Environmental & Social Justice

Chelsi Sparti is an energy professional with 12+ years of experience in North America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe. She holds a Master’s of Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Point Loma Nazarene University. Chelsi currently works for Brookfield Renewable where she studies and responds to electricity policy, regulation, and markets in the Western United States.

Nishaila studies urban resilience and the interdisciplinary role of policy. With experience in green infrastructure, she explores climate adaptation that prioritizes environmental justice. As a recent Revolutionary Power Fellow, she assisted with the Justice40 Initiative to ensure 40% of benefits flowed to disadvantaged communities nationally.

David is researching how the community organizing strategies of two environmental justice organizations in Oakland and San Diego get air pollution issues onto their local government’s policy agendas. He is an environmental justice advocate and mentor for students of color.

Inspired by her upbringing as a Latina and by the natural environments of Miami, FL, Gabriela works to center social equity in the clean energy transition by advancing equitable community engagement in decision-making around climate change to ultimately drive community power and support a Just Transition.

Liz Jacob (she/her) is working to build a practice of community-based lawyering alongside movements for a just transition. Liz is dedicating her life to working in community to collectively dream and build a transformative new world grounded in mutual aid, justice, and equity so that all people and the planet can thrive. Liz is a recent graduate of Yale Law School and will be serving as a Skadden fellow with the Sugar Law Center for Social and Economic Justice and the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, where she will serve as an environmental justice lawyer to advance environmental, climate, and energy justice alongside communities of color and low-income residents in Detroit, Michigan.

Amaya is an educator and researcher pursuing accessibility of environmental stewardship within the BIPOC community by increasing diverse representation in the classroom and investigating how education and sustainability policy influence environmental justice.

Peter studies the relationship between immigrant and refugee migration, disaster resilience, climate change adaptation, and environmental and climate justice. Grounded in public and community-engaged scholarship, his current research focuses on the Vietnamese community in New Orleans, LA.