Event

Cessia Esther Chuc Uc

TEKEG member

A social anthropologist out of Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán and a doctoral candidate in Mesoamerican Studies from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cessia Esther Chuc Uc is a professor and researcher at Universidad Autónoma de Campeche. Her current research work focuses on the use of honey and wax from the beeswax from the stingless bee (Melipona beechii), encompassing honey’s symbolic, ritual, medicinal and nutritional significance.

Originally from a Mayan family of artisans, she overcame her social disadvantages and began to work in fields of knowledge that have been validated by her tireless efforts to rescue and create awareness of her millennial roots. Her career and professional endeavors were recognized by Unesco in October 2010 as part of the “Indigenous Women: Life Stories” initiative. An author of numerous studies on aspects of Mayan culture, such as thought, language, current farming rituals and traditional crafts, Chuc Uc has also written books to teach the Mayan language. More recently, she is noted for her bilingual (Mayan-Spanish) stories in which she uses the Mayan narrative on the elements of nature as a strategy to teach children to respect and value their natural and cultural heritage.

Louie Porta

JPAC Chair

Louie Porta is the Executive Director of Oceans North. With extensive experience living in, working in and exploring Arctic Canada, he oversees projects related to marine conservation, oil and gas, Arctic shipping, indigenous protected areas, coastal stewardship, and plastics. He formerly served as lead political adviser to Mary Simon during her appointment as Minister’s Special Representative for Arctic Leadership. He was appointed to serve on Canada’s National Advisory Panel—charged with recommending how Canada can meet its international conservation obligations.

Louie is also an adviser to the Students on Ice Foundation, is a senior associate for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, serves on the governing council of the Ocean Tracking Network and sits on the research oversight committee for Genome Canada’s investigation into oil spill countermeasures for the Arctic. He has a master’s degree from Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies, and lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with his wife and three children.

Richard Morgan

CEC Executive Director

Richard Morgan was appointed Executive Director of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation in 2019, after serving as a Commissioner of the (Canada-U.S.) International Joint Commission from 2014 to 2018. He has taken leadership roles for 35 years in international relations, government, business and management consulting in several sectors, ranging from natural resources to health sciences. Richard has a keen understanding of the North American landscape, government organizations and the business sector, and considerable experience in collaborating with stakeholders in the environmental and sustainable development area.

Richard started his career in 1986 in the Office of the Prime Minister as Executive Assistant to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and served in that role for several years and also as Special Advisor, Director of Planning and Operations. He later joined the corporate office of Bombardier as strategic planning advisor. He is a graduate in business administration from the University of Ottawa.

Vern R. Cheechoo

Director of Lands and Resources, Mushkegowuk Council

Vern Cheechoo is of Cree ancestry and is a proud member of the Moose Cree First Nation, located on the southern shores of James Bay. Since 2013, he has been the Director of Lands and Resources for the Mushkegowuk Council, an organization that represents seven First Nations, with a population of approximately 10,000 people, and whose territory comprises nearly one-third of Ontario. He has successfully negotiated several funding agreements with the federal and Ontario governments. He also developed the annual Climate Change Summit involving partnerships with the provincial government, universities, and scientists, which included collaboration on traditional expertise from the communities, thus creating a forum for the two world perspectives on climate change. He has a Bachelor of Arts in political science/sociology, and a certificate in community economic and social development.

Lawrence Martin

Marine Region Manager, Mushkegowuk Council

Born in 1956 in Moose Factory, Ontario, raised on the land by his grandparents, Lawrence Martin was taught traditional knowledge by his elders in the Cree language and customs of his people. He was also taught that his birth month of January (He/She Loves to Learn—in Indigenous astrological teachings) would find him involved in many interesting roles throughout his life, and indeed it has. He is a father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and Traditional/Cultural Ceremonial Carrier; and became the first Indigenous person to be a mayor in two different “white” towns in Ontario. He was elected twice as the Grand Chief of Mushkegowuk Council’s seven communities, he headed up the Native Language Wawatay Radio and Television Network, became a policeman, ran health centres, friendship centres, and won a Juno Award for his music, becoming the first Indigenous person to win such an award in Canada.

Today, he is the Mushkegowuk manager of the National Marine Conservation Area Feasibility Studies project to provide protection and management of the waters of James Bay and Hudson Bay in northern Canada, an area his elders call “The Birthing Place” because of the untold millions and billions of migratory birds that nest there.

Lucio López Méndez

President of the Consejo de vigilancia del Ejido Nuevo Becal

A forestry engineer, ejido member, and chair of the supervisory board of the Nuevo Becal ejido, Lucio López Méndez has been collaborating for a dozen years with communities in the Municipality of Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico. He does this through the community consulting services organization Sosetec Selvas de Calakmul, which offers a variety of services, from technicians to professionals, all of whom are native to and residents of communities from this region, as well as experts in comprehensive landscape management, environmental restoration, protection and conservation, and forest management, informed by a biocultural heritage approach.

López Méndez dedicates much of his work to ensuring Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. With his support, the members of the Nuevo Becal ejido focused their activities and consolidated the governance of their lands based on a comprehensive land management model. This enabled them to obtain international sustainable forest management certification from the FSC. Moreover, it’s worth noting that in addition to being the country’s largest voluntary conservation area (50,689.93 hectares), the Nuevo Becal ejido was the first community in Mexico and North America to obtain FSC “Ecosystem Services Certification.”

Lilian Hill

Executive Director of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance

Lilian Hill is a member of the Hopi/Quechan Nations and comes from the Tobacco Clan from the Village of Kykotsmovi. In 2001, Lilian founded the Black Mesa Water Coalition, an organization working to address energy and water exploitation on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations. Lilian, along with her husband, Jacobo Marcus, founded the Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture Institute in 2004 as a way to develop community leadership and provide opportunities for the Hopi community to develop sustainable solutions to the problems that exist on the reservation. She has studied at the North American School of Natural Building, earned a bachelor’s degree from Northern Arizona University (NAU) in applied Indigenous studies and is currently pursuing her master’s degree there in sustainable communities.

In 2015 Lilian was awarded the Agricultural Humanitarian of the Year award by the Justin Willie Foundation and, in 2019, was selected as a Skoll Foundation Fellow to attend the 2019 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, in Oxford, England. In addition, Lilian was a 2019 recipient of the Castanea Fellowship, which supports diverse leaders working for a racially just food system to build power that can shift structures and culture toward the creation of more equitable, sustainable, and healthy food systems. Lilian has traveled to Italy, Africa, India, Tajikistan, New Zealand, Belize, and Mexico, learning, sharing her work, and promoting Indigenous self-determination.

Rosa Esther Peña Soto

Advisor to the coordinator of farmworker organizations and Indigenous Peoples of Huasteca Potosina

Anthropologist Rosa Esther Peña Soto is a graduate of the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH). Formerly a longtime collaborator of Igualdad de Xilitla, a cooperative formed by certified organic coffee producers from the Nahua First Nation, she is currently an advisor to the Huasteca Potosina Federation of Peasant and Indigenous Organizations. Peña Soto also collaborates with the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) project “TOCOYANI: Toward transformative water management planning in Mexico,” directed by Pedro Moctezuma Barragán with support from Mexico’s National Science and Technology Council (Conacyt).

She recently participated in the trinational workshop, “Knowledge Dialogue: Shared Values on Environmental Stewardship in North America,” organized in coordination with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) and held on 29 April to 1 May 2022 at the Incalli Ixcahuicopa Center for Sustainability (CENTLI-UAM), in Tlalmanalco, México state.

Pedro Moctezuma Barragán

JPAC member

Economist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), with a PhD in planning and development from the University of Liverpool’s Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies, Pedro Moctezuma Barragán is a prominent national and international activist on the issues of water, the environment and community participation. He is currently coordinator of the Sustainability Research Program at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) where he also sits on the Board of Directors. He is a member of the National Coordination Council of Agua para Tod@s, Agua para la Vida (“Water for all, Water for Life”) and a participant in the Society, Environment and Institutions (SUSMAI) graduate seminar at UNAM.

Founder and Director of the lncalli lxcahuicopa Center for Sustainability (Centli) and co-founder of the Amecameca and La Compañía River Basins Commission, Moctezuma Barragán also has experience in implementing community development processes and in projects on the design and self-managed construction of social housing. Founder of the Department of Socioeconomic Research at the Torreón School of Economics, in Coahuila, he has given over 140 courses in various academic institutions and advised a large number of professional and postgraduate dissertations. In addition, he has been a member of various academic commissions, organized courses and workshops, participated in the reviewing of undergraduate and MA curricula, and presented over two hundred papers and conferences in dozens of universities in Mexico, as well as in Europe, Canada, the United States and Latin America.

Felicia Marcus

JPAC member

Felicia Marcus is the William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program, an attorney, consultant, and member of the Water Policy Group. She most recently served as Chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, implementing laws regarding drinking water, water quality, and state’s water rights, hearing regional board water quality appeals, settling disputes, and providing financial assistance to communities to upgrade water infrastructure.

Before her appointment to the Water Board, Marcus served in positions in government, the nonprofit and private sector. In government, she served as the Regional Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Pacific Southwest Region. Preceding her work at the EPA, Marcus served as the President of the Board of Public Works for the City of Los Angeles.
In the non-profit world, she was the Western Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and prior to that the Executive Vice-president and Chief Operating Officer of the Trust for Public Land. Marcus also has an extensive background as a private sector and public interest lawyer.

In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies from Harvard College, and Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law and studied at Hong Kong University on a Rotary Fellowship.

Paolo Solano

Director, Submissions on Enforcement Matters and Legal Unit

The Director of Legal Affairs and Submissions on Enforcement Matters (SEM) at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Paolo Solano is a lawyer trained in Mexico with over 15 years of experience in the field of international environmental law. His responsibilities at the CEC pertain to the implementation of the SEM process under NAFTA/USMCA-CUSMA and also include advising on operational and legal matters of the CEC more generally.

Paolo obtained his law degree from the Faculty of Law at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), a master’s degree on environmental governance from University of Essex (awarded with honors); a diploma on US law from the Georgetown Law Center, and graduate studies on Business Management and Canadian Law at the University of Montreal.

Paolo has also been a visiting law professor in the United States and Mexico and has published academic articles and a book chapter. Since 2008 he has published the annual report for the Yearbook of International Environmental Law and, as of 2015, also reports on the development of environmental law in Mexico.

Andy Carey

U.S. National Advisory Committee Chair

Andy Carey is the executive director of the US-Mexico Border Philanthropy Partnership (BPP), a position he has held since 2008. BPP is a binational membership organization based in San Diego, CA, that supports a network of nearly 400 organizations that build prosperity through leadership, collaboration, and philanthropy in the US-Mexico border region. Previously, Andy served for 15 years at Kiwanis International leading volunteer mobilization and fund development throughout the globe. Andy received his bachelor and master of arts degrees from Purdue University.

He is an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Diego in the School of Leadership and Education Sciences where he teaches post graduate courses on International nonprofit management. He was named 2017-18 Adjunct Faculty of the Year by the Dean of the School of Leadership and Education Sciences. Andy serves in many civic capacities, including as chairman of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Advisory Committee, on the US-Mexico Science Foundation Board of Directors, the University of San Diego Kroc School of Peace and Justice Advisory Board, the Independent Districting Commission in Escondido, CA., and on the Advisory Board of St. Mary Catholic School in Escondido. In 2018, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Relations presented Andy with the Ohtli Award in recognition of his long-standing commitment and service to the needs and interests of the Mexican community residing in the United States of America.

Marina Brock

U.S. Governmental Advisory Committee Chair (virtual)

Marina works as a senior environmental specialist in the Environmental Health Division, Barnstable County Department of Health, and the Environment and as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Her areas of expertise are public and environmental health and emergency, risk, and safety management. In addition, she is interested in individualized genetic and environmental factors as they influence public health and environmental health exposures and outcomes. She has written and co-authored several articles on these subjects and has lectured and mentored throughout the New England states.

Brock has received several awards, including the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Excellence Award (2000) and the (Massachusetts) Governor’s Award for toxic use reduction in the design and implementation of an innovative initiative for pollution prevention (P2) in the public sector. Her work in this area has served as a template for a national focus on the safety of chemical management in schools. She was also nominated for the Harvard School of Government’s Innovations in Government Award for facilitating collaborative efforts between local, regional, state, and federal government agencies. She holds an undergraduate degree from Simmons College and an MS in occupational health and safety engineering and emergency management. In 2018 she began work on a Ph.D. in public health and emergency management policy.

Brock Dickinson

Assistant Director, Economic Development Program, University of Waterloo, Canada

Brock Dickinson is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence with the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo, where he works with students and faculty to help launch new green entrepreneurial ventures.

A serial entrepreneur, Brock has operated companies in management consulting, import/export, and environmental services, including a company named to Profit Magazine’s “Hot 50” list of Canada’s fastest growing start-ups.

A noted sustainable community development advocate, Brock has worked with more than 400 communities around the world to help build local economic opportunities.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and master’s degree from Brock University (which – he admits – was not named after him but is very convenient).

Dr. Samantha Montano

Co-founder, Disaster Researchers for Justice and Center for Climate Adaptation Research, United States

Samantha Montano is an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

She has a doctorate in emergency management from North Dakota State University and is the author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis.

Samantha conducts research on a range of issues at the intersection of emergency management and climate change with the Center for Climate Adaptation Research.

She is also a co-founder of Disaster Researchers for Justice, a group working to strategically implement global change in the field of disasters.

Brook Morgan Thompson

Environmental Engineering Graduate Student, Stanford University, United States

Brook Thompson is a Yurok and Karuk native from northern California. Growing up, she lived and fished on the same land that her ancestors had been on for over 12,000 years.

Brook fights for water and Native American rights through speaking to groups and frontline activism.

She has been an intern for the City of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in Washington DC, the California State Water Resource Control Board Office of Information Management, and currently, for Save California Salmon.

In 2017 Brook was awarded the American Indian Graduate Center’s Undergraduate Student of the Year award and in 2020 she won Unity’s 25 Under 25 award. Recently she was accepted into the 5th Cohort of the Water Solution Network.

Brook is a graduate of Portland State University with a degree in civil engineering and a minor in political science. Currently, she is in her master’s program in environmental engineering at Stanford University and has just been accepted into a PhD program in environmental science at UC Santa Cruz.

Brook’s goal is to bring together water rights and Native American knowledge through engineering, public policy, and social action.

Ricardo González Hernández

President of Proyectando un Ambiente y Sociedad Verde, A.C., Mexico

Ricardo González Hernández is a biologist by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), president of the organization Proyectando un Ambiente y Sociedad Verde, A.C. (PASO, A.C.), and a junior technical advisor at the German Agency for International Cooperation for Sustainable Development in Mexico (GIZ).

Ricardo has eight years of experience working with communities, mainly as a technical advisor for agroforestry projects in communities within the Carso Huasteco region in Mexico, as well as in conservation areas in Mexico City.

His areas of interest and expertise include sustainable agri-food systems, ethnobotany, and the re-valorization of traditional knowledge for its application in adaptation measures and mitigation of climate change effects.

Dr. Irasema Alcántara Ayala

Vice-president of the Science Committee, Integrated Research on Disaster Risk, Mexico

Irasema Alcántara Ayala is a researcher and former director of the Geography Institute, and a professor at the Philosophy and Letters Faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

She was born in Mexico City and did her undergraduate studies in geography at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM and holds a PhD in geography from King’s College, University of London. Later, she made a postdoctoral stay at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, United States.

Her research areas include geomorphology, slope failures, risk geography, integrated research on disaster risks, and forensic research on disasters. Her main interest lies on linking science with the formulation of policies and practice for the management and reduction of disaster risks.

Irasema is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Geological Risks at the National Civil Protection System (Mexico), as well as the Mountains Research Initiative, the Scientific Council of the UNESCO’s International Geoscience Program, the World Meteorological Research Program, and the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction for America and the Caribbean.

She has authored over 150 publications, has been a speaker in over one hundred international conferences, and has taught 150 undergraduate, specialization, and graduate courses.

Louie Porta

JPAC Chair

Miguel Ángel Zerón

Alternate Representative for Mexico

Academically:

Degree in Political Science and Public Administration from the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo; degree in Law from the Universidad Iberomexicana. He studied political sociology at the University of Granada, Spain; of political communication at the Institute of Social Research of the UNAM and is a master in Political Science from the College of Mexico (COLMEX).

He is currently developing her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies on Thought, Culture and Society at the Autonomous University of Querétaro seeking to understand the way in which science and society can establish a dialogue through metaphors.

Professionally:

From 2010 to 2018 he specialized in the qualitative study of complex societies and phenomena based on ethnography to understand the reality in Mexico and Latin America when he was at the head of the multidisciplinary team of Social binnacle.

Some of the topics he has studied in Mexico and Latin America are: financial behavior, public policies, social conflicts, political participation, institutional change and eating habits with a primary objective: to know people from their own reality.

Since September 2021 he has served as a public servant of the Mexican Federal Public Administration as Head of the Coordinating Unit of International Affairs in the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

Richard Morgan

CEC Executive Director

Jérémy Lavoie

Canada

Rodrigo Trejo

Mexico

Kyra Trent

United States

Valérie Courtois

Canada (virtual)

Valérie Courtois is a registered professional forester who specializes in Indigenous issues, forest ecology and ecosystem-based management and planning. She is a member of the Innu community of Mashteuiatsh, located on the shore of Peikuakami, or Lac-St-Jean.

Courtois has been the Director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative since 2013. In addition to her work in conservation and planning, Courtois is an avid photographer. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Corporation du Mushuau–nipi, a non-profit that encourages cultural and professional exchanges on the George River. She lives in Happy Valley—Goose Bay, Labrador

Paulina Garrido Bonilla

Mexico

Our colleague Paulina currently represents the Tosepan Cooperatives Union (Unión de Cooperativas de Tosepan in Spanish). This organization, which is 45 years old, is comprised of 9 cooperatives involved in several activities, as well as 3 civil associations; it includes 48,000 families (64% of them women) from 37 municipalities in the Northeast Sierra. Eighty-six percent of these families belong to the Maseual (Nauat) and Tutunakus (Totonacos) indigenous groups. She took this position on October 2nd, 2016.

It should be noted that she is the first woman to carry out this role. Part of the reason she is trusted is due to her community involvement, where she has carried out the following responsibilities:

• President of the Cooperative Committee in the town of San Miguel Tzinacapan, Puebla from 2004 to 2006.
• Member of the Abasto Community Committee in the town of San Miguel Tzinacapan from 2006 to 2009.
• Member of the Organization for Comprehensive Land Use Planning in the Municipality of Cuetzalan, Puebla.
• Different community commissions related to the cultural strengthening of her home town, San Miguel Tzinacapan.

Paulina belongs to the second generation of cooperative members; in this capacity, she became very active as a Community Promoter in the Tosepantomin Cooperative from 2008 to August, 2013. After this she took on the role of Coordinator until 2015.

In 2015 she began working with Yeknemilis A.C. coordinating its Administration and Accounting departments.

Having a Bachelor’s degree in Public Accounting, she has been able to specialize in Micro-finance, with an emphasis on social and consensus economics.

She has also lived in the Basque Country (Spain) more than once in order to exchange technical tools with the Mondragón University through the LANKI Institute of Co-operative Research, in two certificate courses on social and consensus economy, in association with the Iberoamericana University of Puebla.

With this same goal, she carried out internships at a few cooperatives in Ecuador and Germany. As a Public Accountant she has been trained in Social Entrepreneurship Facilitation and Coaching from the School of Social Economics in Andalucia, Spain, and she obtained a certificate in Cooperative Business Administration for Directors from the same institution.

She is now working toward obtaining a certificate in Training Techniques Facilitation using the CEFE methodology from the German GIZ cooperation. She participated in the México a Futuro seminar with the social and farm worker organizations network in coordination with the Santa Fe campus of the Iberoamericana University, the International Centre for Research on Social and Consensus Economics (CIIESS as abbreviated in Spanish) and SERAPAZ.

With this wealth of experience, she now faces the challenge of representing a 45-year-old organization in order to continue moving forward in the construction of a good living project, where all of us, both men and women, are committed to working for future generations and to opening paths, dreaming and working for a different Mexico to become a reality.

Rashida Ua Bakari Ferdinand

United States

Rashida Ferdinand is the founder and CEO of Sankofa Community Development Corporation (CDC), founded in 2008 to support health-centered economic development in the Lower Ninth Ward area after the 2005 Hurricane Katrina Disaster. Ferdinand brings her background and experience as a sculptor and visual artist to her work to creatively inspire community development in the Lower Ninth Ward area, with her Mandala sculpture installed on Caffin and Claiborne Avenues in the Lower Ninth Ward as a part of the Arts Council of New Orleans public art program. Ferdinand leads Sankofa CDC through engagement in community-driven planning and infrastructure development projects to improve the built environment of the Lower Ninth Ward and other under-resourced neighborhoods through facilities for access to healthy food, environmentally sustainable use of land, and community health programs to support equitable, sustainable, and progressive growth.

Louie Porta

JPAC Chair