Environmental & Social Justice

Fellow Story

Landback in California with Brittani Orona

This in-depth conversation with Dr. Brittani Orona (Hupa, Hoopa Valley Tribe) on the Cal Ag Roots WELL podcast digs into the concept and practice of the Landback movement in California, including the deep history of Native resistance in the state. It also explores Brittani’s background and new role at San Diego State University.
November 23, 2022
Fellow Story

In Puerto Rico, Activists Transform Abandoned Land To Build Food Sovereignty

Luis Alexis Rodríguez Cruz writes about how in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, activists have turned abandoned land into a community garden. They say El Huerto is only the beginning.
October 6, 2022
Fellow Story

José Guadalupe Gutierrez: Designing Green Spaces for Equity and Community

As a child José regularly visited family in Mexico, where they had abundant natural space to explore, but he was disappointed in the lack of safe parks to play in when he would return to Los Angeles. As a community organizer, he saw the value of quality greenspace to working class communities. These experiences ultimately led him to pursue a career as a landscape architect working to advance park equity.
September 28, 2022
Fellow Story

Historic environmental justice victory to phase out oil and gas wells in LA

This spring, Zully Jaurez took a deeper dive into how frontline communities in Los Angeles, a city built on the world’s largest urban oil field, mobilized and ultimately won a ban on new oil drilling and begin phasing out existing wells in their city.
July 27, 2022
Fellow

Nishaila Porter

2022 Fellow
Nishaila studies urban resilience and the interdisciplinary role of policy. With experience in green infrastructure, she explores climate adaptation that prioritizes environmental justice. As a recent Revolutionary Power Fellow, she assisted with the Justice40 Initiative to ensure 40% of benefits flowed to disadvantaged communities nationally.
Fellow

David Herrera

2022 Fellow
David is researching how the community organizing strategies of two environmental justice organizations in Oakland and San Diego get air pollution issues onto their local government’s policy agendas. He is an environmental justice advocate and mentor for students of color.
Fellow

Gabriela Rodriguez

2022 Fellow
Gabriela helps everyday communities achieve a more sustainable and equitable future through engagement and capacity-building. Currently the Network and Engagement Manager at UndauntedK12, she has contributed to impactful efforts at the U.S. Department of Energy, The CLEO Institute, and Yale University.
Fellow

Liz Jacob

2022 Fellow
Liz Jacob (she/her) is working to build a practice of community-based lawyering alongside movements for a just transition. Liz is dedicating her life to working in community to collectively dream and build a transformative new world grounded in mutual aid, justice, and equity so that all people and the planet can thrive. Liz is a recent graduate of Yale Law School and will be serving as a Skadden fellow with the Sugar Law Center for Social and Economic Justice and the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, where she will serve as an environmental justice lawyer to advance environmental, climate, and energy justice alongside communities of color and low-income residents in Detroit, Michigan.
Fellow

Amaya Simpson

2022 Fellow
Amaya is an educator and researcher pursuing accessibility of environmental stewardship within the BIPOC community by increasing diverse representation in the classroom and investigating how education and sustainability policy influence environmental justice.
Fellow

Peter Nguyen

2022 Fellow
Peter studies the relationship between immigrant and refugee migration, disaster resilience, climate change adaptation, and environmental and climate justice. Grounded in public and community-engaged scholarship, his current research focuses on the Vietnamese community in New Orleans, LA.