Angela Mahecha is a Climate Justice leader originally from Colombia. She was previously the Executive Director of the Climate Justice Alliance, where she centered the national influence of 74 frontline urban and rural alliances, movement-support organizations, and base-building grassroots groups to move forward a Just Transition and Just Recovery. She has served as a leader of multiple organizations including: It Takes Roots, the Rising Majority, La Via Campesina North America, US Food Sovereignty Alliance, the Rural Coalition, Friends of People Affected by Dams from Brazil, and the Green New Deal National Network. As a natural weaver, she facilitates relationships between sectors such as greens, philanthropy, and now academia, with those on the frontlines. In her advisory roles with partners like the Mosaic Fund and others, she has been able to move millions to the grassroots. Angela splits her time between New Jersey and Florida with her two kids, partner, and the occasional manatee.

Bineshi Albert grew up in the movement and remembers her family organizing for community and Indigenous Rights throughout her upbringing. Her work over the last 30 years has primarily focused on environmental justice and Native/Indigenous rights. She has also been part of many pivotal movement building and multicultural spaces throughout her career. She joins CJA from one of our founding member organizations, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN). She was a founding board member of IEN, served on their three person

Leadership Team alongside the Executive Director and was their Movement Building Coordinator and Co-Coordinator for Indigenous Feminisms. She is proud to have contributed to the work of It Takes Roots, the Rising Majority and international movement spaces. Bineshi supported the creation and development of both an Indigenous Feminist Organizing School and an International Feminist Organizing School. She is the proud mother of three, and recently became a grandmother. She makes her home in relocated Yuchi & Muscogee territory in Oklahoma, also known as Tulsa.

Colette Pichon Battle is a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana. She is the founder of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy (GCCLP), where she develops programming focused on equitable disaster recovery, global migration, community economic development, climate justice, and energy democracy. Colette worked with local communities, national funders, and elected officials in the post-Katrina and post-Deepwater Horizon disaster recovery. She was a lead coordinator for Gulf South Rising 2015, a regional initiative around climate justice and just transition in the South. In 2015 Colette was selected as an Echoing Green Climate Fellow, in 2016 she was named a White House Champion of Change for Climate Equity, and in 2018 Kenyon College awarded her an Honorary Doctorate. In 2019, Colette was named an Obama Fellow for her work with Black and Native communities on the frontline of climate change and she gave a TED Talk, “Climate change will displace millions. Here’s how we prepare.” In 2021, Colette was appointed a Margaret Burroughs Community Fellow. In addition to developing advocacy initiatives that intersect with race, systems of power, and ecology, Colette directs GCCLP’s legal services in immigration and disaster law. 

Colette chairs the Equity Advisory Group of the Louisiana Governor’s Climate Initiative Task Force, advises the Kataly Foundation’s Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective, serves on the boards of the US Climate Action Network, Center for Constitutional Rights, Highlander Research Education Center, and Healthy Gulf, is a member of the Movement for Black Lives policy table leadership team and the Resilience Roadmap project steering committee.

Jade Begay, Diné and Tesuque Pueblo, is an Indigenous rights and climate justice organizer, narrative strategist, and filmmaker. Jade has partnered with organizations and Tribal Nations from the Arctic to the Amazon to develop strategies, create stories, and build campaigns to mobilize engagement and impact around issues like climate change, Indigenous self-determination, and environmental justice. Jade is the Climate Justice Campaign Director at NDN Collective and serves on White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

 Osprey Orielle Lake is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International, working nationally and internationally with grassroots and frontline women leaders, policy-makers, and diverse coalitions to build women's leadership, climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean energy future. Osprey is the Co-Director of the Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegations, and actively leads WECAN International's projects — from various trainings and work to shift the narrative on climate justice using a feminist lens, to engagements at United Nations climate conferences — from frontline delegations, to campaigns such as the 'Women for Forests' program. Osprey was the visionary behind the International Women’s Earth and Climate Summit, which brought together 100 global women leaders to draft and implement a 'Women’s Climate Action Agenda', and co-founded the International Women’s Earth and Climate Initiative (IWECI), the precursor initiative of WECAN International. Osprey is honored to serve on the Executive Committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, and has been a core organizer of various International Rights of Nature Tribunals. She has served on the board of the Praxis Peace Institute and on the Steering Committee for The UN Women’s Major Group for the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Awards include National Women’s History Project Honoree, Taking The Lead To Save Our Planet, the Woman Of The Year Outstanding Achievement Award from the California Federation Of Business And Professional Women, and the Be the Dream Lifetime Achievement award. Osprey's writing has been featured in publications including The Guardian, Common Dreams, Earth Island Journal, The Ecologist, OpenDemocracy, and EcoWatch, and she is the author of the award-winning book,'Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature'.

Before leaving to found The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership, Jacqueline was the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Since 2007 Patterson has served as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United. Jacqui Patterson has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist working on women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice. Patterson served as a Senior Women’s

Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid where she integrated a women’s rights lens for the issues of

food rights, macroeconomics, and climate change as well as the intersection of violence against

women and HIV&AIDS. Previously, she served as Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs

for IMA World Health providing management and technical assistance to medical facilities and

programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Patterson served as the Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University. She also served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica, West Indies.

Jesús Juan Vázquez Negrón is a Puerto Rican organizer, advocate, popular educator and activist that works in the intersections of environmental justice, agroecology, food sovereignty and climate justice at the national and international level. He has been working collectively for the past 12 years with rural, urban and coastal communities organizing mutual support efforts, political education workshops, dialogues, capacity trainings and just recovery initiatives with family farms and communities where people work and live. He is the National Coordinator of Organización Boricuá of Ecological Agriculture of Puerto Rico, a 32 year old national grassroots organization composed by farmers, peasants, farm workers, and food sovereignty activists that promote and practice agroecology as a tool to achieve food sovereignty and social justice on the archipelago. He works and collaborates internationally in CLOC, LVC, PAP, USFSA & CJA.