EJ Disrupt Design fellows (2024-26)

Group 1

Kaniela Ing

Kaniela Ing is the movement leader and community organizer who leads the Green New Deal Network as its National Director. Their work has been regularly featured in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC, CBS, and numerous other major news publications. Previously, Kaniela served as a State Legislator in Hawaii where they organized coalitions of labor, industry, environmental, and community groups to successfully pass transformative climate and democracy bills and secure hundreds of millions of public dollars for green infrastructure projects.

Kaniela serves on numerous advisory boards including Climate Power, Our Hawaii Action, The Hawaii Community Bail Fund, and the Indigenous Earth Fund. Kaniela is a father of two beautiful children and comes from a mixed-raced background which includes Kånaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Russian-Jewish, and Micronesian ancestry. Kaniela writes and produces music in his free time.

Khara Jabola-Carolus

Khara Jabola-Carolus is co-founder of Roots Reborn, a Maui-based organization that stands in the gaps between climate equity, immigrant rights and economic justice. Roots Reborn works to disrupt the institutional U.S. environmental disaster relief and recovery system—delivering dignified direct assistance to fires-affected immigrants and empowering Maui’s immigrant community through cross-cultural solidarity.

Khara also serves as the Director of Feminist Philanthropy at the Global Center for Gender Equality incubated at Stanford University. Khara brings over a decade of government leadership, community organizing, and policy advocacy experience to our team. Previously, she served as the executive director of the Hawaiʻi State Commission on the Status of Women, the statewide feminist government agency dedicated to restoring gender equality in Hawaiʻi. She also chaired the State of Hawaiʻi Missing and Murdered Native Hawaiian Women and Girls Task Force, as well as the State’s Home Birth Task Force. Khara holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Hawaiʻi, where she specialized in Native Hawaiian rights.

Paʻaele Kiakona

Born and raised in the fishing village of Mala and the fertile Kalo fields of Honokohau Valley, I, Paele Kiakona, have been deeply rooted in the struggle for environmental justice, or as we know it, aloha ʻāina. My life’s journey has been shaped by the fight for water rights in Maui, a cause close to my heart and central to my upbringing. This passion for protecting our natural resources and upholding the rights of our community propelled me into environmental studies, culminating in a bachelor’s degree. Today, as an organizer with Lahaina Strong and president of the Save Honolua Coalition, my commitment to safeguarding our ʻāina for future generations remains unwavering. My goal is to continue advocating for my people, my community, and most importantly, our land, embodying the spirit of aloha ʻāina in every action I take.

Nadezna Ortega

Nadezna Ortega was born in Pasaleng, Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte, Philippines. She and her family immigrated to Hawaiʻi when she was 10 years old. She grew up in Pauoa Valley and currently lives in Honouliuli on the island of Oʻahu.

Nadezna is the Executive Director and founder of Tagnawa, a grassroots organization dedicated to building back radically different, culturally rooted frameworks of care for land and people after environmental disasters in Hawaiʻi. Led by immigrant women, Tagnawa is committed to building power and advocating for the needs of Filipino survivors of the Maui fires, particularly those who are multiply-marginalized such as women and immigrants. Nadezna is a co-founder and advisor to LAING Hawaiʻi, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the cultural and linguistic heritages of the immigrant communities in Hawaiʻi.

Nadezna is an Instructor of Ilokano language and Philippine culture and history at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a PhD candidate in Political Science focusing on Indigenous Politics. She also holds a Juris Doctor with concentrations in Native Hawaiian Law, Pacific-Asian Law, and International Law.

Group 2

Lynnette Grey Bull

Lynnette GreyBull (she/hers) Executive Director of Not Our Native Daughters (NOND), a national organization that pursues indigenous justice, equity, and healing, recognizing the urgent need to address the deeply rooted issues stemming from the legacies of colonialism and slavery. In this work she has spearheaded the development of Indigenous Youth Voices for Conservation—an NOND program aimed at empowering indigenous youth in environmental justice and conservation efforts. This inclusive platform began with a vision to expand horizons and create opportunities for indigenous youth; while also exposing them to the joys of outdoor recreation and teaching them about the intersection of indigenous heritage with climate and environmental justice.

Indigenous Youth Voices for Conservation fosters a diverse and dynamic learning community that is rooted in indigenous justice and guided by the invaluable Traditional Ecology Knowledge and treasured oral stories of our tribal elders, passed down through generations. The transformative adventures that GreyBull leads are designed to empower and inspire Indigenous youth to embrace leadership opportunities, fostering their growth and strengthening their connection to their heritage.

GreyBull's core mission extends far beyond crisis intervention for native communities, instead centering education, policy change, coalition-building, and the empowerment of Indigenous capacities to create change. She seeks to pave paths to for Indigenous youth to directly contribute to conservation and environmental justice initiatives. Lynnette is a mother of three, and her activism and advocacy for native communities has led her to run for Congress as Wyoming’s representative.

Vivian Breckenridge

Vivian Breckenridge’s (she/hers) life work is helping to build a Regenerative Economy in which all communities are healthy, green, and overflowing with opportunity and joy. She founded Just Homes in Oakland after a lifetime of witnessing her family and communities experience housing insecurity, environmental and climate injustice, economic marginalization, and gentrification.

Through Just Homes, Vivian plans to create a piece of a Regenerative Economy with and for her community by resourcing unhoused people of color with high-quality, permanent, and climate-resilient housing where they can pursue lives of joy and well-being. She comes to this work with a diverse background of advocating for environmental and climate justice policy, supporting community EJ leaders, and educating and mentoring BIPOC children and youth. Most recently she worked at The Greenlining Institute developing a vision of a Just Economy and with the Steering Committee of the CA Green New Deal Coalition on a Green Social Housing Campaign.

Vivian is also a leader on the boards of Indigenous Youth Voices and Camp Murciélago. She holds a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment where she co-led activism to diversify the school and found the Center for Environmental Justice. She also holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California. Vivian is from the East Bay and spends her downtime playing in the ocean and volunteering with Salted Roots (formerly Brown Girl Surf).

A. J. Hudson

AJ Hudson (he/him/él) spent five years teaching high school science and eventually helped to found a public school in one of the most disenfranchised, polluted, and over-policed neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Though he faced the injustices of pollution, housing insecurity, and systemic racism throughout his own education as a low-income kid of color... it was watching the children under his daily care confront these same persistent injustices that inspired him to fight for environmental justice.

Moved to take action, he organized for NYC's BIPOC students to have access to healthy and equitable school buildings, and eventually left the classroom for law school, full-time advocacy, and a career dedicated to climate and environmental justice. He is still a teacher at heart, and his commitment to the emancipitory potential of education and BIPOC youth empowerment grounds his work. During graduate school at Yale University, AJ was the environmental justice director of the Environmental Protection Legal Clinic, and formed several new environmental partnerships between Yale's free legal aid programs and local communities.

AJ has been working and partnering with UPROSE since he first joined the family in 2018. He has organized coalitions to pass New York’s trailblazing climate legislation, helped to plan and execute the 2019 Climate Justice Youth Summit, led weekly neighborhood workshops on climate justice, as well as protests and political actions, and he is currently a member of the UPROSE Advisory Board. He is also an author of the recent Routledge Environmental Justice History textbook, and a visiting professor at the Pratt Institute.

Alegna Malave Marrero

Alegna Malavé Marrero (she/hers/ella) grew up on the tropical island of Puerto Rico and her love for her people and her homeland developed into direct advocacy for the rescue of public access to beaches, rivers, and nature reserves. She is a recognized leader in the “Las Playas son del Pueblo” movement, a decades-long civil rights effort to preserve public and democratic access to beaches. In the face of mounting foreign tourism development and worsening climate impacts, this illegal privatization of public lands is often at the direct expense of local Puerto Rican communities' climate future.

As founder and director of the Camp Murciélago Beach Defenders, she is currently spearheading the efforts to protect the sacred indigenous Taíno archaeological sites on the coastline of Puerto Rico from destruction by tourism investment and private developers. Malavé serves as a sociolegal advisor for an islandwide coalition of organizations collaborating on rescuing and protecting the public lands and communal assets of Puerto Rico. With a BA in sociology from the University of Puerto Rico and an MA in socio-spatial planning from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, Malavé has focused her activism on educating her communities and the youth about the laws and regulations that designate public areas and preserve the legal right of Puerto Ricans to access nature.

As a member of a climate threatened frontline community, she organizes direct political actions, while also bringing legal actions in court to contest the neocolonial privatization of Puerto Rico’s land that is making the island’s people more vulnerable to hurricanes and sea level rise.

Group 3

Melanie Allen

Melanie Allen (she/her) is a founding Co-Director of the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice. The Hive Fund is a specialized re-granting intermediary that raises funds and makes grants to groups that have historically lacked access to funding and are playing impactful roles in scaling back dirty energy and speeding an equitable transition to renewable energy across the US South.

Melanie began her philanthropic career as a Network Officer at the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation where she helped launch the organization’s energy equity portfolio and managed relationships and grant making in South Carolina and Georgia. Melanie is fiercely committed to supporting leadership across the South. With more than 15 years in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, Allen has considerable experience facilitating community-based solutions that ensure those most affected by policy are centered in the decision-making process.

Melanie is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina currently residing in Durham. Melanie studied History and African American Studies at Columbia University and taught one of the first Environmental Justice courses at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Melanie serves on the steering committee ofGrantmakers for Southern Progress (Co-Chair) and the board of theHayti Heritage Center in Durham, NC.

Dana Johnson

Dana Johnson serves as Senior Director of Strategy and Federal Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and leads the organization’s work to build power and grow capacity for Federal climate and environmental justice action. During her tenure at WE ACT, Dana has conceptualized and served as the primary driver of national advocacy and policy-setting efforts, such as the Dirty Deal permitting fight, Justice40rward funding initiative, Clean Air for the Long Haul Cohort regulatory campaign, and Wrong Direction energy policy storytelling project, that advanced equity in Federal decision making. Prior to her current role, Dana served in nonprofit leadership roles with YMCAs in Chicago and Washington, DC and client service and operations roles at global, mid-sized and boutique communications firms.

Dana is a sought after thought leader and has lectured at Georgetown University and Washington & Lee University and participated in conversations hosted by the New York Bar Association, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Water Club, Roosevelt Institute, and Tishman Environment and Design Center. Dana earned Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Marketing and Master of Business Administration in Management degrees from Roosevelt University. She is a Board Member of Green 2.0 – a non-profit organization that believes that the voices and leadership of a powerful environmental movement must be as diverse as the causes’ it champions. She also is on the Advisory Council of the State Energy & Impact Center of NYU School of Law.

Ajulo Othow

Ajulo Othow is the founder and CEO of EnerWealth Solutions, a North Carolina-based solar and energy storage company committed to fostering an ecologically sustainable and equitable world. With a focus on rural America, EnerWealth develops community-scale renewable energy projects, aiming to center local control and meet the financial needs of historically marginalized communities. A pioneer in solar development, Ajulo's work also seeks to aid in minority land retention and rural economic development. In addition to her entrepreneurial ventures, she serves as a Board member at the Center for Progressive Reform, The NC Clean Energy Fund, Self-Help Ventures Fund and is President of Black Owners of Solar Services (BOSS). Raised in a family of educators, Ajulo’s upbringing fueled her commitment to social justice and environmental stewardship. She holds a Master’s in International Development from George Washington University, further graduate work in Public Policy from Duke University, and a Juris Doctorate from Northeastern University. Ajulo and her family reside on a small farm in Oxford, NC.

Ansha Zaman

Ansha Zaman is a policy advocate. Born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh her values on environmental advocacy are deeply rooted in leadership emerging from climate change impacted communities across the world. As Federal Policy Director for the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy (CEED), Ansha combines strategic policy development with effective partnership and coalition building to advocate for policies that lead to reduction of harm and greater access to benefits from energy systems, in environmental justice (EJ) communities. Through her partnerships, she uplifts the important work carried out by EJ advocates by conducting outreach with and in congressional offices to ensure that policy making is led by the voices of environmental justice advocates.

Ansha is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is deeply invested in promoting the momentum of climate change dialogues in the Midwest at local and regional levels. In addition to serving on several local community advisory boards, Ansha has served on American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s (ACEEE) Low Income Energy Efficiency Working Group and Environmental Law Institutes’ (ELI) EJ Advisory Council.

Ansha holds an MS in Environmental Policy and Planning from the University of Michigan and a BS in Environmental Engineering from Smith College.

Group 4

Christine Cordero

Raised by a Filipino immigrant family in the working class town of Pittsburg (no “h”), CA, Christine acts from the deep belief that we are stronger together and can go farther together than we ever could alone. She is Co-Director of Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), organizing with immigrants and refugees for a healthy environment and thriving economy for all communities. For over 20 years, Christine strategized, organized, and built coalitions across environmental health and justice, workers rights, and economic and racial justice issues. Previously, she was Executive Director at the Center for Story-based Strategy, training 2,000+ people and working with 200+ groups to reinvigorate narrative strategies for social justice. Christine is an ordained priest of the Chozen-ji line of Rinzai Zen, and trains in Oakland, CA and Kalihi Valley, HI. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics from Stanford University, with a focus on language and power.

Vivian Huang

Vivian Yi Huang is honored to work at Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) alongside immigrant and refugee community members to build power and create the world of love and justice we envision. Being from a Chinese immigrant family, she was raised in a culture of loving your people, living in the world of possibility, and the importance of making ideas tangible. Over the past 11 years and now as a Co-Director, Vivian has played a leadership role in strengthening APEN’s organizing and leadership development, advancing our collective strategy for just transition and systemic change, catalyzing innovative models, and deepening our embodiment of feminisms and shared power.

Prior to working at APEN, Vivian spent a decade working on policy, legislative, and budget campaigns, including model policies to improve health care interpretation, $25 million for health disparities in cancer, and a successful effort to support immigrant parents that made a conservative “top bills to kill list.” She has also been a facilitator, trainer, and teacher with the Women’s Policy Institute, School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), and San Francisco State University’s Department of Public Health.

Vivian finds joy in dance parties with her threenager and doggy, somatics and healing, masterpieces by Wong Kar Wai and Octavia Butler, and cake, ice cream, or best of all, the combination.

Darryl Molina Sarmiento

Darryl Molina Sarmiento (she/her) is the Executive Director for Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), a 45-year-old frontline environmental justice organization that builds power through community organizing, research, and legal support in California. Darryl embodies CBE’s transformative organizing model, having first encountered CBE at the age of 18, when she took a CBE Toxic Tour and has been on staff since 2005 in the roles of Youth Program Coordinator and Southern California Program Director before becoming Executive Director. She was at the helm of successful community-based campaigns against the fossil fuel industry and toxic polluters including the Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling-Los Angeles Coalition(STAND LA) to end neighborhood oil drilling in the City of Los Angeles and leading the passage of Clean Up Green Up, a City of Los Angeles ordinance and one of the first Environmental Justice Green Zone Policies in the nation. Darryl serves on the boards of the California Environmental Justice Alliance, the Climate Justice Alliance and on the Steering Committee of the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California. Darryl has a bachelor’s degree in Asian American Studies from UCLA with Political Science and Urban Planning minors. She is a certified transformational coach and a mother of 2.

Group 5

Denise Abdul-Rahman

Denise Abdul-Rahman, (She/Her) is an Executive Director and Founder of Black Sun Light Sustainability (BSLS) a Movement Strategy Center fiscally sponsored project.

Abdul-Rahman is the State Chair of Environmental and Climate Justice for the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP.

She leads policy, education, and practice on environmental and climate justice issues.

Her leadership in the State of Indiana has enabled funding to support projects and organizing such as securing water filtration, fruits, and vegetables, lead testing kits and the initiation of the “Our Youth/Community Scientists '' initiative which was instrumental in the creation of a report entitled “East Chicago Toxic Crisis” based on the residents of East Chicago inundated with 91,000 ppb of lead contamination in 2016.

She is leading the Indiana Alliance for Equity, Diversity Inclusion for Electric Vehicle Infrastructure & Economic Opportunities, Solar Equity For All Alliance and an ECJ Hub.

She has deployed equitable clean energy projects that have reduced greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 16,000 cars off the road for 1 project, equating ~$950 monthly savings to a nonprofit providing medical care to a community 96% Latinax and Black; and launched demonstration projects to PowerUp Clean Energy Jobs, Minority Business Contracts and infuse the Black Green Pipeline initiative.

Abdul-Rahman formerly served as Vice Chair of the Indianapolis Air Pollution Control Board and has served as a delegate to the Conference of Parties in Paris, Glasgow, and Egypt. Abdul-Rahman served the United States Consulate as Speaker in Brazil.

Abdul-Rahman Recently completed the Key Essentials: The Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development and the Law Certification from the University of Cambridge and is pursuing a PhD in Transdisciplinary Leadership and Creativity for Sustainability at the University of Vermont.

Bryan Bullock

Attorney Bryan Bullock has contributed to the leadership of the environmental racism movement in various ways. He has represented various organizations in environmental lawsuits and appeals. As a community-minded lawyer, he has been a part of various organizations, such as the Environmental Justice Partnership, where he served in a leadership role in confronting the Army Corp of Engineers, as well as corporate entities such as U.S. Steel, regarding their environmental policies. He was selected by the Federal Highway Administration to serve on a panel to select the best Metropolitan Planning Organization’s EJ planning, nationwide. He has also fought and/or litigated against the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. As a candidate for State Representative, Atty. Bullock’s platform included environmental justice issues. Atty. Bullock has also written numerous articles around environmental racism for publications such as Black Agenda Report and has been published in an anthology of environmental justice by Greenhaven Press.

Jorden Giger

Jorden Giger leads local, statewide, and international efforts to address environmental and climate justice-related threats against low-income communities and people of African descent. For nearly eight years, he advocated for increased funding, testing, outreach, and remediation in Black neighborhoods affected by lead contamination. Through a statewide coalition, Jorden worked with Denise and other Black leaders to promote equity in Indiana’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Plan. Concomitantly, he ensured the City of South Bend included Black representation in decision-making around community-based planning and deployment of electric vehicle infrastructure. Internationally, Jorden is engaged with movements to end extractive industries and gun trafficking from polluting and displacing Black and Indigenous communities in Mexico.