Catalina Garzón-Galvis
About Catalina's Work
Catalina Garzón-Galvis is Principal Practitioner at Community Research and Education in Action for True Empowerment (CREATE). In this role, Catalina plans and facilitates leadership development, popular education, participatory research, and participatory media partnerships with community-based organizations and coalitions that center the lived experiences and thought leadership of those directly impacted by environmental and health disparities. She previously co-chaired the Resilience and Adaptation Subcommittee of the Oakland Climate Action Coalition, coordinating community-based climate impacts assessment, adaptation planning, and resilience curriculum development projects with coalition members. Catalina also developed a popular education curriculum guide on the impacts of moving goods from where they’re made to where they’re sold with the Ditching Dirty Diesel (DDD) Collaborative and conducted a health impacts assessment with DDD members of selected strategies to reduce air emissions from freight transport infrastructure in the Alameda County Goods Movement Plan. Most recently, she co-facilitated several digital storytelling partnerships with StoryCenter – a participatory media organization based in Berkeley CA - to develop short videos and digital media that amplify the diversity of languages and voices of Indigenous farmworker leaders affected by heat-related illness and exposure to wildfire smoke. Catalina is a recipient of the 2010 Yamashita “Foundations for Change” Prize which honors scholar-activists whose work bridges academia and community.
