Sustainival – Leading the Way: Student Sustainability Activism Panel

Now more than ever, we have seen the fight for climate change break into mainstream narratives and witnessed how young people, such as Greta Thunberg, are the leading faces of this movement. We have gathered five (5) student-activists from different University of California campuses to share their experiences in creating social change. Join us for a panel to learn more about their journeys and how you can begin or further your activism journey!

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SPEAKER INFO

Sithara Menon

University of California, Los Angeles

Sithara is a 4th year Biology major at UCLA! She got started in activism working with the UCLA chapter of CALPIRG Students her freshman year, working to secure commitments from the state of California and the UC system for 100% clean electricity. Since then, she worked to turn out the youth vote (increasing UCLA’s turnout by almost 500%), ran the Zero Hunger campaign to fight food insecurity and food waste on campus, and worked on UCLA’s commitment to phasing out single use plastics!

Jed Lee

University of California, Berkeley

Jed Lee is a Taiwanese and Chinese-Filipino American student activist and artist. As a fourth year at UC Berkeley, Jed is pursuing a major and two minors relating to environmental, climate, and development justice. Jed strongly believes that we can always look to nature to find inspiration for our interpersonal relationships, collective movements, and personal healing, and that there is always love, life and hope in this world. Jed loves hanging out, being outdoors, gardening, and exploring new food places! Jed also holds a major love for the ocean, sociology, writing, and hearing about other people’s stories.

Diana Garcia

University of California, Santa Barbara

Diana Garcia is a 4th year student at UCSB majoring in Environmental Studies with a minor in Latin American Studies. Her passion for environmental justice grew as she broke away from the false dichotomy that separates humans from Mother Earth. She is currently the Co-Chair for Environmental Justice Alliance (EJA) advocating for an inclusion of social justice in the environmental field to make a safer space for Black and brown students to speak on their experiences.

Lindsey Tavares-Sabido

University of California, Santa Cruz

Lindsey Tavares-Sabido will graduate from the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Legal Studies major with a minor in Politics in Fall of 2020. She is a first-generation American, first-generation college student, and an adult child of a formerly incarcerated parent. Lindsey’s passions are at the intersection of social and environmental justice with particular interest in food sovereignty, global health, human rights and international law.

She has served as the Political and Cultural chair for the UCSC Black Student Union from 2019 to 2020. Through her deep dialogue and engagement with the issues marginalized communities face on campus, Lindsey and other Black student leaders co-created the Pan African Research Fellowship pilot program at UCSC to ensure student advocacy leads to equitable, sustainable change. As a research fellow, Lindsey explores the relationship between housing and academic success for ABC students at UCSC.

Lindsey is the founder and director of the BIPOC Liberation Collective in Santa Cruz, CA. After graduation, she hopes to continue organizing and building intersectional solidarity amongst Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) by reclaiming space and making political education and cultural arts accessible to all BIPOC people. Lindsey plans to broaden her experience in the nonprofit and public sectors before applying for her PhD. In her free time, Lindsey enjoys going to the beach, hiking, biking, gardening, cooking, painting, & dancing.

Gabrielle Christina Ambayec

University of California, Berkeley

Gabrielle Christina Ambayec (she/they) is a third-year undergraduate who currently works as the Environmental Justice Associate at the Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC) at UC Berkeley. She aims to introduce and amplify the work of grassroots organizers in the East Bay through various events open to the general campus community at Berkeley. Her specific work prompts her to create events and resources with the intent of educating the campus community on matters including environmental racism, food justice, and community care.”

Nisha Bansal

Moderator

Nisha Bansal (she/hers) is a recent UCLA graduate with a degree in Environmental Science. She previously worked in the LA Mayor’s Office and as a Sustainability Assistant with UCLA Housing to put on cool sustainability events like this one! In addition to being a sustainability advocate, Nisha is a writer, performer, Survivor fanatic, and enthusiastic consumer of dumplings.