About me and my work
I'm a consultant, educator, and facilitator and I work with environmental organizations, mission-driven organizations, and nonprofits on the gap between what they stand for publicly and how they operate internally.
My long-term goal is to help dismantle systemic inequities. Systems are created and sustained by people, which means meaningful change takes more than a shift in policy or structure. It takes investment in the people who operate and exist inside of them.
Together we work toward a world where someone's identity doesn't determine their ability to thrive. I start from the conviction that the seeds of a solution already live with the people experiencing the problem.
For two decades, I've been drawn to the same question: how well do mission-driven organizations care for the people carrying the mission?
Your organization holds most of what it needs. What's missing is usually someone skilled enough to surface it and guide what comes next.
But first, I spent nearly a decade running a national conservation program in Wisconsin, building pathways into environmental careers for young people the field had overlooked.
When that program ended unexpectedly, I didn't want the mission to end with it. So in 2016, I started Cream City Conservation, which became the first Black-owned company in Wisconsin to be certified as a B Corporation.
I designed it with two arms that fed each other: The consulting side worked to change the environmental sector from the inside, helping organizations examine the cultures and practices that kept them homogenous. The Conservation Corps side created paid training and work for young adults in trail building, invasive species management, green infrastructure, and urban agriculture, mostly on public lands.
Cream City Conservation Corp. grew into a seven-figure social enterprise.
HOW I GOT HERE
B Lab named it to the Best for the World list in the Workers category, which puts how we treated our own staff in the top five percent of certified companies globally.
Profits from the consulting funded the Corps. So every organization that hired me to examine who it was hiring was, at the same time, paying to train the people who could contribute to their mission.
Then the federal landscape shifted and the Corps closed.
But the work didn't disappear. It went with our people.
The young people we trained and the staff we employed now hold roles across the environmental sector, carrying these practices into the field.
Closing the Corps moved me to concentrate my full efforts on consulting, facilitation, teaching, mediation, and the restorative retreats I lead in Mexico and the Philippines.
Too many people in this field experience depletion as their operating condition. But restoration is what allows us to continue this work.
Nobody gets it right every time. Repair stays available to anyone willing to keep learning and implementing change.
When people know what's expected, they’re able to connect and collaborate.
Self-abandonment is not a job requirement.
Justice is a practice without a finish line.
clarity is kindness
People can face hard truths about their impact without being humiliated or discarded. Unity is fostered when we don't bypass hard situations.
A workshop plants a seed but without follow-through, it can do more harm than good.
Diversity is the result of the right culture and practices. Otherwise, it's tokenization.
Accountability and dignity are not opposites.
Change requires education and implementation.
Representation is not true diversity.
A few beliefs that shape our work
WHAT I BELIEVE
Wisconsin Conservation Voters Green Tie Award
United Way Philanthropic 5
Force for Positive Change Award
WAEE Eco-Justice Award
YWCA Eliminating Racism Award
Field Museum Parker/Gentry Award
Appointee to Governor Evers' Climate Action Task Force and the Milwaukee City/County Climate & Economic Equity Task Force.
Delegate to the US Water Alliance's Water Equity Team.
Board service with The Wilderness Society and the Green Leadership Trust.
I'm a formally trained facilitator in restorative practice, nonviolent communication, and culturally responsive teaching, with additional experience in risk management, harm reduction, mediation, and organizational coaching.
I studied sociology, community education, and nonprofit management at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside and UW–Milwaukee.
I lead every engagement myself and bring in a trusted team of facilitators and consultants when the work calls for it.
Appointments & service
training and education
From federal agencies including the U.S. Forest Service to national nonprofits including The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, 350.org, and the Student Conservation Association.
certified b corporation
Cream City Conservation Corp. became the first Black-owned company in Wisconsin to be certified as a B Corporation
served over 100 organizations
Selected recognition
Credentials & recognition
Cream City Conservation Corp. was founded and is still based in Milwaukee, WI, and my roots now run through Milwaukee, Cebu, and Quintana Roo.
I speak fluent English, Tagalog, Visayan, and intermediate Spanish.
I share this because moving between cultures isn't a footnote to this work. It taught me early that two people can sit in the same room and have entirely different experiences of it.
It's also why my work centers equity rather than culture more broadly. If the same circumstances produce different outcomes depending on identity, then fairness isn't a condition an organization achieves and holds. It's a discipline, one that depends on measuring what's happening and addressing what the measurement surfaces.
When I'm not teaching or consulting, I'm usually traveling, salsa dancing, cooking, or losing track of time in nature. Whether I'm working or wandering, I remain a student of the world.
I'm based between Mexico, the Philippines and the United States, and I work with organizations across the U.S., virtually and on site.
where i am now
When I founded Cream City Conservation in 2016, I set an audacious goal to help organizations embody the practices and workplace cultures necessary to foster a dynamic and diverse workforce, and bring representation of people of color to 30% by 2030.
People of color experience the effects of environmental degradation first and worst. Generations of redlining, discriminatory policy, and inequitable decisions made in the name of "race neutrality" placed communities of color nearer to polluting industry and kept them out of the rooms where environmental policy gets written.
Organizations that decide without the people most affected produce weaker solutions and repeat the harm they set out to solve.
The number came from the data. In 2014, Green 2.0 commissioned Dr. Dorceta Taylor's The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations, which found that people of color made up roughly 38% of the U.S. population but no more than 16% of staff or boards across the NGOs, foundations, and agencies surveyed, and under 12% of leadership positions.
What has come since is unstable. When Green 2.0 surveyed the 40 largest environmental NGOs and foundations in 2018, senior staff of color had risen from 14% to 21% at the NGOs and fallen from 33% to 4% at the foundations. They titled that report Leaking Talent. The truth is that most organizations can move their hiring numbers within a year if they decide to. Sustaining those numbers asks more of them.