Lori helped launch the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), a global network of public interest advocates now spanning 80 countries, in 1991. She has traveled to Asia, Europe, the Middle East, the South Pacific, and Central and South America to work with local advocates to protect the planet and defend human rights. These days, she is most deeply engaged with colleagues in Mexico and Central America, and programmatically focused on protecting marine and coastal biodiversity and coordinating ELAW’s work to Defend Defenders – fighting back against attempts to chill civil society leaders worldwide. Lori oversees administration and finance at the ELAW Secretariat in Oregon. She earned a B.A. degree from Hollins University in English with a minor in Theater Arts. She studied Business for Graduates at the Katharine Gibbs School in Boston, MA, and worked as a paralegal in environmental, administrative and nonprofit law in Oregon. She was a founding Board member of the Western Environmental Law Center, where she served for 23 years supporting that work to protect wild places and communities in the Western United States. Lori says, “I’m inspired by OAEC’s hands-on important work, and pleased to serve. Alongside my Board service, I learn from the experts about cutting edge strategies for building community resilience in the face of a changing planet.”
Susan McGovern is a member of the intentional community that resides at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, as well as a founding member of OAEC. In her 23 years on the land, she has engaged in consensus-based community governance and land stewardship to support the missions of both the residential community and OAEC. One of the greatest outcomes of this joint project to date for her has been the creation of a vast network of progressive people who now consider themselves to be part of the larger OAEC community. Susan is also a teacher at Salmon Creek School, Occidentalās public school. Working with hundreds of students and their families over the years, she has created close links to the local community. Susan has a special interest in place-based education, an approach that supports the idea that students learn best when their curriculum is connected to place. Closely aligned with this approach are values placed on ecoliteracy, community service, and environmental stewardship. Susan has been instrumental to the realization of the schoolās place-based charter. *Not an independent, voting board member.
Gopal (he/him) has been involved in working for social, economic, environmental, and racial justice through organizing & campaigning, teaching, writing, speaking, and direct action since the late 1980s. He is a co-founder of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project, which inspires and engages in transformative action toward the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. MG is rooted in vibrant social movements led by low-income communities and Black, and Indigenous & communities of color committed to a Just Transition away from profit and pollution and toward healthy, resilient, and life-affirming local economies. MG is a founding member of the Climate Justice Alliance. Gopal has served on the staff collective and is now a member of the Planning Committee and Board and continues to work closely with MG on diverse projects.
Currently, Gopal teaches Race, Activism and Climate Justice; Asian Americans and Environmental Justice; and South Asians in the United States at San Francisco State University in the Race and Resistance Studies and Asian American Studies Departments. At SF State, Gopal is also on the steering committee for Climate Justice Leadership Initiatives and the Certificate in Climate Change Causes, Impacts, and Solutions. Gopal also teaches Ecological Systems Thinking/Science and Systems Thinking and Social Justice Frameworks for Sustainability in the Masters of Arts in Urban Sustainability program and Climate Justice and Environmental Justice in the undergraduate program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.
Gopal also supports movement building through his work with organizations including The Climate Justice Alliance, ETCgroup, NDN Collective, the Center for Story-based Strategy, Peopleās Solar Energy Fund, Grassroots International, and The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa among others. He was a Fellow with the Center for Economic Democracy from 2019-2022.
Gopal is a trainer with the Ruckus Society and The Center for Story-based Strategy and is a member of Asians4Black Lives and Bay Area Palestine Solidarity. Currently, he serves on the boards of Movement Generation, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, The Peopleās Solar Energy Fund, ETC Group, and Frontline Catalysts. He has recently served on the boards of The Center for Story-based Strategy and The Working World. He is also on the advisory boards of the Catalyst Project and The Sustainable Economies Law Center. Gopal works at the intersection of ecology, and economy, ending extractivism & empire and creating commons and community.
Gopal has been a campaigner for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition on human rights and environmental justice in the high-tech industry and the Oil Campaigner for Project Underground, a human and environmental rights organization that supported communities resisting oil and mining exploitation around the world. He has been active in many people-powered direct action movements, including the Global Justice/Anti-Globalization Movement, Direct Action to Stop the War, the Climate Justice movement, Take Back the Land, Occupy, and as an ally with Black Lives Matter and Indigenous Sovereignty struggles.
Gopal was an elementary and early childhood educator, working formerly as a teacher and also as the co-director of the Tenderloin Childcare Center, a community-based childcare center supporting children and families forced into homelessness. He has worked in teacher education and education organizing in the US and India.
Most importantly, Gopal is the parent of two amazing rabble-rousers. He lives in Huichin/Oakland in an intentional, multi-generational social justice community.
Janelle OrsiĀ is a lawyer, advocate, writer, and cartoonist focused onĀ cooperatives, the sharing economy, urban agriculture, shared housing, local currencies, and rebuilding the commons.Ā SheĀ is Co-founder and Executive Director of theĀ Sustainable Economies Law CenterĀ (SELC), which facilitates the growth of more sustainable and localized economies through education, research, and advocacy.Ā Janelle has also worked in private law practice at theĀ Law Office of Janelle Orsi, focusing on sharing economy law since 2008.Ā
Janelle is the author ofĀ Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise, and Local Sustainable EconomiesĀ (ABA Books 2012), and co-author ofĀ The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build CommunityĀ (Nolo Press 2009). Janelle says, “I’m in awe of OAEC’s work, accomplishments, and the values and thoughtfulness the staff put into everything they do. Their democratic staff governance structure, in particular, has long been an inspiration to me, so I’m proud to be supporting it!”