Breaking Green Ceilings

Andrew Kricun is a Senior Director with Moonshot Missions, a non-profit focused on providing technical assistance to water utilities in underserved communities.  He is also a Senior Fellow with the US Water Alliance working on their national water equity initiative.  He is also working as a Senior Advisor at the Water Center at the University of Pennsylvania on various projects related to the Delaware River watershed.    Prior to that, he served as  Executive Director and Chief Engineer of the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, operators of an 80 million gallon per day wastewater treatment plant in Camden, NJ. He has 35 years of wastewater and biosolids management experience.  He graduated with honors from Princeton University with a degree in chemical engineering.

Show Notes - https://watersavvysolutions.com/being-an-ally/

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Whitney Tome is the former Executive Director of Green 2.0. Prior to joining The Raben Group as a principal, Whitney served as the director of diversity and inclusion at the National Parks Conservation Association where she led, defined, and crafted metrics and measures for the organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts. Whitney has advised complex ocean stakeholder processes as a Program Manager and Mediator at the Meridian Institute including facilitating public meetings for regional ocean planning bodies that included state, federal and tribal partners. At Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Whitney served as a strategist, cat herder and trusted advisor in dozens of state and federal political campaigns. She also developed, launched and grew the Fisheries Leadership and Sustainability Forum – a partnership between EDF, Duke, and Stanford.  Whitney earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Middlebury College and a J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law. She also won the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) International Mediation Competition in Paris, France.

Show Notes - https://watersavvysolutions.com/how-to-diversify/

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Alyssa Perez is many things but among the most important are a mother, an environmentalist, and the founder of Stay Blooming. She's a Puerto Rican and has lived in the Bronx, New York her entire life. She has had a passion for our natural world since young and found herself wanting to protect these spaces over the years. Environmental awareness, education, and stewardship encompass much of her professional and personal lives. Stay Blooming reflects these values. She has also worked with Queens Botanical Garden as a Farm & Compost Intern and with GrowNYC as a Compost Coordinator. Alyssa recently graduated with her  BA in Environmental Studies at CUNY Queens College. Her goal is to make environmental education common knowledge, accessible, and digestible for anyone and everyone but especially her community.

Show Notes - https://watersavvysolutions.com/cleaningup-newyork/

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Jeremy Lin is an interpretive naturalist for California State Parks. Based at Donner Memorial SP, Jeremy is the lead interpreter for several parks in Sierra District. As lead interpreter Jeremy manages several park programs including nature education, docent volunteers, and infrastructural and long-range planning. Jeremy has been involved in creating a number of park programs to increase public engagement – California State Parks Backpacking Adventures (CASPBA) program, Wilderness Patrol volunteer program. Jeremy has also managed all interpretive programs Rancho del Oso – Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Programs include recruiting/facilitating low income communities/schools for field trips. Previously, Jeremy worked as a program director for an outdoor science school. He graduated from University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in Environmental Studies and is on track to graduate from Prescott College, Arizona with a M.A. Environmental Studies in Spring 2020. His main area of study for grad school is Evaluating the Impact of Volunteers Serving Public Lands.

Show Notes: https://watersavvysolutions.com/podcast/naturalist

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Dr. Mariaelena Huambachano, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Society and Community Studies and Director of Biodiversity Protection and Indigeneity at UW, Madison. Dr. Huambachano’s work explores public policies for food sovereignty, social movements, sustainable development, and the role of Indigenous knowledge to improve food security and environmental policies. Dr. Huambachano utilises a novel theoretical approach by using the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) theory and rights-based approaches to food security complemented with community-based participatory research. To give voice to and recognize unique knowledge systems, she developed the ‘Khipu Model,’ an Indigenous research-based framework, which she uses in her work with Indigenous communities. She is also an active member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and a Lead Author in the global report on the ‘values’ assessment of nature of the Intergovernmental Panel of Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES).

Show Notes - https://watersavvysolutions.com/podcast/indigenous-rights

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Bill Tripp is a Karuk Tribal Member and Interim Director of the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources. He began learning how to work with fire from the age of four from his Grandmother.  His work to restore fire into the hands of Karuk People through an integrated Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western science framework has been instrumental in shaping state and federal policy changes in regards to prescribed fire.

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Syren Nagakyrie (they/she) is a long-time disabled activist and community builder who is passionate about liberation through connection. Syren grew up with multiple invisible disabilities; they found connection with nature to be a source of comfort in times of social isolation. Syren is the founder of Disabled Hikers, (www.disabledhikers.com), an organization providing resources, events, and advocacy. Syren is a freelance writer, consultant, and presenter. They are the author of The Disabled Hiker’s Guide to Western Washington and Oregon: outdoor adventures accessible by car, wheelchair, and foot, to be published by FalconGuides. Syren currently resides on traditional lands of the Quileute, in Forks, Washington. Syren identifies as a white, queer, and poor person from a disabled and working-class background.

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Dr. Jonathan Hall is a wildlife ecologist by training with a broad interest in wildlife conservation, human/wildlife interaction, environmental justice, and species movement ecology. Much of his research experience is in the semi-arid environment of Western Rajasthan, India, focusing on the ecological and cultural relationships that exist between human populations and vultures. In addition to research in India he is also interested in understanding landscape and other environmental dynamics involving the recovery and range expansion of California Condors. The primary goal of his research is to develop comprehensive conservation strategies for non-human species that accounts for and incorporates human livelihood practices.

Jonathan founded the Wilderness Geography Lab (previously the Conservation Geography Lab) in 2014 in the Department of Geology and Geography at West Virginia University. The lab currently conducts research in West Virginia, California, Yellowstone National Park, and Rajasthan India. Dr. Hall holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Ohio State University and a B.S. in Biology from Morehouse College.

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Belinda’s environmental journey began when she was growing up in New York. As the first-born child of immigrant parents from south east China, Belinda found herself caught between two worlds. As a young child, she faced discrimination from white peers who saw her as “other” and faced the pressure of her parents’ desire to pursue a “respectable” and economically beneficial career path.

To find solace from the pressure and the discrimination, Belinda would seek out the peacefulness of the wooded parks in her neighborhood to “cut down on the voices” in her head so she could hear her own thoughts. She became familiar with the trees and understory plants and “their beauty just helped to quiet the noise”. Those woodlands became sacred and safe spaces for her. From then on, she made a promise to the woodlands to use her life to pay it forward and improve the relationship between humans and nature.

Building Environmental Education Programs

As an adult, Belinda decided to pursue a career in environmental education. Currently, she is the coordinator for the Urban Food Systems (UFS) Program at Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR). She oversees 23+ acres of SPR public space dedicated to growing food. Race & social justice are at the center of her work as she has dedicated herself to equitable access for learning in outdoor spaces in service to a vast diversity of people in a variety of urban settings.

Through her work experiences she has witnessed a lack of representation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color in her environmental education programs and in the organizations she's worked in. She writes, “The disproportionality is disturbing in light of the diversity of peoples borne from the wilds of this earth. The trees call to me to act.”

As a result, Belinda uses her position to cultivate diversity by using intergenerational logic models and racial justice tools, and by serving on the The Race & Social Justice Change Team with the city of Seattle. This helps but she stresses that “we have a long way to go!

Empowering Environmentalists of Color

Often being the only person of color in her workplace, Belinda felt isolated and yearned for a community that could see and accept her for who she is. Her white workplace peers often tokenized and dismissed discriminatory acts towards her. Wanting to understand the prejudice of dominantly white environmental organizational culture, she started to educate herself on issues of environmental history and environmental justice and attend workshops on the same.

Belinda attended a Center for Diversity and Environment (CDE) workshop facilitated by Marcelo Bonta and Queta Gonzales where she had an opportunity to connect with other like-minded people and from different cultural backgrounds. She was also uplifted when she saw leaders of color facilitating the workshop.

It was only until she attended that CDE workshop that she felt like she found a place she belonged - “I was in community with people who could see me! See me as a professional!” It was a watershed moment that inspired Belinda and a few colleagues to co-found the Seattle chapter for the Environmental Professionals of Color - affiliated with the CDE. The Seattle Chapter has been successful and growing; Starting with three co-organizers in 2012 to nine co-organizers and over 400 members in 2020!

Other Themes Explored

Belinda is inspiring and a true pleasure to listen to as she explains the intricacies of her work, the realities of institutional racism, tokenism, and so much more, on this week's episode of Breaking Green Ceilings.

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