BEA Steering Committee
Dr. P. Qasimah Boston
Grassroots Representative
Tallahassee Food Network
My name is Dr. P. Qasimah Boston. I am a community advocate, trained in behavior science and public health practices and I have expertise in the National Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services standards and in participatory processes. Through the Tallahassee Food Network, I practice my passion of working with people to improve community health and wellbeing and to strengthen community capacity to address food insecurity and mental health challenges which are deeply connected to EJ. My work in collaboration with many helps to ensure justice for all. As a co-founder of the Tallahassee Food Network, and a Moving Forward Network (MFN) Advisory Board member, my efforts to engage youth voices in the movement globally and to build the leadership capacity of young people align.
Much of my Movement work is in small and rural communities and examples include; engaging community members in urban and rural communities to share perspectives and experiences regarding the impacts of COVID-19 and racism; engaging global youth voices in an annual youth symposium on food & hunger: opportunities for policy and change; engaging community voices in monthly conversations called, “Collards & Cornbread; and implementing a statewide campaign on the National Environmental Policy Act process. I teach West African dance and I actually made my own Kayak. Family is very important to me, and I spend a lot of time connecting to each of my family members. My motto is, “innovation makes it better” and “little by little a bird builds its nest.”
Jamesa Johnson-Greer, J.D.
Grassroots Representative
Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition
Jamesa Johnson-Greer, J.D. is a Climate Justice Director for Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition where she works to build opportunities for community power to be exercised in climate and environmental policy. She is a creative, thoughtful leader with 10 years of experience in cross-disciplinary research, technical writing and grassroots advocacy focused on environmental justice, community and human rights. Jamesa is a graduate of Wayne State University Law School and is also an Alumna of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies with a focus on Global Health and the Environment. As a native Detroiter, Jamesa is passionate about protecting society’s most vulnerable people and places through advocating for transformational systems change.
Beto Lugo-Martinez
Grassroots Representative
CleanAirNow
Beto is an environmental justice organizer & co-executive director of CleanAirNow EJ Organization. Beto serves to raise community voices in the fight against environmental racism and to overcome systemic exclusion of frontline communities from the decision making process. His lived experience, growing up fenceline to a petrochemical facility continues to drive his work at the intersection of climate, environmental justice, and public health. He is a founding member of the California Environmental Justice Coalition, SciCAN.org, Co-Founder of La Union Hace La Fuerza a farmworker justice organization and member of CJ & EJ networks including the EJ Leadership Forum and Moving Forward Network. Beto’s contributions to the movement include organizing, legislation that prioritizes environmental justice and community led research amongst many other community engaged initiatives that directly informed state policy. Beto has co-authored multiple academic publications on CBPR, air pollution, data accessibility, community engagement. He is also serves in advisory board roles of professional associations and academic institutions, such as (APHA), USC, Health Effects Institute EJ Advisory Group.
Carlos Marentes
Grassroots Representative
Border Agricultural Workers Project
Carlos Marentes has been a labor organizer and farm worker advocate since 1977. In 1983, he founded Sin Fronteras Organizing Project to support efforts to improve the working and living conditions of the migrant and seasonal farm workers of Southern New Mexico and Far West Texas. Marentes is also the founder and director of the Border Agricultural Workers Project, an effort to organize the farm workers of the US-Mexico border. He participates in many local, state and national organizations that deal with issues of poverty and economic inequality, and coordinates the International Committee on Migration and Rural Workers of La Vía Campesina and has attended many conferences and workshops in U.S. as well as in Mexico, Europe, India, South Africa and Southeast Asia, to advocate for migrant workers rights.
Melissa Miles
Grassroots Caucus
New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance
Melissa Miles (she/her) is an Environmental and Climate Justice advocate who began her career as a community organizer while living in an Environmental Justice community in Newark, New Jersey. She holds an MA in Anthropology from The New School but maintains that her knowledge of EJ is rooted in her lived experience and her commitment to making sure that people at the frontlines are the protagonists in the struggle for their future. Melissa’s vision is to support environmental and climate justice for communities that are rooted in place, where people can live, work, learn, and play in health. She is the Executive Director of New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, a statewide organization working towards a Just Transition with New Jersey's low-income and Of Color communities overburdened by pollution and climate change impacts. Melissa also serves on NJDEP’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council, the Coalition for Healthy Ports, and the Moving Forward Network Advisory Board.
Frankie Orona
Grassroots Representative
Society of Native Nations
Tongva, Chamash & Borrado
Frankie is a Husband of 22 years, a Father, an Entrepreneur, and an Activist. He is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Society of Native Nations, "an Intertribal Native American Nonprofit" based in Texas and California. Frankie is also a member of the American Indian Movement and the Environmental Liaison for his Tribal Chief, Anthony Morales, of the Gabrieleno Tongva Tribe of the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians.
Entrepreneurship has allowed him to turn his lifelong passion for serving indigenous communities of North and South America into the Society of Native Nations, addressing issues domestically, nationally, and globally focusing on Native American rights, social justice, and environmental justice issues. He sits on many coalition steering committees, nonprofit environmental organizational boards and is part of the UN INC EJ Plastics Treaty Delegation. Frankie lives with his wife and their children in San Antonio, Texas.
Leslie G. Fields, ESQ.
Green Caucus
Sierra Club
Leslie Fields brings thirty years of federal, state, local, and international environmental justice and environmental and civil rights law and policy experience to the Sierra Club. She serves on the boards of the Children’s Environmental Health Network and Empower DC. She also serves on the board of Adeso African Solutions (an East African natural resources and development organization based in Nairobi, Kenya) and has been an adjunct law professor at Howard University School of Law. Fields was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Board of Directors of the Mickey Leland Urban Air Toxics Research Center. In 2018, she received the American Bar Association SEER Dedication to Diversity and Justice Award and the Sierra Club Mike McCloskey Award. In 2021, Fields received the Gertrude R. Rush Award from the National Bar Association. Leslie Fields is a graduate of Cornell University, the Georgetown University Law Center, and licensed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and the US Supreme Court.
Michell McIntyre
Green Caucus
Center for Science and Democracy, Union of Concerned Scientists
Michell McIntyre is the policy director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In her role, she coordinates the Center’s policy strategies, and helps align UCS research, supporter and member engagement, and government affairs for the greatest impact on advancing science-based policymaking.
Prior to joining UCS, Ms. McIntyre worked for Earthjustice, leading their campaign on access to justice and directing a team of lobbyists and litigators. Ms. McIntyre has also served as manager for the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards with Public Citizen, working to get quality science-based public protections passed and fighting off attacks on the US regulatory system, and as the Outreach Director for Labor & Workers Rights with the National Consumers League. Before entering the nonprofit sector, Michell was a political consultant for various progressive candidates and organizations including Sierra Club, Women's Voices Women Vote, American Federation of Teachers, and the AFL-CIO.
Gavi Reiter
Funder Ally Caucus
Pisces Foundation
Gavi Reiter (she/they) is the Climate & Energy Program Associate at the Pisces Foundation. Prior to joining Pisces, she worked as a distributed organizer at Lead Locally where Gavi supported local organizers and organizations to elect down-ballot leaders who will stop fossil fuel infrastructure and create good, green jobs in the South. Additionally, they served as a COVID-19 Emergency Manager and NYC Urban Fellow at New York City Emergency Management.
Gavi is a member of SustainUS, a frontline youth-led organization which organizes young people to advocate for global climate justice. With SustainUS, Gavi led a delegation of young New Yorkers impacted by the climate crisis to the UN Secretary General’s 2019 Climate Action Summit and was a U.S. Youth Delegate to COP24. Gavi has an M.S. in nonprofit leadership and B.A in earth sciences from the University of Pennsylvania, where they co-founded Fossil Free Penn and Sunrise Philly.
In loving memory of Cecil Corbin-Mark (1969-2020), champion of environmental justice and inaugural BEA Steering Committee member.