Summit Recording
Climate & H20 (Water)
The first in the CEMTF 4th Virtual Summit Series: Climate, Social Justice & Rights of Nature
9:00 - 9:10 AM
Land Acknowledgement
Corrina Gould, Tribal Chair, Confederated Villages of Lisjan & Co Founder, Sogorea Te Land Trust
Welcome
Speakers & Co-Speakers
9:15 - 9: 45 AM
Salmon, H2O & Ceremony
Corrina Gould, Tribal Chair Confederated Villages of Lisjan & Co Founder Sogorea Te Land Trust
9:45 - 10:50 AM
Sea Level Rise, Groundwater Rise and Adaptation for the San Francisco Bay Shoreline
Toxic Sites Creating Toxic Futures
Nature-based Solutions for Flood Resilience
10:50- 10:55 AM Break
10:55 - 11:20 AM
Drinking Water & Climate Change
11:20 - 11:45 AM
Environmental Justice in a Time of Unjust Justices (decisions)
11:45 AM - Noon
Bodies of H20
Raheemah Nitoto, Thirsty for Change (T4C!) Program Coordinator, Healthy Black Families
Announcements & Closing
* Recipients of the United Nations Association, East Bay (UNA EB) Global Citizen Award
Welcome
Cheryl Davila
Founder & Chair CEMTF
Former Councilmember, City of Berkeley, CA
As a Councilmember, Cheryl was a champion for the climate. Under her leadership the Climate Emergency Declaration passed unanimously in June 2018 which was the third in the world. Now over 2335 governments around the world have since declared climate emergencies.
Cheryl founded CEMTF in 2019. Did you know CEMTF was the brainchild of the prohibition of natural gas infrastructure in new buildings? True.
CEMTF is in its 4th year! We’ll be celebrating out 5th year in early 2024. Stay tuned!
Land Acknowledgement &
Salmon, H2O & Ceremony
Corrina Gould
Tribal Chair Confederated Villages of Lisjan &
Co Founder Sogorea Te Land Trust
Corrina Gould is the Tribal Chair for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone. She was born and raised in Oakland, CA, the territory of Huchiun. She is an Indigenous activist and organizer that has worked on preserving and protecting the ancient burial sites of her ancestors in the Bay Area for decades. She is the Co-Founder and a lead organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native run grassroots organization and Co-Founder of the Sogorea Te Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women’s community organization working to return and to Indigenous stewardship in San Francisco’s East Bay.
Have you paid your Shumi Tax?
Speakers & Co-Speakers:
Climate & the San Francisco Bay
Ellen Plane
Environmental Scientist
San Francisco Estuary Institute
Ellen Plane is an environmental scientist in SFEI's Resilient Landscapes Program, focusing on sea-level rise adaptation and tidal habitat restoration. Her work supports landscape planning efforts that aim to enhance shoreline resilience using nature-based solutions. Ellen also specializes in groundwater rise and has been a leader in expanding knowledge about this emerging climate hazard in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Nature-based Solutions for Flood Resilience
Haley Currier
Policy Manager
Save the Bay
Hayley is Save The Bay Policy Manager focused on equitable climate resilience and multi-benefit green infrastructure, ensuring our region’s land use planning is addressing the impacts of climate change. Before joining Save The Bay’s team, she worked on land use planning policy advocacy related to transportation, housing, open space, and agriculture at Greenbelt Alliance and TransForm. She is passionate about deconstructing systems of oppression and ensuring our land and water ecosystems are healthy and abundant. She has a master’s in Environmental Policy and Planning and Environmental Justice from the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability. When not advocating, Hayley can be found puttering in her garden or swimming in Alpine Lakes.
Toxic Sites Creating Toxic Futures
Julia Dowell
Field Investigator and Community Advocate
San Francisco Baykeeper
Julia joined Baykeeper in 2022. She responds to pollution hotline reports, manages our boat patrols, and supervises our volunteer skippers. Julia also plays a central role in supporting Baykeeper’s advocacy by engaging community organizations and activists from around the Bay Area who are also working to protect the Bay’s watershed. Prior to joining Baykeeper, Julia was a community organizer with our partner organization GreenAction, where she worked to clean up toxic sites around the Bay that are threatened by sea level rise. She also conducted research on the effects of extreme heat due to climate change on communities in Southern California. Julia has a master’s degree in geography and a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and policy from California State University, Long Beach.
Aundi Mevoli
Field Investigator and Policy Advocate
San Francisco Baykeeper
Aundi joined Baykeeper in September 2020 as a volunteer on the science team, and we then hired her as our field investigator and policy advocate in 2022. She plays a central role in Baykeeper's investigation, advocacy, and outreach to local municipal governments and governmental agencies. Aundi is on call to respond to our pollution hotline. She also conducts pollution patrols on the water, via our drone and with our aerial patrol partners. In addition to being in the field, Aundi leads projects related to sea level rise and toxic site inundation, including efforts to improve green infrastructure and make shorelines climate resilient. Aundi holds a bachelor's degree from the University of San Francisco and a masters degree in global sustainability and natural resource management from Virginia Tech.
Drinking Water & Climate Change
Kija Rivers
Policy Advocate
Community Water Center
Originally from San Diego, Kjia Rivers attended the University of California, Santa Barbara to obtain her Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and Political Science. Kjia is a Policy Advocate at Community Water Center working on drought, nitrate, and climate change related drinking water issues. She ensures that protections needed to safeguard drinking water quantity and quality prevent further impacts to vulnerable communities in the Central Valley and on the Central Coast. Kjia aspires that all Californians -- regardless of race and income -- have access to safe, clean, and affordable drinking water.
Cheryl Sudduth
Elected: President
Board of Directors West County Wastewater District
Ms. Cheryl Sudduth is a Senior Government Contracts Professional, International Negotiator, Mediator, Regulatory and Compliance Officer, with nearly 30 years of business and legal experience, serving in a broad array of senior leadership roles in the commercial, private, and public sectors.
A University of Illinois alum (Cellular & Molecular Biology and Biochemistry), Cheryl is an intentionalist, a potentialist, and a committed, proactive environmental scientist.
As a Scientist and Negotiator who has closed deals from Silicon Valley to Paris, London, Munich, Sydney & Colombia to DC, delivering solutions is one of the things she does best. The current Contracts Services Manager for AC Transit, she has previously led global negotiation and contracting for Mattson Technology, Sony, and Siebel negotiating multimillion-dollar, multinational, multilingual agreements and training international sales teams earning her numerous awards and recognitions.
Raheemah Nitoto
Program Coordinator
Healthy Black Families
Raheemah Nitoto is the Thirsty for Change (T4C!) Program Coordinator at Healthy Black Families. Raheemah has devoted her life to researching human wellness. She is a Holistic Health and Nutrition Educator with a B.A., in biology with an emphasis in human biochemistry from Mills College. She has also studied at La Casa de Saude in Capim Grosso, Brazil; a nonprofit clinic focused on nutrition, natural healing and herbal remedies and certification in naturopathy and holistic nutrition at the Global College of Natural Health. It’s Raheemah’s dream to help people decrease the incidences of chronic disease in their lives and communities through nutrition and other natural means. For eight years she has been honored to work in partnership with Alameda County Nutrition Services and Allen Temple Baptist Church, serving our East Oakland community.
