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Meet the staff of the Sustainable Economies Law Center, working across more than ten program areas to bridge the gap in legal education, research, advice, and advocacy to transition from destructive economic systems to innovative and cooperative solutions.

Looking to connect with us? Try looking below at each staff member's program areas or come to one of our upcoming events.

Janelle Orsi - Executive Director & Co-Founder

Janelle is Sustainable Economies Law Center's chief visionary, continually developing ideas and strategies for stronger, more resilient economies. She provides guidance and support to each program circle and leads the Legal Profession in the New Economy program. She is also the Cartoonist-in-Chief, and her works can be found here and all over our website. And check out her book: Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy (ABA Books 2012).  

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More about Janelle: theselc.org/janelle_orsi

Neil Thapar - Food & Farm Attorney

Neil leads Sustainable Economies Law Center’s Food and Farm Program. He is passionate about building collective power within communities of color to recreate a healthy, just, and resilient food system. Neil’s definition of happiness is his dog, Sutro.

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Contact Neil at neil@theselc.org

More about Neil: theselc.org/neil_thapar 

Christina Oatfield - Policy Director

Christina is a leader of Sustainable Economies Law Center’s Food Program and she supports the Grassroots Finance Program. She also leads California state legislative campaigns in a variety of issue areas. While she is not yet licensed to practice law, her areas of expertise include food safety laws, agricultural laws, securities laws, and cooperative and nonprofit corporations.

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Contact Christina at Christina@theSELC.org

More about Christina: theselc.org/christina_oatfield 

Cameron Rhudy - Staff Attorney

Cameron leads Sustainable Economies Law Center’s Fellowship Program, which supports lawyers building resilient local economies. She also provides legal support to the Grassroots Finance Program and the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe Program.

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Contact Cameron at cameron@theselc.org 

More about Cameron: theselc.org/cameron_rhudy

Yassi Eskandari - Policy Director

Yassi leads the Law Center’s local and regional policy work and co-manages the groundbreaking Transformative Policymakers project. She primarily focuses on worker cooperatives, direct legal services, food systems, and renewable energy, and serves as President of the center's Board of Directors. In 2017, Yassi passed the California bar exam without going to law school, and is honored to join a movement of lawyers who are making our economy work for the planet and the 99 percent. 

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Contact Yassi at  yassi@theselc.org 

More about Yassi: theselc.org/yassi_eskandari 

Ricardo Samir Nuñez - Director of Economic Democracy

Ricardo co-coordinates the Law Center’s education, research, advocacy, and advice for equitable, democratic enterprises. Programs and projects include the Worker Coop Academy, Co-opLaw.org, policy advocacy at the local and state level, building a cooperative support ecosystem, and much more! He endeavor to co-create policies, structures, and institutions that empower communities to liberate themselves from systems of economic and social oppression. He is currently on the board of the California Center for Cooperative Development and the Board President of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. He's also becoming a lawyer without going to law school through the California Law Office Study Program (likelincoln.org).

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Contact Ricardo at ricardo@theselc.org

More about Ricardo: theselc.org/ricardo_nunez 

Chris Tittle - Director of Organizational Resilience

Chris focuses on participatory governance for community-controlled economies, and co-leads or contributes to the Law Center’s Housing, Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits, Farmland, and Money & Finance Programs. He also helps coordinate much of the Law Center's internal governance, grant writing, and grassroots fundraising. Chris practices Aikido, is committed to collective liberation, and once traveled from Japan to West Africa by land and sea.

Contact Chris at chris@theselc.org

More about Chris: theselc.org/chris_tittle 

Sara Stephens - Housing & Cooperatives Attorney

Sara leads Sustainable Economies Law Center’s Housing Program and contributes legal support to the Cooperatives and City Policies programs. She is committed to supporting community-led solutions to housing and economic inequity. She also likes running and gluten-free baking.

Contact Sara at sara@theselc.org

More about Sara at: theselc.org/sara_stephens

Subin DeVar - Community Renewable Energy Program Director 

Subin (formerly Subin Varghese) leads the Community Renewable Energy Program, working to ensure that it is primarily communities, nonprofits, cooperatives, and households -- not large utilities -- that will own and control energy infrastructure as society transitions to renewable energy.

Contact Subin at subin@theselc.org 

More about Subin at: theselc.org/Subin_DeVar

Elizabeth Burnett - Staff Attorney

Elizabeth focuses on funding development and strategic partnership outreach for Sustainable Economies Law Center in order to expand the breadth and types of community support for the Law Center as it grows and expands programs for community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment. Elizabeth also provides legal support to the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe Program.

Contact Elizabeth at elizabeth@theselc.org

More about Elizabeth:theselc.org/elizabeth_burnett

Sue Bennett - Director of Operations & Miscellaneous Stuff

Sue ensures the organization's office space and internal operations contribute to the wellbeing of staff and the effectiveness of the Sustainable Economies Law Center’s programs.

Sue has spent 25 years working in the nonprofit sector in a variety of program and administrative roles. When not reading a book, she is searching for a camping spot near the ocean or in a forest. 

Contact Sue at sue@theselc.org

More about Sue: theselc.org/sue_bennett

Charlotte Tsui - Skadden Fellow

Charlotte is a Skadden Fellow with the Center's Cooperatives programs. Her fellowship work is focused on supporting immigrant worker-owned businesses, particularly those from the domestic work sector and Asian Pacific Islander communities. Charlotte also provides support to the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe Program. 

Contact Charlotte at charlotte@theselc.org

More about Charlotte: theselc.org/charlotte_tsui

Jay Cumberland - Legal Research and Policy Specialist

Jay supports the Policy Circle and Cooperatives Circle. He assists with Policy Cafes, which allow community members to obtainlegal advice on forming and implementing policies at the state and local levels. He assists in identifying policy opportunities related to worker cooperatives, and he works with the Worker Coop Brigade, a group of worker coop worker-owners, to pursue those opportunities. He also performs research on miscellaneous topics, like the possibility of allowing self-directed solo 401(k)s to invest in local economies.

Jay attends the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where he is in his second year. Jay is from Jackson, Mississippi, but had left the South to become a lawyer focused on alleviating poverty. 

Contact Jay at jay@theselc.org

More about Jay: theselc.org/jay_cumberland

Tia Katrina Taruc-Myers - Director of Legal Education

Tia Katrina Taruc-Myers is the Sustainable Economies Law Center’s new Legal Cafe Director! She joined the Law Center excited to recruit volunteer attorneys to help folks create and control their own economies.

Passionate about redistributing power and wealth, Tia spends her time promoting participatory budgeting, worker-owned cooperatives, and economic justice for domestic violence survivors.

 Contact Tia at tia@theselc.org

More about Tia: theselc.org/tia

Gregory Jackson- Equal Justice Works Fellow
Sponsored by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

Greg is an Equal Justice Works Fellow within the Center's Housing and Cooperatives programs. Greg assists the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative as Partnership Director. His fellowship work is focused on educating Black residents in East Oakland through a book club and workshop series, laying the groundwork for sovereign grassroots economic development rooted in community ownership, resource sharing, and collective decision making.

Contact Greg at greg@theselc.org

More about Greg: theselc.org/greg

Saki Bailey - Scholar-in-Residence 

Saki is an activist, researcher, and writer on the Commons. At Sustainable Economies Law Center, Saki will be documenting and writing articles about the development of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative and supporting its communications needs. She will also be providing feedback on and contributing to the Law Center’s policy analysis and advocacy, particularly on policies that support and encourage the commons and economic democracy.

More about Saki: http://www.theselc.org/saki

Adam Stocker - Transportation Consultant

Adam is a transportation engineer and shared mobility researcher. In addition to serving as a consultant to the Sustainable Economies Law Center, he holds a research and project management position at the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley. In partnership with the Law Center, Adam will be leading the design and implementation of a research project focusing on the potential of platform cooperatives in transportation and shared mobility applications.

More about Adam: http://www.theselc.org/adam_stocker

That's right! We're looking for a Bay Area resident interested in a full-time position (which we define as 30 hours per week), to join our dynamic, democratic, and delightful organization. 

Cooperative economies aren't created in a vacuum, nor do they take root without the participation of broader community involvement. Every year during the month of May, we ask our friends, families, and allies to become monthly contributing members of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) and support the cultivation of the legal roots of just and resilient economies.

After our month-long #PeoplePoweredEconomies campaign, the results are in: you rock! We continue to be motivated by a sense of both urgency and opportunity to create people powered economies everywhere, and YOU give us the inspiration and support we need to make that happen. This is what a People Powered SELC looks like:

• Over 150 donors during the month of May
• 50 new Community Members
• Over $20,000 pledged
• Hundreds of dollars raised for our allies Richmond Grows Seed Library (Richmond, CA), Cooperation Jackson (Jackson, MS), and Phat Beets Produce (Oakland, CA)
• Oh yeah, and this…

Ricardo Samir Nuñez

Director of Economic Democracy

“Building just and resilient local economies through the power of cooperative enterprises”

         Contact Ricardo at ricardo@theselc.org

Ricardo coordinates Sustainable Economies Law Center’s education, research, advocacy, and advice for equitable, democratic enterprises as the Cooperatives Program Director. Programs and projects include the Worker Coop Academy, Co-opLaw.org, policy advocacy at the regional and state level, building a cooperative support ecosystem, and much more! Previously, Ricardo worked for the Peace Corps in Zambia and then with Our Place Housing Solutions coordinating homeless rehousing and eviction prevention services in southern Los Angeles county.

Roles

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As the Cooperatives Program Director, Ricardo coordinates the Law Center's legislative strategies, popular education, and legal research around worker-owned businesses. 

He is the lead coordinator for the Bay Area Worker Coop Academy, a semester long business Academy for worker coop entrepreneurs and worker coop developers. He also co-coordinates Co-opLaw.org, a collaborative national legal resource library for US based cooperatives. Co-opLaw.org is constantly being revised, updated, and added to, so let us know what areas you'd like us to research and create resources for! We are currently working with legal professionals and universities around the country to create a State-by-State guide for cooperatives enterprises. Please email Ricardo to let him know if you can support this effort!

He is also on the Board of the California Center for Cooperative Development and the Southern California Focus on Cooperation. He supports Southern California cooperative entrepreneurs and technical assistance providers. If you'd like to connect to the Southern California cooperative community, whether related to housing, food, worker, or other types of coops, please like the Southern California Coops Facebook page!

Ricardo also supports SELC's direct legal services programming, the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe. The Legal Cafe is a program that provides direct legal support to individuals and groups creating new solutions for resilient economies in Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, and beyond. Ricardo works primarily in the Cooperatives and the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe Programs and energizes roles within the Rethinking the Legal Profession and Work in the New Economy Programs. He also energizes multiple administrative roles within the Operations Circle.  

Regarding the Law Center's distributed administrative responsibilities, Ricardo supports in social media strategy, intern programming, grant funding, and membership engagement.

Ricardo is not an attorney. He is becoming an attorney without going to law school through the Law Office Study Program of the State Bar of California. The Law Office Study Program is an alternative to law school that allows would-be lawyers to obtain their attorney’s license through a four-year legal apprenticeship. Ricardo is working with current and past legal apprentices to create a support, advocacy, and match making organization for legal apprentices across the United States.  

Prior to Sustainable Economies Law Center

Ricardo began working domestically with cooperatives at the Los Angeles Eco-Village with the Los Angeles Worker Ownership Resources and Cooperative Services (LAWORCS) Committee. LAWORCS is an initiative to start a worker cooperative incubator and resource for the greater L.A. area. Prior to LAWORCS, Ricardo was a Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Case Manager working with low-income families to stop pending evictions and re-house homeless neighbors in southern LA County, primarily in Bellflower and Paramount. Prior to his housing work, Ricardo was a Rural Education Development Specialist in Zambia with the U.S. Peace Corps. Ricardo led efforts in capacity building with 15 rural, up-country schools. His focus within as a RED Specialist was on teacher training, teacher monitoring, and strengthening administrative management systems. His heart, though, belonged to the two village based Women’s Cooperatives that he supported and co-founded. Working with the Women's Cooperatives displayed the transformative power of the cooperative model in action. Ricardo also worked in concert with multiple Farmer’s Cooperatives providing trainings on sustainable farming practices and connections to resources.

Ricardo is from Long Beach, California, and he doesn't mind if you know it. #StrongBeach! 

Projects, Publications, and Interviews

Interview with Grassroots Economic Organizing (Spring 2015)

Personal Interests

Ricardo enjoys bodyboarding, cycling, traveling, and the ocean breeze. He is deeply committed to family, friends, and community.

Education, Training, and Notable Achievements

Ricardo is a graduate of  Cal State University Long Beach where he majored in Political Science (International Relations) and International Studies (Western Europe) with a minor in Anthropology (Cultural). He is also a graduate of St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, CA.

Ricardo was voted Orange County Weekly's 2007 Best Bartender of the Year. 

We want to live in a society where reliable and affordable legal support is available to all those creating the transition to localized, resilient economies.

The primary way that the Sustainable Economies Law Center provides legal advice is through our Resilient Communities Legal Cafe.

The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides direct legal advice, workshops, teach-ins, discussions, and legal services to businesses and organizations that are trying to make their communities a better place to live. Legal advice is provided on a first-come, first-serve basis, so no appointment is necessary. Find our where the next Legal Cafe is and sign up here!

At the Legal Cafes, our staff and volunteers specialize in serving cooperatives, nonprofits, cottage food businesses, social enterprises, urban farms, complimentary currencies, time banks, and small businesses. We provide advice and legal consultations around the following legal areas: 

• Legal formation for small businesses 

• Legal entity choice 

• Employment law 

• Securities law 

• Tax law 

• Contracts 

• Liability issues 

• IP agreements and licensing  

• Environmental Law 

• Food Safety Laws 

Seeking ongoing legal representation?

Due to limited staff capacity, the Sustainable Economies Law Center very rarely provides ongoing legal representation. Nearly all of our past clients have come through the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe first, so why not start there?!  

We are only able to provide low- or no-cost legal advice because of the generous support of people like you! Support our capacity to provide legal services for a people powered economy here and see why others support our work here!

A message from our Executive Director, Janelle Orsi:

Lately, this big word has been stuck in my head:

Three things are happening right NOW that are creating a sense of urgency at the Sustainable Economies Law Center. Sometimes, it's hard to see that they are happening, so we thought some visuals might help... 

Board of Directors

PRESIDENT

YASSI ESKANDARI is the Sustainable Economies Law Center's Policy Director. She co-leads the Transformative Policymakers and Resilient Communities Legal Cafe Programs, and contributes to the Worker Cooperatives, Energy, and Food & Farm Programs. In 2017, Yassi passed the California bar exam without going to law school, and is honored to be part of a movement of lawyers who are making our economy work for the planet and the 99 percent.

SECRETARY

SUSHIL JACOB is an associate and cofounder of the Tuttle Law Group, with coop attorney Therese Tuttle. Sushil represents consumer cooperatives, worker-owned cooperatives, and business owners who want to transition their business to cooperative ownership. Prior to joining the Coop Law Group, Sushil worked with the East Bay Community Law Center, where he founded the Green-Collar Communities Clinic, a community economic development practice that assists clients who seek to create green, worker-owned businesses as a community empowerment strategy. Sushil received his J.D. in 2011 from Berkeley Law. Prior to attending law school, Sushil worked in India for two years on community economic development projects, including Just Change, a cooperative of small farmers and indigenous peoples groups in South India. Sushil serves on the board of the Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union, a seventy-two year old financial institution in Berkeley that is owned by its 13,000 members. He also serves on the board of the Sustainable Economies Law Center, where he provides guidance to their Worker Cooperative Academy and other cooperative legal programs.

TREASURER

EUNICE KWON is the Director of the Asian Pacific American Student Development at UC Berkeley. Previously, Eunice was a Coro Fellow in San Francisco, a graphic designer for several congressional and local campaigns, served as a housing commissioner for the City of Berkeley, and is currently on the board of Asian Women United. She graduated UC Berkeley with dual bachelors in Ethnic Studies and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies and is committed to promoting economic empowerment in communities of color. Before joining our board, Eunice worked at the Sustainable Economies Law Center in our Communications, Admin, and Operations Circles, and co-coordinated our Resilient Communities Legal Cafe and Policy programs.

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.

Advisory Board

GREG JACKSON is an Oakland native and second-year law student at Golden Gate University. He believes that the most effective way to affect the future is through supporting our youth. In addition to interning for the Sustainable Economies Law Center, Greg also serves on the National Lawyer's Guild Board and is on the board at his school's National Black Law Students Association. In his free time, Greg makes music and produces radio shows on KPFA and KPFB. 

STACEY SULLIVAN has been Sustainable Conservation’s Policy Director since 2009, during which time he has led successful legislative campaigns to enact state statutes to improve water quality (SB 346) and expedite riparian habitat restoration (AB 2193), and guided the organization’s policy initiatives in water supply and management, greenhouse gas reduction, and air and water quality. Prior to joining Sustainable Conservation, Stacey spent 12 years as a committee consultant to the California State Assembly, including eight years as Chief Consultant to the Local Government Committee. His work while with the Assembly included in-depth involvement in significant legislation and policy initiatives concerning the California Environmental Quality Act, water policy, sustainable agriculture, housing, and land use planning. Stacey has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and the Steering Committee of the Central Coast Rangeland Coalition.  He was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz, University of Oxford, and King Hall School of Law at the University of California, Davis, from which he received his J.D. in 1995.

GOPAL DAYANENI has been involved in fighting for social, economic, environmental and racial justice through organizing & campaigning, teaching, writing, speaking and direct action since the late 1980’s. Gopal is an active trainer with and serves on the boards of The Ruckus Society and the Center for Story-based Strategy (formerly smartMeme). He also serves on the advisory boards of the International Accountability Project, and Catalyst Project. Gopal works at the intersection of ecology, economy and empire. Gopal has been a campaigner for Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition on human rights and environmental justice in the high-tech industry and the Oil Campaigner for Project Underground, a human rights and environmental rights organization which supported communities resisting oil and mining exploitation around the world. Gopal has been active in many people powered direct action movements, including the Global Justice/Anti-Globalization Movement, Direct Action to Stop the War, Mobilization for Climate Justice, Take Back the Land, and Occupy. Gopal is the father of two young direct action junkies, Ila Sophia and Kavi Samaka Orion, and lives in an intentional community with 9 adults, 8 kids and a bunch of chickens.

JENNY KASSAN has almost two decades of experience as an attorney for and creator of mission-driven enterprises. Jenny earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and a masters degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. She worked for eleven years at a nonprofit community development corporation in Oakland, where she served as staff attorney and managed community economic development projects including the formation and management of several social ventures designed to employ and create business ownership opportunities for low-income community residents. Jenny is the President of Community Ventures, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the economic and social development of communities. She also co-founded the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

LINDA SHEEHAN is the Executive Director of the Earth Law Center and has over 20 years of environmental law and policy experience. Linda holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with a Concentration in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; an M.P.P. from the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, where she was named a Berkeley Policy Fellow; and a J.D. from the University of California's Boalt Hall School of Law. She is a Research Affiliate with the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and is a member of the Commission on Environmental Law in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Linda is also Summer Faculty at Vermont Law School and Adjunct Faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she teaches Earth Law. She is a contributing author toExploring Wild Law: The Philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence (Wakefield Press 2011), Rule of Law for Nature (Cambridge University Press 2013), and Wild Law in Practice (Routledge 2014).

JOHN FARRELL is the Director of Democratic Energy at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and widely known as the guru of distributed energy. He is best known for his vivid illustrations of the economic and environmental benefits of local ownership of decentralized renewable energy. John’s work appears most regularly on Energy Self-Reliant States, a blog with timely and compelling analysis of current energy discussions and policy. The posts are frequently enriched by charts, translating the complex economics of energy into tools for advancing local energy ownership and they are regularly syndicated at Grist, CleanTechnica, and Renewable Energy World. He’s also written extensively on the economic advantages of Democratizing the Electricity System, published a rich interactive map on solar grid parity, and polished the policies (like Minnesota’s solar energy standard) necessary to support locally owned renewable energy development.

MICHAEL SHUMAN is an economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur. He’s also an adjunct instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, a Fellow at Cutting Edge Capital and at the Post-Carbon Institute, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). He has authored, coauthored, or edited nine books. His most recent book, which will be published by Chelsea Green in May 2015, is The Local Economy Solution: How Innovative, Self-Financing Pollinator Enterprises Can Grow Jobs and Prosperity. One of his previous books, The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition (Berrett-Koehler, 2006), received as bronze prize from the Independent Publishers Association for best business book of 2006. A prolific speaker, Shuman has given an average of more than one invited talk per week, mostly to local governments and universities, for the past 30 years. He has lectured in 47 U.S. states and eight countries. He blogs regularly at www.michaelhshuman.com.

DAVID BOLLIER is an American activist, writer, and policy strategist. He is co-founder of the Commons Strategies Group, Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, and writes technology-related reports for the Aspen Institute. Bollier’s recent work has focused on developing a new vocabulary for reclaiming “the commons.” The commons refers to the diverse array of publicly owned assets, gift-economies and natural systems that are available to everyone as a civic or human right. Bollier's new book, co-edited with with Silke Helfrich, is The Wealth of the Commons, a new collection of 73 essays that investigate the rich potential of the commons in conceptualizing and building a better future. The book details how millions of people have organized to defend natural resources, re-invigorate local food systems, build useful online communities, reclaim public spaces, and even re-define the very meaning of "progress." Bollier co-founded the public interest group Public Knowledge in 2002 and served as a board member until 2010. He was awarded the 2012 Bosch Berlin Prize in Public Policy at the American Academy in Berlin.

HANK HERRERA is President & CEO of the Center for Popular Research, Education & Policy (C-PREP), a non-profit community based organization. C-PREP serves vulnerable communities with participatory action research, training, technical assistance and policy. His work specifically focuses on food justice and building community resilience. He recently formed New Hope Farms, a network of small farms linked to a network of small corner stores selling only healthy food, using a cooperative model of ownership. The purpose of this project is to grow and sell healthy, affordable local food; to create sustainable, living wage jobs for community residents; and to develop the social, community and economic benefits of a local food enterprise network. He is co-founder and Director of the Sacred Community Land Trust, a non-profit organization devoted to conserving farmland for farming by low-income farmers and ranchers. Together these organizations provide the foundation for building equitable local food systems owned by and serving communities lacking access to fresh, healthy food. Hank has focused his work on food justice for over twenty years. Hank is a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and a Kellogg National Fellow. He practiced psychiatry long enough. He plays the alto saxophone; writes poetry and makes photographs. He lives in Pinole, California.

Last year, we found out that over 300 nonprofit seed libraries were at risk of being shut down due to misapplication of seed laws by several state departments of agriculture.

In partnership with Shareable and Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library, and with the help of the Clif Bar Family Foundation and Seed Matters, we launched a national petition campaign to build support for seed libraries and to tell regulators to protect our right to freely save and share seeds