My name is Priscila Papias, and I am originally from South East Los Angeles, California. I am completing my MS degree at the University of Michigan, where my focus is conservation ecology. I have a background in environmental history from the UC Berkeley, and am interested in community development, bilingual environmental education, and urban sustainability.

Carolina Prado is a Ph.D. candidate in environmental and women’s studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines hazardous waste sites, air pollution and environmental stewardship of rivers in the Tijuana-San Diego region.  She has been an active environmental justice advocate in the border region and participates in a food justice collective in Oakland.  As a future action-oriented professor, Carolina envisions transforming the cross-border environment to be more healthy and just for communities on both sides of the border.

Victoria Ruddle recently completed her Master of Science in Marine Biology at the College of Charleston, South Carolina. Originally from upstate New York, she has a BS in Biology from St. Lawrence University. Though her graduate research focused on the population status of endangered sturgeon in South Carolina, she developed an interest in marine policy and the intersection of research and conservation. She combined her research skills with her passion for outreach and science communication at the Ocean Research Conservation Association in Fort Pierce, Florida as a part of the Environmental Fellows Program. She is now an Assistant Grant Specialist with the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program at the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Massachusetts, where she reports on federal initiatives to fund wildlife conservation in the Northeast.

Marie Schaefer is a Ph.D. candidate in Community Sustainability at Michigan State University (MSU). Schaefer is a founding member of the MSU Indigenous Graduate Student Collective, and a Graduate Fellow in the U.S. Geological Survey’s Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. She received a bachelor’s in Anthropology from Eastern Michigan University, and a master’s in Applied Anthropology from Northern Arizona University. Schaeffer is of Anishinaabe (Odawa) descent. She has worked with tribes from all over the country. Her work focuses on the revitalization of indigenous knowledge systems, especially manoomin (wild rice). Schaefer is interested in using community-based participatory methods to understand the braiding of indigenous knowledges with scientific knowledge.