I started actively working on justice issues in law school, where I was fortunate enough to lead the Minority Law Students Association while pursuing a JD with a Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law. Since that time, I have worked with many great people and partners to build environmental wealth with and for low-income and people of color communities. In 2001, I participated in a fellowship called the Environmental Leadership Program. We had lots of conversations — about low-income and people of color communities ("frontline communities"), environmental justice and the priorities of the environmental movement — and it made me wonder what would happen if more environmental groups prioritized environmental work that directly benefited frontline communities? In Portland, Oregon, we decided to create just that kind of group, and we called it Verde.Verde was founded in 2005 for 2 reasons: Portland’s world-renowned sustainability movement was not serving frontline communities; Portland’s frontline communities lacked capacity to plan their own environmental futures. To respond to this green divide, Verde and its partners reinterpreted sustainability as an anti-poverty strategy and built a frontline community-led environmental movement in Portland. Verde grew from a concept to a startup to a nationally recognized frontline community-led environmental organization.In 2016, as our environmental work began encountering more and more technology issues, we began noticing a familiar dynamic: technology stakeholders failing to engage or benefit frontline communities; frontline communities lacking capacity to plan their own technology futures. 2018, I stepped down as Verde's Executive Director to create something new: a frontline-led nonprofit focused on digital justice and the technology needs of frontline communities. In 2019, we started suma as a Verde program, and spun it off into an independent nonprofit in 2020.Suma (translation: “sum, addition, combination”) creates an inclusive technology future with and for low-income people and people of color. We believe that responsive technology investments and institutions can build community power to address poverty, climate change and an extractive digital economy.
Listed skills include Organizational Development, Nonprofit Management, Policy Advocacy, Legislative Drafting, and 2 others.
