organizer with over 15 years of senior experience in local and state goverment.
Jason Landau Goodman is a fourth-generation Lower Merion resident. For over fifteen years, Jason has built organizations, drafted legislation, and won fights that have made Pennsylvania better. He founded the Pennsylvania Youth Congress, the statewide civil rights organization he still leads as Board Chair — and through that work, he has led campaigns that have secured nondiscrimination protections for millions of Pennsylvanians.
As an attorney with the PA Department of Environmental Protection, Jason held polluters accountable and helped advance the policies that protect Pennsylvania's air, water, and land.
Jason was appointed by Governor Josh Shapiro to serve on his transition team, as well as Montgomery County Commissioners Jamila Winder and Neil Makhija's transition team. In 2026, Jason ran for State Representative in the 148th House District, earning the endorsement of over 30 current and former public officials, including State Senator Vincent Hughes, former State Rep. Lita Cohen, former State Senator Connie Williams, Narberth Mayor Dana Edwards, eight Lower Merion Commissioners, several members of the Lower Merion School Board, the Sierra Club, Indivisible Lower Merion, and the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund.
Read Jason's full storyFrom Lower Merion to Erie to Harrisburg — meeting communities where they are.
Jason's family has deep roots across Lower Merion and Narberth. All of Jason's grandparents were Lower Merion residents from Wynnewood to Belmont Hills. The Landau family textile business, H. Landau and Company, relocated to the old Bala Cynwyd Post Office and HLC recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. Jason's great-grandparents from the Landau and Rudofker families were significantly involved in the building of Har Zion Temple, where Jason and his family are members.
Jason was born in Wynnewood and later moved to Bala Cynwyd and attended Cynwyd Elementary School and Bala Cynwyd Middle School. Jason then transferred to Friends' Central School for high school and was extremely active in student life, including running the school's greenhouse where Jason fell in love with plant science. Jason worked at Albrecht's Garden Center in Narberth while in high school.
Jason earned an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies and Urban Studies, and a master's degree in Urban Spatial Analytics, both from the University of Pennsylvania. Jason then continued on to earn a law degree at the University of Pittsburgh, where he completed a concentration in Energy and Environmental Law.
Jason is a proud member of the LGBTQ community and uses he/they pronouns. While a recent high school graduate, Jason learned that LGBTQ people like them could experience discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations without any explicit recourse under Pennsylvania law.
Starting as a teenager, Jason dove right in to spearhead the local organizing and political strategy towards the enactment of Lower Merion's nondiscrimination ordinance. Jason spent two years building alliances with civic organizations, township leaders, and political activists. In December 2010, Lower Merion Township became the first municipality in Montgomery County and first Township in Pennsylvania to adopt an LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance.
In 2011, Jason co-founded the Pennsylvania Youth Congress (PYC) as PA's first and only statewide LGBTQ youth organization. Jason helmed the organization for over a decade as its founding Executive Director. By 2016, Jason had traveled to all of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.
"When Jason would get a call from a young student or their parents, often from a small town in Pennsylvania, Jason would typically be there later that day to meet with them in-person."
Jason has established a regular presence in Harrisburg advancing education and civil rights policy for over 15 years. Jason has built close relationships with both Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and has worked directly with administration officials.
Jason's first major bill was the Pennsylvania Safe Schools (PASS) Act in 2012, which would provide for a large overhaul of how incidents of violence and bullying are handled in Pennsylvania's public schools. He worked relentlessly on building legislative and public support for the bill — helping to secure over 50 Republicans and over 50 Democrats as cosponsors. Having over 100 cosponsors in a fully bipartisan bill is generally unheard of in Harrisburg.
In 2018, Jason was appointed to serve as a member of the inaugural Pennsylvania Commission on LGBTQ Affairs, an advisory council he wrote the proposal for and spearheaded the creation of with Governor Tom Wolf's administration. Jason served on Governor Wolf's internal LGBTQ Workgroup and various safety and inclusion committees for the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
As a policy advisor, Jason was appointed to Governor Josh Shapiro's transition team for the Education + Workforce Committee and was selected by Montgomery County Commissioners Jamila Winder and Neil Makhija to serve on their Moving Montco Forward transition team in the Sustainability and Climate Change Committee.
Jason has received numerous local, statewide, and national distinctions including being named an Emerging LGBT Leader by the Obama White House, Person of the Year by Philadelphia Gay News, and an annual honor at a spring dinner of the Democratic Committee of Lower Merion and Narberth in 2011. Jason has been invited to march with approximately 70 young Americans by the National Park Service from Selma to Montgomery on the 50th anniversary of the march in 2015, and by an international organization to speak at the United Nations for the LGBT Core Group in 2017.
Following passage of the Pennsylvania Bar, Jason was hired for his dream legal job of being a government environmental attorney. For nearly three years Jason counseled a variety of programs at the Department of Environmental Protection from its Southeast Regional Office in Norristown.
Jason's practice focused largely on Air Quality, Waterways & Wetlands, and Environmental Justice. Jason was directly involved in the work to rehaul the state's Environmental Justice Policy and associated PennEnviroScreen tool. In June 2023, Jason was honored with a special commendation by former DEP Secretary Richard Negrín in Harrisburg.
At home, Jason is in his fifth year on the board of the Neighborhood Club of Bala Cynwyd and has served for two years as its Secretary, and is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and Montgomery Bar Association. Jason lives in the College Park section of Bala Cynwyd, less than a mile from where his parents still reside.
In Jason's free time he enjoys studying Yiddish, vegetable gardening, and Pennsylvania road trips. Jason is an avid fan of Groundhog Day and travels to Punxsutawney each year.
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Jason is an environmental lawyer and civil rights advocate with over 15 years of effective leadership moving policies within local and state government across Pennsylvania. A fourth-generation Lower Merion resident, Jason fights for the issues that matter most to our communities, including:
• Lowering healthcare and utility costs
• Protecting our environment
• Fully funding SEPTA and investing in safe roads and bridges
