Green 2.0 Fellows

Building confidence in your career can be difficult, especially when you’re bringing your own unique culture, background, and perspective to the workplace. Green 2.0 asked environmental leaders of color to tell us how they gained confidence in themselves in their environmental careers, and what advice they have for others like them.

Ogechi Hubert, Green 2.0’s Summer Fellow, is an environmental justice advocate and interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, driven by a passion for creating community-centered, creative solutions to today’s most pressing environmental challenges. In her blog, Ogechi explores the importance of justice-centered gardens and shares tips on how to create one.

Layla Razek, Green 2.0’s Digital Media and Communications Fellow, explores how artistic expression can be used to disrupt dominant modes of thought. Retracing her own family history of resistance, her poem unfolds into a journey to find her place in a global movement for social and environmental justice.

Maliyah Womack reflects on her journey navigating the environmental sector and the feeling of imposter syndrome that follows many young women of color in the movement. Despite years of experience in community organizing, she often felt out of place in the environmental space. Through self-reflection and shared experiences with other women of color, Maliyah came to realize that their lived experiences are their greatest strengths.

Lisette Perez discovered her passion for environmental education, storytelling, and advocacy post-graduation. Her career includes roles with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service in Juneau, and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

In this blog, Green 2.0 Fellow Ki'Ana Speights explores how their identity as a Black, Queer person intersects with the ecological world, and how they work to reclaim their space in nature. They dissect how White-heteronormative binaries were designed to exclude BIPOC people and make them feel othered. Through the lens of queer ecology, they imagine a future where society can accept and reflect the fluidity of nature.

In this blog, Green 2.0 Fellow Kevin Hernandez discusses the colonization of Mexico and how it streamlined Mexican food becoming meat-centric along with his experience as a vegetarian Mexican-American. He proposes that people try to understand their culture and encourages them to try a plant-based diet.

In this blog, Green 2.0 Fall Fellow Yosi Zelalem encourages the environmental movement to adopt an anti-racist framework and create messaging that helps bridge historical gaps between communities.

Green 2.0’s Fall Fellow Michelle Gin dissects White-dominated plant-based diet culture and proposes flexitarianism as a more nuanced diet alternative and ideological framework to affect change at both an individual and systemic level.

Green 2.0 Summer Fellow Andres Vivero is owner and founder of LB Glass Pickup, a curbside glass recycling company operating in Northern Virginia. In this blog, Andres discusses the complications of glass recycling and how his business works to increase recycling accessibility within his community and beyond.