The Climate Leadership Circle

Abigail Doerr (she/her) is a climate and transportation policy leader with a track record of building impactful coalitions and driving transformative policy change at the local, regional, and state levels. Her climate journey began through advoacy fighting bus cuts and securing transit funding which evolved into a career focused on climate and environmental justice. Throughout her career, she successfully secured billions of dollars in clean infrastructure funding and pioneered transformative carbon reduction and air quality policies. You can often catch Abigail hunkered over her sewing machine, a pottery wheel, or paddling around a pool.

Jessica Guadalupe Tovar is the Executive Director with the Local Clean Energy Alliance based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a longtime environmental justice community organizer and has spent the last 10 years advancing clean energy solutions to bring clean power to the people! She grew up in housing projects near an industrial pollution corridor in East Los Angeles. The experience of cancer in her family led her to focus on preventing and reducing local industrial pollution and to advocate for policies to protect vulnerable communities. Jessica has worked for over 22 years as an environmental justice and climate organizer in a variety of urban, rural, and indigenous communities throughout California and Arizona. Her focus is mentoring young organizers and building new leadership for energy democracy to fight for a just transition and bring, “Clean Power to the People!”

Susan’s passion lies in working with solutions-based grassroots projects to help create a more resilient, healthy and equitable world. Susan has more than 30 years of experience working as program creator, fundraiser, project manager, strategic planner and educator in the field of community resilience and sustainability. She has created (or co-created) the NorCal Resilience Network, Nature’s Voices Project, Climate Action Groups at the Ecology Center, the Green Star Schools program with the Green Schools Initiative, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica. Susan is founder and Project Director of the local nonprofit organization Collective Resilience, providing guidance for resilient places (hubs, spaces and neighborhoods) and networks to evolve and flourish, through online resources, presentations, capacity building opportunities and strategic planning. She lives in a tight-knit neighborhood in Berkeley with her daughter and husband, where she enjoys hiking, music and building community.

Naama serves as the Senior Manager of the Climate Ready Communities Program at The Watershed Project, a program she envisioned and initiated to build community resilience through participatory design and nature-based solutions. She fosters collaborations between communities, governmental agencies, and designers/engineers to address climate change impacts in ways that center equity and local leadership. In this role, she has led transformative projects such as the North Richmond Collaborative Shoreline Adaptation Project—an initiative that brings together community members, planners, and engineers to develop resilient shoreline solutions to sea level rise—and Wildcat Watershed Initiative for Leadership and Development (WWILD), which empowers local residents to drive people-centric creek restoration. Holding a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Naama previously worked as a research scientist and lecturer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the University of California, Berkeley. As a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for Global Development Projects, she led evaluation and development efforts with smallholder farmers, Indigenous communities, and grassroots organizations in Central America and Africa. A Richmond resident, Naama has co-led several local Environmental Justice programs.

Katie Robinson is a Senior Innovation Fellow with the Pisces Foundation, where she supports and advises the foundation’s impact-oriented program strategy and operations focused on collaboration and movement building. Katie was most recently the founding Director of Mosaic, a national field catalyst and funder focused on building a broader, more influential environmental movement in the U.S. by investing in field-wide infrastructure critical to the success of all social movements. During her tenure, Mosaic facilitated the collective investment of approximately $27 million in 300+ environmental and justice organizations across the U.S. Prior to that, Katie advised public and private clients in design thinking, social innovation, and environmental policy at Deloitte Consulting. Katie holds an M.P.A. from the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and a B.A. in environmental science & policy from the College of William & Mary.

Description goes hFrancesca Pedraza is a passionate community advocate and nature enthusiast whose life and work are deeply rooted in connection—connection to the land, to family, and to the Latinx community she has served for over two decades. Currently serving as Program Director of Rise South City, Francesca has been involved in community-based work since 1993, when she joined the Young Latino Leaders program in Redwood City. The group connected youth with resources and created spaces for leadership, unity, and support within the Latinx community.  Her career has spanned roles in education, family advocacy, outreach, and community enrichment through organizations such as MAAC Head Start, Optimum Behavioral Health, MiraCosta College, Palo Alto University, and Nuestra Casa. Throughout her journey, Francesca has remained steadfast in her commitment to equity, empowerment, and culturally rooted support for families. 

Kelly Havens is a San Francisco Bay Area centered climate resilience practitioner. Kelly has over fifteen years of experience leading projects with public and private clients focused on climate adaptation, urban greening, stormwater quality, integrated water resources management, and community co-benefits. Through her work, Kelly has managed and led all aspects of project planning and implementation – including goal setting, funding procurement, planning studies, feasibility evaluation, stakeholder, advisor, and public outreach, concept development, pre-design investigations, and engineering design. Kelly has managed many collaborative projects that require deep listening to clients and stakeholders and producing products that meet project objectives while ensuring that stakeholders feel heard. Several of these projects have led to cross-sector, innovative approaches to funding, climate resilience planning, and guidance – including the OneWatershed Framework in San Mateo County, the Contra Costa County Regional Alternative Compliance System, and the Climate Resilience Resources Guide, among other projects. Kelly received her B.S. and M.S. from UCLA and is a Professional Engineer licensed in California.