Board of Directors

PRESIDENT

JAY CUMBERLAND is the Law Center's Labor and Housing Attorney. He believes political theory, social movement theory, and an international perspective must inform his work supporting housing cooperative conversions and worker cooperative conversions. These conversions are, after all, political exercises happening in social spaces around the globe. Learning about Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi somewhat immediately propelled Jay into this work. He believes there’s a thick relationship between that introduction to cooperative economics and politics and the way he approaches his present work. Jay’s approach finds less excitement in creating things from scratch than in making existing things different. In a world without unoccupied political space, he believes it is not only exciting but also necessary to learn to travel through what exists to arrive at our imagined futures.  

Jay received a B.A. with a double major in Philosophy and Religion from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama and a J.D. with a Social Justice and Public Interest Concentration from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He misses intermittent and unexpected Mississippi thunderstorms but has grown to love the ever-steady cycle of fog and sun in the Bay. He loves working with his hands (typing doesn’t count). He comes by that honestly. His dad insisted he be equally good at stringing barbed-wire fences and at stringing together words. Hopefully that combination helps Jay play a role in creating a world, as the Zapatista’s say, in which many worlds exist.

SECRETARY

HASMIK GEGHAMYAN is a staff attorney at the Sustainable Economies Law Center. As an interdisciplinary, community-focused lawyer, Hasmik’s practice areas include democratic transitions of land into various models of community ownership, general labor-law compliance, and services tailored to cooperatives, small, democratically led businesses, and nonprofits. Hasmik believes that a cross-functional model of activism, policy, organizing, and law, led by frontline communities, can be used effectively to bring about a just and ecological society. She is a perennial hiker, a plant-nerd wannabe, and cherishes the power of transnational jazz as an instrument for collective liberation.

    TREASURER

EUNICE KWON is the Director of Asian Pacific American Student Development at UC Berkeley. Previously, she was the Director of Community Engagement at the Sustainable Economies Law Center and a Coro Fellow in San Francisco, where she worked with a range of organizations that included the Haas Sr. Foundation and the Bay Area Community College Consortium. She started her career as a communications consultant for several congressional and local political campaigns and for labor organizations such as the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance and the United Food and Commercial Workers. She currently serves on the board of the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and Asian Women United, a nonprofit that spotlights the diverse experiences of Asian American Pacific Islander women through publications, digital productions, and educational materials. She received her Masters in City Planning at UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design.

AT-LARGE MEMBERS

FARZANA SERANG is the Great Communities Collaborative Initiative Officer at The San Francisco Foundation, and former Executive Director of CoFED, the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive. Prior to CoFED, she worked at PolicyLink, one of the primary national advocacy organizations shaping a social and economic justice agenda for the country. She received her Masters in City Planning from MIT with a focus on community and economic development. During her studies she also worked with the Democracy Collaborative, Milk & Honey, and National Congress of American Indians.

ADRIEN SALAZAR is an environmental advocate, political ecologist, and poet receiving his Masters in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Adrien is committed to supporting communities in shaping policy and managing their resources to achieve community resilience, empowerment, and self-determination. His work focuses on land and resource rights, and engagement of frontline and marginalized communities in resource management and policy. He has supported campaigns in the San Francisco Bay Area with the Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity and the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter. He has also supported conservation of traditional agricultural practices among indigenous farmers in the Philippines. He hails from San Jose, California and Kalibo, Aklan, Philippines. He enjoys running, yoga, mindfulness meditation, and growing heirloom vegetables.

DESEREE FONTENOT is a black organizer, farmer, and ecology nerd. She is a collective member of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project (MG). MG inspires and engages in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. Deseree grew up between Southwest Louisiana and the Los Angeles area and has been based in the Bay Area for the last decade. Before joining MG, Deseree worked as both a farmer and educator focused on land & liberation with the People of Color Sustainable Housing Network and the Queer EcoJustice Project. As a descendant of three generations of rural Louisiana sharecroppers, Deseree is committed to strengthening movements for black land, healing and liberation. She loves to nerd out on queer botany, creole/cajun food and history, and regenerative design practices.