Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation

Fellowship Year: 2010

Academic Background: Brown University - MA 2011- (Environmental Studies)

Sara Bissrat Mersha is a Masters student at the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University, where she focuses on issues of climate justice, climate debt, and food sovereignty on local and international levels. She was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, and has been living in Providence, Rhode Island since 1993. Sara worked for 12 years in the field of community organizing, as Lead Organizer and Executive Director of Direct Action for Rights and Equality, a grassroots organizing group with a membership base in low-income communities of color. In this role, she led and supported a variety of campaigns including low-wage worker organizing, youth organizing, anti-criminalization, and anti-gentrification work, along with political education and broader movement-building work. In 2008, she was Visiting Faculty in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Brown, where she co-taught a practicum course on "Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Social Change.” Sara was a member of the Rockwood Leadership Fund’s 2008-2009 “Leading from the Inside Out” fellowship program. Sara's involvement with national networks has included Jobs with Justice (former national board member), the Right to the City Alliance (current resource ally to the Environmental Justice Working Group), and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (current interim co-chair of the Global Well-Being Working Group). She loves to spend time with her 11 nieces and nephews!

Expertise: Environmental Justice, Energy & Climate Change, Sustainable Ag / Food Policy