# data[].attributes.body
Organization: Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)

Title: Organizer

Cytlalli is an Organizer at CAUSE, serving Santa Paula since February 2024. A Santa Paula native, Cytlalli's journey into community advocacy began during her high school years while protesting against a proposed power plant in her town. Through her involvement with CAUSE, it further ignited her passion for social justice movements. With a background in journalism from California State University, Northridge, and experience as a reporter for publications like the Ventura County Star and The Acorn, Cytlalli brings a unique perspective to her role. She believes in the transformative power of collective action and is dedicated to building inclusive communities where every voice is heard and valued.

Currently she is working with the community to create and implement tenant protections, rent control, a climate resilience hub and climate action plan in her town.

# data[].attributes.body
Danielle Lucero (Pueblo of Isleta/Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) is deeply committed to justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and community resilience. Holding both a Master of Social Work and a Master of Public Health, Danielle’s work is rooted in the belief that lasting change emerges from interconnectedness, adaptability, and the strength of community-led transformation. She has continuously advocated for integrating Indigenous knowledge systems into public health practices, focusing on equity and dismantling systemic barriers to health.

Danielle’s commitment to justice, informed by her upbringing in the Pueblo of Isleta, embraces the principles of fluidity, transformation, and the power of small, intentional actions that ripple into systems change. Her connection to the land and her community’s traditional knowledge systems shapes her approach to environmental and health advocacy. She has contributed to organizations such as Red Star International, Public Health Awakened, and Pueblo Resurgents. At Pueblo Resurgents, Danielle leads community-driven research, including developing the 2024 Isleta Food Sovereignty Community Report, which addresses food insecurity and revitalizes traditional food systems

# data[].attributes.body
Organization: Unite Oregon

Title: Organizing Director

Je mobilizes communities to advocate for safety and well-being through an abolitionist and decolonial lens. With a background in Philosophy focusing on Critical Race Theory and Neurophilosophy, Je bridges deep theoretical insights with practical strategies for systemic change. Je draws on expertise in healing justice and popular education to foster personal and community transformation. Their global and local experiences, including delegations abroad and local board service, inform their commitment to creating a more healed world.

# data[].attributes.body
Organization: Appalachian Voices

Title: New Economy Program Coordinator

I work with several communities in the coalfield region of Central Appalachia, primarily focused in far Southwest Virginia. This includes Lee, Scott, Wise, Russell, Tazewell, Dickenson, and Buchanan counties and I work deeply with the towns of Pound and Pennington Gap. As a region that has historically and continuously suffered from extraction-driven development, I aim to bring in new community leaders to help rebuild our communities in a way that prioritizes all residents. With worsening disasters resulting from climate change, we need to center the lived expertise of our impacted folks to ensure that any new economic development goes hand-in-hand with making our homes more resilient in the most effective ways possible.

# data[].attributes.body
Add a photo of yourself above!

Title: Gulf South Manager, Dogwood Alliance

I'm a community organizer from Mississippi that is looking to create sustainable communities in the midst of environmental crises.

# data[].attributes.body
Organization: ʻĀina Kaiāulu

Title: Halemano Project Facilitator

I serve as the facilitator for the Halemano Working Group, bringing together diverse stakeholders to inform the management and planning of the Halemano Wilderness Area, located in central Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. I work closely with community members, cultural practitioners, conservationists, and land managers to ensure that ecological restoration, recreation, and cultural stewardship are thoughtfully integrated into the project’s long-term vision.

# data[].attributes.body
Organization: IMPACT Community Action

Professional Title: Director of Climate Justice Initiatives

Personal Titles: dog mom, wife, friend, sister, lover of the sun :)

Hi, y'all! I'm Katie (she/her) and I currently serve as the Director of Climate Justice Initiatives at IMPACT Community Action, overseeing the strategic, financial, and operational aspects of large-scale clean energy and climate justice programs supporting marginalized community members in Central Ohio.

The communities I am accountable to are residents of Central Ohio, specifically those with barriers to income and a history of systemic marginalization. I am engaging in community-driven planning because I believe that communities have the answers to the problems they face and I want to support as a resource and catalyst for positive change.

# data[].attributes.body
Abejita Terca Studio

Janaira is an environmental justice advocate and youth educator based in New York. She has a background in environmental policy and community engagement. Janaira is concerned with issues of displacement, housing affordability, and health inequality. She is looking forward to the NACRP trainings to gain more skills to support local residents, like herself, to come together and advocate for better neighborhoods across New York.

# data[].attributes.body
Organization: Multnomah County Health Department

Title: Climate and Health Facilitator (Program Specialist Senior)

I have worked with and continue to work alongside diverse community-based organizations and climate justice leaders in the Portland metro area, and have for more than 7 years. I have served frontline, fenceline communities, those at-risk from climate hazards, catastrophes, and the climate-ecosystem-biodiversity polycrisis. This includes BIPOC, AAPI communities, transit riders, as well as immigrants and refugees, in the Portland metro tri-county region (Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties).

I'm engaging in community-driven planning to build cross- racial-class-generational solidarity and relationships, co-create liberating climate just solutions, and elevate + center the wisdom of Black and Brown communities, and those of the global majority.

# data[].attributes.body
Organization: Atlanta Regional Commission

Professional Title: Energy and Resilience Principal Planner

Personal Titles: dog mama 🐶 biomimicry enthusiast 🌿afro-futurist admirer 🚀

I am an urban designer for community resilience and ecological wellness.

As a person born where movement strategy and collective visioning reshaped the experiential fabric of America, I find myself accountable to moving that vision forward. I come from a culture of people where resiliency is a way of life, and by our own liberation, we inherently uplift the communities —flora, fauna, and marginalized people — with whom we are all inextricably linked.

My work is rooted in the soils of the South, as is the history that I identify with, and it is my mission to protect and enhance the legacies of community care that give us the opportunity to thrive. My background is in environmental science, national advocacy, international organizing and mass movement building. From local CBOs to "Big Greens", my experience organizing across multiple scales informs how I now serve the verdant, creative community where I grew up and recently moved back to: Atlanta, Georgia.

# data[].attributes.body
Hello! (Email: LauraArmst@gmail.com)

My day-job is leading the environmental justice team at the state dept. of commerce to implement our first EJ law to be accountable to communities and tribes for gov't actions' past, present, and future impacts on environmental justice/injustice. I helped advocate for this law, and enjoy now being part of implementing it.

Outside of work though, I'm accountable to communities local to the Yakima Valley where I live - specifically those I've partnered with for 15 years- Mexican immigrant and farmworker communities. I'm engaging in community driven planning because people know best what they need and the systems that need to shift; I love creating spaces and experiences, especially in English and Spanish, where people can creatively co-create and articulate collective vision and the steps to implement it.

# data[].attributes.body
Molokai Clean Energy Hui Coordinator

I’m just a regular shmegular Molokai girl🌱 Accountable to the same tight knit community that raised me to care deeply for our land and for each other. A community that values direct communication and “doing what you said you was going do”. A community that proudly upholds, and fiercely protects, our traditional subsistence based lifestyle.

As a result, i volunteered most of my summers home from school with the Youth Energy Team specializing in household energy audits and appliance & lightbulb exchanging across the island. The past 15 years of energy efficiency experience led me to my current position as part of the core team of the Molokai Clean Energy Hui. As a Hui we help facilitate community-led island-wide renewable energy planning that addresses the chronic issues of top down planning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Co-facilitator for Just Recovery and Healing group, Asheville; Youth Education and Community Outreach Coordinator for Southside Community Farm; Project Coordinator for Elevate Asheville, a city-run climate justice initiative

# data[].attributes.body
I am accountable to life on Earth, its continuation and its thriving. I am accountable to the majority Black community in Asheville living in, from and connected to Southside. This frontline community is where I work as part of the team running the Southside Community Farm, a community-driven project to grow and provide fresh food to families impacted by the legacies of redlining, segregation and urban renewal.

I am accountable to the communities represented by the community members and organizations working together within our Just Recovery and Healing group to advocate and gather resources for those most impacted, frontline communities who have been under multiple pressures for generations and continue to be at risk in the aftermath of Helene.

I'm interested in learning to facilitate community-driven planning processes to support our community in recovery from Helene and in preparing to be more resilient for future and present disasters. I want to learn how we strategize together and build power to self-determine our paths forward in the midst of collapse and how we work across organizations to collaborate tangibly with a shared vision of just recovery and just transition.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Black Appalachian Young & Rising Steward, The STAY Project

# data[].attributes.body
I am accountable to our planet and all marginalized and oppressed peoples, period. Especially those in North-Central Alabama (specifically) and across the South/Appalachia.

I am actively trying to stay in a relationship of accountability via:

serving as a board member of People's Budget Birmingham and working to ensure that all residents have a say in how municipal budgets are created and how their tax dollars are spent

working with the STAY Project to empower young people to make their communities places where they can and want to stay (check out Black Appalachian Young & Rising 🐻 ).

slowly nurturing a small homestead, Humble Hill and connect it with a network of Black farmers across the state

Applying to grad school to get a masters in environmental science & urban planning (I need to skill up ya'll, hmu if you have suggestions!)

To me, community-driven planning is a brilliant way to harness the power of connection to disrupt individualism, braid together seemingly isolated struggles and nurture grounds for the kind of cooperation and community needed to advance solutions at the grassroots level. I have many questions that I think planning can help answer, and I am so excited to dive deep and make this a professional practice that can fortify movement work and advance visions of possibility that people in Alabama have for the places they call home.

# data[].attributes.body
Organization: The Baseline Institute, LLC

Title: Principal Founder

I am facilitator and program designer at heart. I'm currently working to build relationships with about a dozen neighborhood and community organizations in the Dayton, Ohio region. They are mostly volunteer based organizations, mixed demographics between Black-led neighborhood associations, immigrant-led community groups, and white-led social service organizations.

The region has the highest concentration of superfund sites in Ohio, yet lacks a community-led environmental or climate justice advocacy movement. My work is primarily to deepen relationships with the impacted organizations and secondarily to support them in identifying and prioritizing their capacity building and advocacy efforts. It is likely that the outcomes will be as numerous and diverse as the involved organizations.

# data[].attributes.headline
Nicole Aguilera • San Francisco, California

# data[].attributes.subject
Nicole Aguilera • San Francisco, California

# data[].attributes.body
Community Development Coordinator | Canal Alliance

I am a first generation daughter of two strong and inspiring Colombian immigrants. As a Community Development Coordinator at Canal Alliance, I am deeply committed to the Latino immigrant community of the Canal Neighborhood in the city of San Rafael. This community faces significant environmental injustices and underinvestment from both the County of Marin and the City of San Rafael. My role involves amplifying the voices of residents and ensuring their needs are at the forefront of planning and development. I helped launch the "Nuestro Canal, Nuestro Futuro" initiative, a community-driven and place-based project aimed at empowering residents to shape the future of their neighborhood. By prioritizing community-led planning, I strive to ensure that the Canal Neighborhood is a place where all residents, especially those who have long been marginalized, can thrive and build a future they deserve.

# data[].attributes.headline
Sheila J. Babauta • Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands

# data[].attributes.subject
Sheila J. Babauta • Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands

# data[].attributes.body
Founder, Community Solutions

As a daughter of the Marianas, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to serve and protect my home islands. We are a colony of the United States experiencing harmful impacts of climate change, militarization, and colonization.

The Chamorro and Carolinian people, as well as those who call the Mariana Islands home, are the communities I am accountable to.

Engaging in community-driven planning is a pathway to uplifting our voices to ensure the development of our home is designed for us and our families.

# data[].attributes.body
Climate Coordinator, Hollygrove-Dixon Neighborhood Association

I am accountable to the Hollygrove-Dixon neighborhood to help develop and implement a response to the ever changing climate. I do this work for Ms. B. G. who is in her 91 years old and depends on our Association to help look out for her. We also provide meals and a social outlet. I do this work, because of little D. K. who depends on us to make sure he has a neighborhood that is violence free, a neighborhood that is pollution free and does not flood. So, I bring these residents to the work we do. I have been in the Climate space since 2017 starting with teach Nature Based Solutions to help reduce flooding. And now I bring my skills in program development and management to Hollygrove-Dixon.

# data[].attributes.body
Water Wise Gulf South, Executive Director and Co-Founder

Water Wise works with 6 different communities to advance community-driven green infrastructure and to address flooding that affects these low-lying neighborhoods. We host a series of educational events such as workshops and tours and recruit residents to become Water Wise Neighborhood Champions. These 250+ Water Wise Neighborhood Champions have envisioned over 120 large-scale green infrastructure projects in their communities. We have also installed a network of 150 small and medium-scale green infrastructure projects in New Orleans. I think community-driven planning in its simplest form is a way to directly address issues that the community is facing.

# data[].attributes.headline
Vedisia "Dee Dee" Green • Hollygrove Neighbors, New Orleans, LA

# data[].attributes.subject
Vedisia "Dee Dee" Green • Hollygrove Neighbors, New Orleans, LA

# data[].attributes.body
Dee Dee Green is the Area Program Director for American Friends Service Committee’s Peace by Piece New Orleans program. Dee Dee serves on the executive boards of the Hollygrove Neighbors Association, Inc., and Ubuntu Village NOLA and is a member of the Institutional Review Board for the Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies (IWES). She is a 2007 recipient of the Academy for Educational Development’s New Voices Gulf Coast Transformation Fellowship and a 2018 and 2022 Mellon Fellow in Tulane University's Graduate Program in Community Engaged Scholarship. Dee Dee has been involved in sustainable agriculture since 2017 and she manages the Hollygrove Community Gardens.

Dee Dee is accountable to Hollygrove and its residents. She is Board President of Hollygrove Neighbors Association (HNA). HNA is promoting Black sustainability and working to build a self-determined community that controls the cultivation and distribution of its resources.