Workshop Organizers

Diversity Workshop

Strategy Session Participants

RaeShaun Bibbs

RaeShaun Bibbs is a lifelong Alaskan. Born and raised in Anchorage, she attended the University of Notre Dame and received her B.A. in Economics in 2002. RaeShaun returned to Alaska and worked as an intern with the Alaska Conservation Foundation for 8 months. Her internship culminated in the production of the Guide to Alaska's Cultures. You can view the guide online by visiting http://www.akcf.org/pdf/culturalguide.pdf. RaeShaun currently works for Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich as a Constituent Relations Coordinator and serves on the Alaska Conservation Foundation Board of Trustees.

Marcelo Bonta

Marcelo Bonta consults with environmental organizations and institutions on diversity issues, including outreach, partnerships, recruitment, retention, and pipeline issues. He has organized workshops and given presentations to various audiences, like the Land Trust Alliance and the Association of Partners for Public Land . He serves on a steering committee that will create an alliance focused on diversity issues among environmental institutions in Portland. Marcelo is helping to plan a national environmental diversity leadership summit that will convene professionals from the various environmental segments to work together to build a more inclusive environmental movement. He is also a senior fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program and serves on the advisory board of Emerge, an organization that develops future political leaders, especially young people, people of color, and women, who support environmental and social justice issues in the Portland metro area.

Previously, Marcelo worked for Defenders of Wildlife with whom he focused on conservation planning and policy issues. He coordinated and supported nationwide efforts to create effective state and regional conservation strategies. As one of the only people of color on the professional staff, he co-led an effort to start a diversity council. He has also worked for the National Park Service’s Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program, the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and the Center for Conservation Medicine. He received a joint master's degree in environmental policy and biology from Tufts University and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Yale University. He is a published author in the journal, Conservation Biology.

Robin Claremont

Robin Claremont is Program Manager at the Environmental Leadership Program (ELP), a nonprofit organization that inspires visionary and diverse leadership to work for a just and sustainable future. Through ELP, Robin has participated in multiple diversity trainings and broad discussions about diversity issues in the environmental field with young environmental leaders from a variety of backgrounds, sectors and geographic regions. For nearly two years, Robin has served on the organization’s internal diversity team to develop an organizational statement on diversity, diversity and justice values, and a diversity curriculum for the ELP Fellowship. She co-edited and managed a publication within the ELP Fellowship community in which participants shared personal experiences related to diversity in the environmental field, on issues including race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Robin has participated in two dismantling racism trainings with ChangeWork, one with the Center for Environmental Citizenship and one with the State Environmental Leadership Program. She also has attended several diversity trainings led by Elsie Y. Cross & Associates. These trainings have focused on developing an analysis of power dynamics across group memberships including race, socioeconomic class, gender, and sexual orientation, as well as on individual, group, and institutional levels. As a participant in the Boston Environmental Leadership Collaborative, Robin has worked with other regional environmental organizations and professional diversity trainers to explore learning and action on diversity particularly within institutions.

Courtney Cuff

Courtney Cuff was the Senior Regional Director for the National Parks Conservation Association’s (NPCA) Pacific Region. Courtney began her tenure with NPCA in March 2001. She designs and manages the Pacific region's campaigns on parks, including one of our nation's crown jewels, Yosemite. In 2003, Courtney launched a campaign to build a coalition of diverse, allied voices in the Central Valley to encourage key leaders to take action on behalf of national parks and critical environmental policies that protect them. The Central Valley field office design closely mimics that of the desert field office that Courtney opened in 2002. NPCA's “Defending the Desert” campaign brings attention to the incredible biodiversity in the southern Californian desert lands and the serious threats bearing down upon these unique ecosystems, and works to cultivate community grasstops to raise their voices in support of conservation.

Previously, Courtney was the legislative director for Friends of the Earth. She has also served as co-creator and director of the Green Scissors Campaign, teaming fiscally conservative groups with environmental organizations to cut wasteful, environmentally harmful spending and subsidies from the federal budget. Courtney was the field director for the League of Conservation Voters 1998 Wisconsin Senate campaign and has worked on a number of U.S. House races. While in Washington, she sat on the League of Conservation Voters Political Advisory Committee. Currently, Courtney sits on the board of Taxpayers for Common Sense. She has a B.A. and graduated cum laude from Wake Forest University.

Since becoming an Environmental Leadership Program fellow, Courtney has worked to achieve multi-cultural representation among the seven staff in her region, bringing three people of color on board since 2003.

Eva Fearn

Eva Fearn is the Program Manager for the North America Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), based in New York and in Bozeman, Montana. WCS has international conservation projects and is heavily field-based. In North America, WCS has major projects in the Pacific West, the Greater Yellowstone Area, the Adirondacks, Canada and Mexico. Previously, Eva coordinated the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) Annual Meeting at Columbia University. The theme was “Conservation in an Urbanizing World” and it had the most international and student representation of any prior SCB meeting. Before that, Eva was the Program Coordinator for the Environmental Policy Studies Program at Columbia's School for International and Public Affairs. In this position, she organized retreats, group meetings with deans and professors, and career panels, and recruited new students. From 1998-2001, she held several programmatic positions in Fellowship Affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations because her undergraduate major from Duke was International Relations.

Eva’s workshop goals: As Program Manager, Eva has a lot of contact with staff, including field scientists, the public affairs and development offices in New York, and donors. She helps manage the program, especially in terms of human capital, researching staff training opportunities, supporting applications from North American Native Communities in three WCS grant fellowship programs, and recruiting and filling open contract and full-time positions. In the future, Eva hopes to help the Assistant Director to get funding for a Native American grant-making program related to wildlife management training.

From the diversity strategy session, Eva hopes to gain insight and networks that will help the conservation movement be more inclusive and ultimately, more meaningful and effective. In the next five years, Eva estimates she will be involved with hiring about 25 people and hopes to be as inclusive as possible in hiring practices. Eva may also be able to take what she learns at the workshop to inform the general human resources policies at WCS.

Eva is inspired by three varieties on the diversity theme: (1) Being based at the Bronx Zoo, she sees the amazing impact that the education department has on introducing wildlife to thousands of New York City Public School kids every year. (2) Eva sees many women in conservation but not the same proportion rising to the top ranks in organizations and government agencies. (3) There is major Native American and First Nations (Canada) capacity for wildlife management and exemplary sustainable use of natural resources, but this capacity can be overrun by commercial interests if the native wildlife departments are not adequately trained.

Joshua Feldmark

Joshua Feldmark was the Executive Director of EnviroCitizen, an organization dedicated to building leadership and replenishing progressive movements with a diverse base of innovative emerging leaders. Joshua started his activism at Rutgers University by founding the Rutgers Sierra Student Coalition. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Human Ecology. After graduation he served a year in AmeriCorps and eventually found his calling in grassroots political organizing. Josh is now back in is hometown of Columbia (MD), with his partner Jessica. He currently serves as the Wilde Lake representative to the Columbia Council, representing over 6500 residents. So far in his political career he has been called a "subversive radical" and an "annoying young whippersnapper." The last campaign against him ran on the message that "Josh is just 26 years old." Despite the fact that Joshua had no defense to these accusations, he managed to win by 14 percentage points. In May of 2004, Joshua was elected Chair of the Columbia Council and added "boorish behavior" to the list of accusations against him.

Chione Flegal

Chione Flegal is the Senior Program Manager for Latino Issues Forum (LIF), a statewide public policy and advocacy institute dedicated to advancing new and innovative public policy solutions for a better more equitable and prosperous society. Chione manages all aspects of LIF’s Sustainable Development program and oversees a team of staff members working to promote solutions to the unique environmental problems impacting California’s Latino communities. At LIF Chione has authored three reports on issues of the environment and civic participation, has directed programs to engage Latinos in environmental problem solving at the local, regional and state level and has worked to diversify and broaden the environmental movement. Chione serves as a member of the steering committee for the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water and is on the steering committee for Californians for Pesticide Reform.

Chione received a Masters in City Planning from UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning where she concentrated in Community Development and Housing. She completed her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley where she received a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Chione has received several prestigious fellowships, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s STAR Fellowship, in recognition of her work on environmental issues and her commitment to social justice. Chione has worked as an independent consultant for organizations in the United States and abroad including, among others, CARE International and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.

Kristen Fletcher

Kristen Fletcher is Director of the Marine Affairs Institute and Rhode Island Sea Grant Legal Program at Roger Williams University School of Law where she directs legal research and outreach on marine resource and management issues to state and federal agencies, policy-makers, and coastal user groups in New England and across the nation. She conducts research and publishes articles on interdisciplinary approaches to marine law and marine resource issues. Kristen teaches Coastal and Ocean Law and Natural Resources Law at the School of Law and in the Department of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island. She also manages the Roger Williams – University of Rhode Island Joint Degree Program and is President-Elect of The Coastal Society. Kristen has a B.A. from Auburn University, J.D. from the University of Notre Dame School of Law, and LL.M. in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Lewis & Clark Law School. She is happily settling into her second year in New England, kayaking and exploring the coast with her two dogs.

Kristen’s diversity work: Through the interdisciplinary work of the Institute, Kristen is introducing diversity-related issues into Institute events and for ocean and coastal managers and policy-makers. This includes planning an Institute for Future Environmental Leaders at the 19th International Coastal Society Meeting (2004) and an Institute for Graduate Environmental Leaders at the School of Law this fall (2005). She is working on a legal research paper that incorporates principles of critical race theory with environmental law and resource management. Through the workshop, she hopes to increase the number of tools available in the environmental movement to address diversity and gather analysis and information to propose a similar workshop for the ocean and coastal management community in 2006.

Stacie Gilmore

Stacie is the co-founder and Executive Director of ELK, Environmental Learning for Kids. She co-founded the organization with her husband, Scott who is a wildlife biologist and a strong advocate in the field of education for the African American community in Denver. Since 1996, ELK has provided educational programs to over 18,000 culturally diverse youth and their families throughout Colorado. Stacie received her undergraduate degree from Metropolitan State College of Denver with a Bachelors of Science major in Zoology and minor in Chemistry in 1994. In 2003, she graduated with honors from Regis University with a Masters in Non-Profit Management on a Fellowship Scholarship from the Colorado Trust Foundation.

For the past 16 years, she has been involved in environmental and conservation education through nonprofits, government agencies, and school districts, including a yearlong service as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer. Past experience includes working for the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. Stacie has coordinated and presented numerous preschool, K-12 and college curriculum outreach projects and educational programs for Denver Public schools, wildlife, and natural resource agencies. She has served on various boards and advisory committees representing the Latino community. Stacie enjoys fishing, camping, and gardening with her family, husband Scott, and their three children.

Stacie’s diversity activities include working through ELK to provide a voice for communities of color regarding educational rights, environmental justice, leadership, and careers in the field. Currently Stacie and ELK are working with Audubon Colorado to write the Education Plan for the Audubon Center for Conservation Careers which will be built adjacent to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal – National Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City, Colorado. Stacie hopes to get out of the diversity session knowledge about new ideas and programs across the nation that her colleagues are involved in, learning each others stories of gaining interest in science and the environment, and ways to partner together to accomplish the goal of increasing diversity in the field!

Michelle Lin

Michelle Lin grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for a degree in environmental policy. While on campus, she was active in campus politics, the Asian Pacific American student body, and other student of color issues. Today, she works for the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services' (ACCESS) Environmental Program. She is currently finishing up an anti-oppression training project called "Building Capacity Through Diversity", a two-year project that brought together over 50 environmental activists and community organizers in Michigan to discuss the intersection of race and our work for the environment. ACCESS expects to release a report to document lessons learned and share resources to environmental groups and other organizations interested in anti-oppression. Michelle's work at ACCESS also involves coordinating a state-wide coalition to pass environmental justice policy goals. Michelle is committed to local youth organizing, and spends time volunteering for Detroit Summer and the Detroit Asian Youth Project.

In terms of the session, Michelle is excited to meet the other participants who have been selected to be part of this dialogue. She is looking forward to learning about the work that other folks are doing around the country. She hopes there will be space to have open conversations about the mainstream environmental movement, and be able to start articulating OUR vision(s) for the environmental/environmental justice movement, as it relates to the larger context of movement building. What kind of change are we working for? How do we draw upon lessons of the past in order to better inform how we might approach our work in the present and future?

Clarissa Mendez

Clarissa Mendez is the newly appointed Special Initiatives Manager for Student Conservation Association (SCA) Conservation Interns. As Special Initiatives Manager, Clarissa partners with the National Park Foundation, The National Park Service Office of Business Planning, Unilever and other partners to coordinate SCA Conservation Intern targeted initiatives. A key focus within her role is to increase underrepresented individuals among the Student Conservation Association participants and programming. She has earned her Master’s Degree at New College of California in San Francisco in Social-Clinical Psychology. Clarissa is also a professional trainer on the issue of cultural diversity, and is a consultant to help non-profits run effectively and efficiently.

Clarissa’s current diversity activities include being a member of the Diversity Working Group at SCA, being a member of the Environmental Diversity Group of Washington, DC, and conducting diversity trainings within and outside of SCA.

Her intentions for the diversity strategy session include networking, strategizing and creating an action plan to bring awareness to diversity, and learning about any other ideas or strategies for our work

Daria Ovide

Daria Ovide is the Parks for People New England Program Associate at the Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation charity. As a member of the P4PNE team, she works to develop and improve open spaces in cities throughout New England through stakeholder coordination, public outreach, research, fundraising, media relations, and real estate transactions. Daria was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel; grew up in Dayton, Ohio; and graduated from Haverford College (Pennsylvania) in 2002, where she earned her B.A. in the growth and structure of cities. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, where she bakes bread if the weather is not too hot. Daria recently completed a year in fellowship with the Jewish Organizing Initiative, a Boston-based program that provides training in community organizing and organizational development for young Jews working for justice.

For Daria, growing up in and through upper-middle class environments with bi-cultural and female lenses never matched her experience of the “world as it is” or her beliefs of how the world should be. She is thrilled to participate in the Diversity in the Environment for the Next Generation workshop to become a stronger ally with colleagues of color, develop a clearer voice to explore privilege in environmental organizations, and to question with others the nature of the environmental movement.

Danielle Solomon

Danielle Solomon manages the day-to-day operations of DKH Property Consultants, LLC (“DKH”) an environmental consulting company that specializes in providing solutions for the cleanup and redevelopment of environmentally impacted properties. In addition to daily management of the firm, Danielle’s responsibilities include: business development, administrative management and strategic planning.

Prior to launching DKH Danielle served as the Brownfields Coordinator for the District of Columbia where she developed and implemented a comprehensive program to facilitate the remediation and redevelopment of environmentally contaminated property. She served as Project Manager for all three U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Grants awarded to the District of Columbia. Danielle developed a protocol for identifying and cataloguing potential brownfields sites. She also managed Phase I and Phase II environmental site assessments. With the use of tax increment financing, tax abatement, low interest loans and environmental savings accounts she develop a financing tool kit and financial incentive program for redevelopment of Brownfield sites in coordination with the Office of Tax and Revenue and the Department of Insurance Securities and Banking.

Danielle began her career with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an Assistant Regional Counsel in the Superfund Program where she enforced federal environmental laws including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA/"Superfund"), and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA).

Danielle received her Juris Doctor from Vermont Law School and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Pace University. Danielle is a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program and served on the DC Vermont Law School Alumni Association Board of Directors from 2001 through 2003. Danielle has delivered numerous presentations and lectures on topics ranging from emerging issues in environmental law to careers in sustainability.

DKH Property Consultants, LLC is a development consulting firm. DKH specializes in utilizing public sector incentives to leverage private sector investment for the redevelopment of environmentally impaired property. The experts at DKH have extensive experience in negotiating with regulatory agencies, developing applications for government incentives and securing capital.

Braddock Spear

Braddock Spear is Fisheries Management Plan Coordinator at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), a quasi-governmental organization that sets policy for sustainable and equitable use of marine fisheries in state waters from Maine to Florida. Braddock is responsible for overseeing the management plans and processes of several species. He frequently interacts with constituents ranging from commercial and recreational fishermen to environmental group representatives to government officials. Braddock received his undergraduate degree in marine biology from University of Maryland and his master’s degree in marine affairs from University of Rhode Island.

While at the University of Rhode Island, Braddock studied abroad in Belize for a summer semester. Taking courses focused on cultural diversity in developing countries and living with a host family, he grew to appreciate the opportunities people in the U.S. have to be concerned about environmental issues and to take action to address them. In addition to his work at ASMFC, Braddock has lectured to English as a Foreign Language students at Georgetown University informing them of global fisheries issues and responsible consumerism. He also participates each summer in a mentor program that brings high quality college students (many with an international background) from around the country to Washington, D.C.

Braddock does not often encounter diversity in his job with ASMFC. This deficiency is driving his interest in the workshop. He feels the opportunity is now to raise awareness in his field and to the general public.

Katharine Wang

In her role as the Program Manager of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Pacific West Program, Katherine Wang is working with the regional scientists to develop professional development opportunities and environmental education programs for two Native American tribes. On the Hoopa Valley Tribal Reservation in Northern California WCS currently provides wildlife-related training opportunities for unemployed and younger community members in the form of on the job training in field biology techniques and paid internships for high school students. In the next two years WCS hopes to expand this program to include an environmental education program in the local high school that will get a wider range of students involved with WCS’ research on the pacific fisher (a member of the weasel family that is culturally significant to the Hoopa Valley Tribe and a species of special concern in California) and the Hoopa Valley Tribal forestry program. In Arctic Alaska, WCS is planning a community environmental education workshop in Barrow, AK with members of the Inupiat Tribe. The objective is to raise the awareness of the community about the conservation pressures that face wildlife in the area and get high school students involved with WCS’ field research on nesting shorebirds as summer interns. WCS’s intent in both programs is to provide professional development opportunities for Native American youth in the conservation field, while also working to raise the collective awareness of community members about the importance of conservation and the impact that they can have as individuals on the environment.

At a meta-level, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is in the process of revising its long range strategic plan. Currently WCS has a very good policy and practice of building capacity by hiring local people to staff our projects overseas. In North America, however, the organization needs a different model for ensuring that it is hiring staff that reflects the ethnic and cultural make-up of the communities that WCS works with and in.

Katherine plans to take what she learns in this workshop about what other conservation organizations are doing to diversify their ranks and leadership, and the strategies and goals that the group develops, back to the leadership of WCS to provide effective models for how WCS can address issues of diversity at the institutional level.

Hazel Wong

Hazel Wong has been instrumental in building the foundation for statewide conservation initiatives in The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Hazel’s specialty in communications - working on local television affiliates to building public education programs – complements her legislative and campaign experience.

Hazel served as TNC’s Government Relations Director working with the Nevada legislature and advocating for conservation policy and funding culminating in her role as campaign manager for the successful Question 1 campaign in Nevada. Question 1 raised $200 million for conservation and community projects throughout the state. Hazel joined TNC’s State and Country Programs team shortly thereafter and has taken the lead role in managing the Hewlett Foundation grant that seeks to build a conservation ethic in the west. This grant has multiple components but is rooted in the idea that public opinion polling, message development and capacity building help build a groundswell of support for conservation initiatives. By raising the profile of conservation in these states, TNC chapters and their partners are conditioning the environment for conservation successes.

Hazel’s work has expanded beyond Nevada as she now works with most western state TNC chapters. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from California State University – Fullerton in Fullerton, California and a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Nevada – Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada.