Emerging Leaders Program (ELP)

 

2021 ELP Participants

The following people were selected for last year’s program.

Dani Abboud

​Dani is the Manager of Community Programs and Partnerships at Brushwood Center. Dani builds and maintains Brushwood Center’s partnerships with community organizations, and manages program coordination, social media communications, and volunteers.  They also coordinate and facilitate youth programming with partners across the region, focused on supporting mental health, building community, and empowering students through creative expression. They graduated from Loyola University Chicago’s Institute of Environmental Sustainability, where they studied Environmental Science and Sociology.  During their studies, they were part of a research project exploring environmental gentrification and racism, which inspired them to work in the social side of environmentalism. They bring a wealth of experience in community engagement, environmental justice issues, and qualitative research.”

MacGregor Beatty

MacGregor Beatty is currently a student at the University of Chicago. Previously, MacGregor worked in Zion National Park, Steamboat Springs, and Jackson Hole. MacGregor has deep interests in wilderness medicine and connecting with the benefits of outdoor recreation. In his free time, MacGregor enjoys ski mountaineering, climbing, and backpacking.

 

 

 

Ximena Diaz Velasco

“Ximena Diaz Velasco is a young professional who is passionate about conservation and community building. She is currently completing an 11-month fellowship at the NPS Office of Outdoor Recreation, where she works with her team to increase the quality of sustainable recreation and reduce the barriers of access to public lands. Ximena also serves as the co-founder of the Happy Hour Fund, a mutual aid fund that supports excluded service workers who have been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis in D.C. and Los Angeles. Prior to NPS, she worked as a program manager at the Urban Libraries Council, managing and facilitating programming across five different initiatives to promote innovative strategic thinking in public libraries across the United States. Ximena earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Development and a minor in French Language, Culture and Literature from the George Washington University. During her undergraduate days, Ximena completed eight internships and studied abroad in Cameroon where she completed a research project around the commercialization of Arabica coffee in the western region. In her free time, Ximena likes to paint, hike, and spend time with her community in DC.” 

Alijandrina Martinez

Hey Y’all! My name is Alijandrina Martinez. Here is some stuff about me : I’m 28 and am

born/raised/living in Philly. I’ll be 29 on October 21st. I have a 9 year old daughter. I love animals (tell your cat I said pspsps), the outdoors, and Bob’s Burgers. I just forced myself to start driving a little over 2 weeks ago (if you’ve ever seen Philadelphia potholes you’d understand my hesitation LOL.) I was an AmeriCorps member for about a year and was hired by my host organization, PowerCorpsPHL. PowerCorpsPHL opened heart to the vast green spaces in Philly and my mind to the inequities among them. I’ve served as a member of the Youth Justice Panel with the National League of Cities. I dream of a world in which everyone has food to eat and somewhere to live.

Vanessa Morales 

Vanessa E Morales graduated from The George Washington University with majors in Economics and French. Her love of language took her to Europe for several years to teach English. After her experiences abroad, she taught in a Spanish immersion classroom for 3 years. Throughout her travels, she gained a deep appreciation for the outdoors. Now, she is the Communications Fellow for the National Trails System and the Hispanic Access Foundation. She will be working to reach more diverse audiences and spread awareness about the National Trails. In her free time, Vanessa enjoys camping, birding, and walking her retired Greyhound.

Sheneé SImon

Shenée brings high energy and strategic thinking to the inclusion of girls/women of color across borders with a deep commitment to peace, safety and security in spaces of living, learning, work, play and pray. She has created programming centering gender equity and social systems in suburban and rural Virginia, Orlando, Miami, South Texas and Memphis. In 2019 Shenée founded S.H.E. Collective, LLC. a niche organization to shift the naming of peace, safety and security for girls and women. Connecting global resolutions and goals to regional, state and local education, health and environment. Prior to this, Shenée spent twelve years in for profit and non-profit space with organizations, Randstad North America,, Walt Disney Co, Independent schools and National Association of African Americans in Human Resources. Shenée is a 2021 Truman National Project Security Fellow. A 2020 Inaugural Fellow for Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security and United State of Women’s Ambassador, TN. She serves as the National Chair for New Leaders Council Women’s Caucus, Advisory Board Member for City of Bartlett Parks and Recreation, and Working Group on Girls. Shenée holds a M.A. in Women Gender Studies, Human Resources & Nonprofit Management; B.A. in Women’s Studies and Leadership Studies. She is conversant in French. Shenée is a Virginia native, calls Memphis, TN home with her husband and their 2 daughters and 2 sons, proud homeschooling Army family!

Cre Wells

Nature Enthusiast and Youth Advocate. Credell currently is the Outreach Program Coordinator for the Forest Preserve of Cook County. He has worked with the Jane Goodall Roots & Shoots program and the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance managing various youth programs and connecting people of all ages to nature and engaging in the outdoors.

Throughout his career, he has done several TV and radio spots promoting the care for nature, people, service learning and youth development.  He has delivered professional and personal development training workshops to more than 3,000 youth nationally.  He has studied Improvisational comedy at Chicago’s Second City and has performed with his sketch comedy group at different festivals and venues in Chicago. He has a BA from DePaul University in Non-Profit Management and an MA in Biology from Miami University. He is a proud graduate of the 2019 Latino Policy forum, Multicultural Leadership Academy which promotes black and brown unity. He is also proud 1997 Alum of AmeriCorps, Chicago Public Allies program. He is also a proud Alum of Public Housing (Robert Taylor Homes) and Chicago Public School system.

He believes that everyone can make a difference, but the first change must come from within. With that change, you can create change around you and the world.

Morgan Green, MD, Director, Emerging Leaders Program

Dr. Morgan Green is a Pediatric Hospitalist at Children’s Hospital of Michigan. He is a proud mentee of Dr. Nooshin Razani, the founder of the Center for Nature and Health. During his residency at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital of Oakland, he worked with Dr. Razani and specifically helped with community engagement and resident curriculum within the SHINE program, an initiative that helps to connect patients seen in clinic from all walks of life—whether that be low-income patient populations, immigrants, refugees or people of color—to the vast amount of regional parks in their community.

An alumni of The Center for Jackson Hole’s 2018 Emerging Leaders Program (ELP), Morgan received his medical degree (and found his wife, Tedean Green) at Loma Linda University. He was also a member of UCSF PLUS Program, which trains pediatric residency to become leaders in advancing health equity. He hopes to take the tools he learned from the Center of Nature and Health, his time in Oakland and his global life experiences to better integrate the benefits of outdoor play as a core interaction between physicians and patients.

More about ELP

Although the program takes place over the course of a week, conversations in the months leading up to ELP help build community amongst the cohort, lay the groundwork for group discussions during ELP and prepare cohort members for their roles at SHIFT. These conversations may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Customized seminars to discuss program curriculum
• Group presentations led by cohort teams. Participants will be given time to lead discussions during virtual sessions.
• Cohort members who are selected to participate in SHIFT are invited to join conference calls with national leaders who serve as their peers on panels and in think tanks, ensuring ELP participants are recognized as equal contributors during the ideation process.

During each ELP, participants gain familiarization with content that will be discussed at SHIFT. They have the opportunity to lead group discussions during ELP and explore different perspectives with fellow cohort members and ELP facilitators. The experience allows them to discuss issues relevant to their work amongst their peers, prepares them for substantive interaction at SHIFT and provides them with tools they can use to bring SHIFT’s coalition-building model back to their communities.

As much as ELP is a program, it’s also a collaboration. The following five core values shape our foundational community agreements.

Making Differences Our Strength

At the core of our vision is the belief that bringing together leaders from various sectors, cultures and lived experiences to discuss the most challenging problems facing our public health and our natural world’s survival makes us stronger, smarter and more resilient.

Sharing the Gift of Mutual Respect

Personal investments in one another are our foundation. When we invest in trust and respect, we grow individually and as a community. This allows us to build upon our shared experiences at SHIFT and ELP with new allies and partnerships.

Advocating For Our Planet and Its Inhabitants

We are part of the natural world. We learn from it and about it, and are partners in its future.

Embracing Personal Challenge

Building a diverse coalition is difficult and complicated. We enter this work with the expectation that deeply held beliefs may be challenged—and that changing our perspectives and our minds to develop new ways of thinking may be critical to our shared success.

Leading with Relationship

SHIFT and ELP are built to foster and create personal relationships. The resulting alliances make our work fun, sustainable and enhance our ability to protect our natural world.

 

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