Phoenix is the Senior Manager for Climate Equity and Community Engagement at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC). They work on operationalizing equity and environmental justice across the agency and have specifically worked to integrate equity into BCDC’s permitting and planning processes. They previously worked with community-based organizations including the Mycelium Youth Network and the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, and they have been an equity advisor to several regional projects, including BayCAN, BCDC BayAdapt, and Resilient by Design. They hold a BA in anthropology from Howard University and an MA in energy and resources from UC Berkeley, with a specialty in environmental justice and social movement theory.

Zara is an interdisciplinary educator with roots in postcolonial anthropology, social ecology, embodied inquiry and popular education. She is the co-director of Partners for Collaborative Change, which supports progressive organizations to become more equitable through anti-oppression facilitation, with a particular focus on the interdependence of social justice and the environment, and supports community-driven climate resilience planning through participatory action research.

Irene is Senior Manager of Global Foundation Strategy at Natural Resources Defense Council. She brings nearly twenty years of experience in research, project management, and development at nonprofits across the U.S. and internationally. Since 2000, she has been doing institutional fundraising for international NGOs working in the environmental and social sectors. Her previous roles in stakeholder mapping and engagement, monitoring and evaluation, and teaching reflect her passion for adaptive learning, systems change, and participatory decision-making. Irene holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of Michigan, where she studied medieval narratives of the frontier, and an M.S. in International Affairs (concentration in cities and urbanization) from The New School—where she also taught. She spent her teenage years in various public schools in Oakland and went to college at UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis. Now based in the Bay Area again, Irene is learning to be a slow birder and eager to lend her skills to support local environmental justice movements.

Dr. Elias is a tenured professor who holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016. At UCSF, Dr. Taylor-Cornejo researched the intracellular pathogen responsible for Legionnaires disease, Legionella pneumophila. Dr. Taylor-Cornejo joined the Biology Department at Randolph-Macon College in the Fall of 2020. His research program broadly explores host-pathogen interactions, with an emphasis on how Legionella pneumophila exploits cellular stress response pathways in the host. Dr. Taylor-Cornejo’s research incorporates fundamental microbiology, molecular biology and bioinformatic techniques to study the evolution of stress response pathways in eukaryotic microbes (amoeba), which have served as ancient “evolutionary boot camps” for many bacterial pathogens.

Haleh is the co-founder of Planting Justice that builds sustainable solutions at the intersection of urban farming, prison abolition, and land rematriation. Over a period of 12 years, Haleh led in the development of an innovative non-profit model that now operates 4 commercial properties on a total of 11 acres in unceded Ohlone land. Haleh has been an integral part of forming a national collaborative called EFOD, Equitable Food Oriented Development, a multiracial coalition of food systems leaders organizing across Turtle Island. Together they co-designed the EFOD Fund to support and uplift emerging food justice enterprises at the intersection of health and economic development.