Board of Directors

Melissa Nelson

President

Melissa K. Nelson is a Native ecologist, writer, media-maker and indigenous scholar-activist. She is the president/CEO of The Cultural Conservancy, a Native-led indigenous rights organization she had directed since 1993. She is also associate professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University where she teaches courses in Native Science. Her work is dedicated to indigenous rights and revitalization, biocultural heritage protection and environmental justice, intercultural solidarity, and the renewal and celebration of community health and cultural arts. For nearly two decades Melissa has been involved in the Native American food movement in North America and since 2006 in the indigenous food sovereignty movement internationally. Melissa is a Switzer Environmental Fellow and has received awards for documentary films, community engagement, and experiential education. She publishes essays in academic and popular journals and books and documents Native issues through audio and video recordings. Her first edited anthology Original Instructions – Indigenous Teachings For A Sustainable Future (2008), focuses on the persistence of Traditional Ecological Knowledge by contemporary Native communities. Her next edited anthology, Keepers of the Green World: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Sustainability will be out in 2018. She has served on numerous boards of directors, including Earth Island Institute, Bioneers, and the Center for Whole Communities. Melissa is Anishinaabe, Cree, Métis, and Norwegian. She is a proud member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Melissa says, “I’ve loved OAEC since the beginning as I have been blessed to know some of its co-founders from UC Santa Cruz. I’m thrilled to deepen my kinship with OAEC by serving as a board member and supporting it’s cutting-edge, holistic sustainable model of living-in-place with deep respect and reverence for ecological processes and local peoples.”

Lori Maddox

Treasurer

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*

Secretary

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, Occidental’s 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 school’s place-based charter. *Not an independent, voting board member.

Gopal Dayaneni

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, People’s 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 People’s 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 Orsi

Janelle Orsi is a lawyer, advocate, writer, and cartoonist focused on cooperatives, the sharing economy, urban agriculture, shared housing, local currencies, and rebuilding the commons. She is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), which facilitates the growth of more sustainable and localized economies through education, research, and advocacy. Janelle has also worked in private law practice at the Law Office of Janelle Orsi, focusing on sharing economy law since 2008.  Janelle is the author of Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise, and Local Sustainable Economies (ABA Books 2012), and co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (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!”