Photo credit: First salmon ceremony, Lummi Tribe, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
Our speakers span a vast array of disciplines, identities, and geographies. Below is a list of our speakers and presenters for the 2019 Symposium:
Ken Workman Workman is the great-great-great-great grandson of Chief Seattle. He is a retired Boeing Flight Operations Engineering as a Systems and Data Analyst, he is a former Duwamish Tribal Council member as well as a former Duwamish Tribal Services 501(c)(3) President. Ken is a member of the Duwamish Tribe, the first people of Seattle, and a current board member of two (2) non-profit organizations... “Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition” and the “Southwest Seattle Historical Society”. Today Ken enjoys retired life living on a river in the mountains east of Seattle. Hannah Wilson, Doris Duke Conservation Scholar and 2019 UW graduate Hannah is a recent graduate from the University of Washington where she majored in Environmental Science and minored in Geography. While she has always been curious about the connection between humans and their environment, she found her passion for environmental justice work early on in college through her classes and during her time as a Doris Duke Conservation Scholar. She will continue her work with Earthcorp next year as an Outreach Coordinator as well as working with various EJ organizations and serving as a Commissioner on the Seattle Commission for People with disAbilities. Mari Shibuya, artist Mari Shibuya is a Creative Empowerment Specialist. The goal within all they create is to highlight the regenerative, healing power of Creativity and the power of visual information in reimagining growth. Mari works as the Youth Development Leader for Urban Artworks, as a Lead Facilitator for Young Women Empowered in addition to leading Creative Facilitation Trainings for Partners for Youth Empowerment. Mari is also a working Artist and Muralist. Mari takes delight in incorporating graphic facilitation and visuals in all the group processes they lead to harness the power of our collective radiant thinking to catalyze epiphanies and innovation. Zoltan Grossman, Evergreen State College Zoltán Grossman is a Professor of Geography and Native Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. He is a longtime anti-racist organizer, and was a co-founder of the Midwest Treaty Network in Wisconsin, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2002. He was past co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, co-editor of Asserting Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis (Oregon State University Press, 2012), and author of Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands (University of Washington Press, 2017). More background: https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan Ellany Kayce, Nakani Native Program Ellany Kayce is an enrolled tribal member of the Tlingit Nation, Raven-Frog Clan. Throughout her career she’s worked as a cultural consultant, event planner, coordinator, facilitator, trainer, curriculum developer and fundraiser. Expertise areas include: keynote speaking, workplace culture, workshop presenter, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and racial and social justice. Ellany has life-long experience working with Alaska Native, Native American, First Nations communities, and is a trainer, traditional drummer, singer, and dancer, and activist. Todd Mitchell, Swinomish Tribe Todd A. Mitchell, swəlítub, a Swinomish Tribal citizen, is the Director of the Swinomish Department of Environmental Protection. He graduated from Dartmouth College (BA, Earth Sciences & Film Studies) and Washington State University (MS, Geology) specializing in hydrogeology, igneous petrology and geochemistry. Todd works for Swinomish as a geologist and indigenous scientist researching the Tribe's water resources including traditional ecological knowledge, tidelands, surface water, groundwater, wetlands, and salmon habitat restoration research. Adrienne Hampton, Washington Sea Grant Keystone Fellow and Seattle Aquarium Adrienne grew up in Washington D.C. or what some call the "DMV" and has lived in the greater Seattle area since 2011. Adrienne often works at the nexus of collaborative processes and environmental issues, mindful that decisions made throughout a process matter. She hopes that her work will leave a responsible legacy of decision making which may even heal existing inequities in the environmental movement. Adrienne’s career endeavors across sectors and lived experiences have taught her that the most important values within the environmental field are balance, connection and trust. Adrienne holds a Masters in Public Administration. Luz María Cárdenas, Emma-Maria Maceda, and Bình Tran, Community Health Advocates Luz is a trusted community leader and 'co-madre' among her peers, who consistently organizes her community on urgent and upcoming issues of environmental health. She also comes from a fishing family and prepares the seafood that her husband catches locally. Emma is a co-lead of the Latino community health advocates team. She started as a community health advocate 4 years ago and with time, was given the opportunity to step up in her role. She love her role because she is able to be a CHA and is also able to support her teammates and help them grow into bigger leaders. Binh is an avid fisher and has found the friendship and community with the people he met through fishing. He is passionate and empowered to raise awareness about the contamination of Lower Duwamish River seafood so that he and his friends can continue to fish safely and eat seafood healthfully. Sean Watts, SM Watts Consulting, LLC Dr. Sean M. Watts is owner of SM Watts Consulting – empowering communities to drive environmental policy and helping historically white-led organizations move from awareness to action to create an equitable and inclusive environmental movement. Sean has spent his career bridging gaps between conservation science, policy and society as faculty at Santa Clara University; as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation and as founding Director of the UW Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program. Sean received his BA in Biology from the University of Virginia; and PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Mindy Roberts, Washington Environmental Council Mindy Roberts leads the Puget Sound program at Washington Environmental Council (WEC). WEC’s mission is to protect, restore, and sustain Washington’s environment for all. For over 50 years, WEC has passed, defended, and enforced environmental laws that protect people, lands, waters, and wildlife through grassroots advocacy, policy development, initiatives, lobbying, and litigation as a last resort. The Puget Sound program advocates for clean water, healthy habitat, and renewed leadership to recover the Salish Sea region for future generations. Mindy is an environmental engineer with 30 years’ experience synergizing human infrastructure needs with natural resources. Maritza Mendoza, EarthCorps Maritza Mendoza is a first generation Mexican American raised in the Piedmont region of NC. Her interest in our natural world started at an early age and she was fortunate enough to pursue those interests in school, obtaining her Bachelor's in Environmental Science and a Master's in Marine Resource Management. Her experience in academia and the habitat restoration field emphasized the lack of investment in creating avenues for people of color to navigate and succeed in these spaces. She wants to change the mainstream environmental narrative to include the intersections that affect peoples’ lived experiences within our environment. She is eager to continue creating avenues for people of color to not only explore careers in the environmental field but also create the solutions needed to address our socio-environmental crises. Lisa Kenny, EarthCorps Lisa Kenny is a Filipino-born, Chicago raised, Seattle transplant. She's a first generation college graduate with a degree in environmental studies and a capstone in acoustic ecology. Lisa holds 4 years of experience in habitat restoration in the Pacific Northwest. In her various roles of managing restoration crews and creating project timelines to coordinating volunteers, Lisa has often been one of few persons of color on these perspective teams. These experiences have mobilized her to co-create a POC Resource Group and serve as a racial equity advisor at EarthCorps. Lisa is passionate about re-imagining structures and systems to better support and uplift the voices of marginalized communities. Jules Hepp, Tiny Trees Jules is an Environmental Educator, Artist, Forest Therapy Guide, and Queer person. Their passion to interweave all of their identities to practice nature connection through a Social Justice and Anti-Oppression lens. Michael Chang, Makah Tribe Mike Chang is the Climate Adaptation Specialist for the Makah Tribe. He has led the Makah Tribe's Climate Impacts Assessment and coordinates the climate adaptation and resiliency planning process across tribal departments and the Makah tribal community. Mike also supports the Tribe by participating in various state and regional marine planning groups and is working on a tribal land policy tool for natural resources managers. He was an author for the Northwest chapter of the recent U.S. 4th National Climate Assessment, where he focused on highlighting climate impacts to Tribes and Indigenous peoples, cultural heritage, and frontline communities. In his free time, he loves to swim and is learning how to sail. He received his Masters from the University of Washington's School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and a B.S. from Yale University. Maria Baron Palamar, Resolve Conservation Maria is a wildlife veterinarian turned social scientists out of despair. After working directly with wildlife (her first passion), she realized people needed the most work if we wanted sustainable solutions. After five years in government, she co-founded Resolve Conservation with Graise. Maria now works connecting people to nature and to each other (her second passion), making natural resources management more equitable and sustainable; from the science and technology, to the resulting data and decision making, to the conservation organizations that do the work. Traveler, explorer and maker, she loves wildlife; watching it, touching it, and even poking it when scientifically necessary. |
1. Centering Equity and Justice in Community Engagement
This theme will aim to highlight and elevate best practices, policies, and examples of ethical, just, and relational engagement with community partners. Presentations that specifically include community partnerships and engagement with historically-underrepresented communities, communities of color, and tribal and Indigenous communities will be prioritized. Potential speaker ideas can span ideas of reciprocity, participatory-based research, decolonized and/or Indigenous methodologies, etc... |
2. Institutional policies to address systemic and structural inequities within the Environmental Movement
This theme will aim to highlight and elevate how organizations and institutions should implement internal policies that improve equity and inclusion for historically under-represented persons (i.e. persons of color, queer persons, persons with disabilities, immigrants, etc.) within the environmental movement. Potential speakers should focus on issues of educational/job access, hiring practices, recruitment, retention, and/or workplace culture. |
3. Power structures and how they influence Knowledge/Research Production
This theme will focus specifically on how power structures inherently influence how knowledge and research is produced and applied, which often leads to erasure or homogenization of experiences and data. Potential speakers can speak on epistemology, Traditional and Indigenous Knowledges, inequities within scientific peer-review processes, data collection and analysis, governance, etc... |