Current Green Pathways Fellows
Yolanda Altamirano (she/her)
Forterra
Yolanda (she/her) graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in International Studies and Anthropology. She lived in Spain for a year before returning to Seattle to work in education nonprofits and travel.
She has been dedicated to living a sustainable life and committed to being environmentally friendly since joining her high school’s environmental club. She wants to help others learn about and have access to sustainable choices. Yolanda volunteers for the Washington Trails Association, Green Seattle Partnership, and Real Change. She also enjoys hiking, reading, traveling, and supporting local businesses.
Magdalena Angel Cano (she/her)
Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition
Magdalena Angel Cano is a student at the University of Washington, graduating with a degree in gender, women and sexuality studies and a minor in diversity. Magdalena has an interest in community engagement and bringing opportunities to those in her community to bring equal access to resources. Magdalena has been a South Park resident for more than 20 years and was part of the first Duwamish Valley Youth Corp.
As a daughter of two immigrant parents, she has used her Spanish skills to fill in the language gap in her community by working one-on-one with her neighbors to discuss issues and bringing awareness of institutes that work with her community. As part of her work with the community, she has participated in other organizations, such as interning at El Centro de la Raza and Juntos si Podemos Cuidar a Nuestro Rio Duwamish. These two experiences brought her to work with a diverse group of people.
Magdalena recently coordinated the Duwamish River Festival, working with the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition Team (DRCC). Magdalena will be joining DRCC in bringing the community voice into account in the process of the Duwamish River cleanup.
Sharon Huerta (she/her)
Sharon (she/her) grew up on the west side of San Antonio, Texas. Her passion in life is to increase representation and give power back to marginalized communities within the environmental sector. In college, she focused on environmental justice and education as a way for her to learn about these oppressive systems and how to combat them. Every summer since freshman year, Sharon has interned with programs that focus on diversifying the environmental sector through exposure to field work, networking, conferences, mentorship, job training, and work opportunities.
She hopes to create her own program and expand opportunities that are available to marginalized individuals interested in working in similar fields. As the first student in her family to attend college, a low-income individual, and a queer POC, she hopes to be an example for others who face similar barriers and let them know that others are pushing to break the green ceiling. Sharon enjoys outdoor activities, like hiking, kayaking, and camping. In her spare time, she’ll be exploring Seattle and finally getting to read all the books she couldn’t from her last year in undergrad.
Shaylea Pilarski (she/her)
Got Green
Shaylea (she/her) has spent most of her childhood growing up in South Park. During her time there, she worked with the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps. In fact, she was involved with a few cohorts through the program. Afterwards, she worked with Choose 180, a nonprofit to help in youth diversion programs to help keep youth out of the justice system. She then moved on to join Community Passageways, where she found her passion for nonprofits. It was a great community that she loved being a part of, but moved on after some time to go into the working world.
She is currently living life as a first-time mom and enjoying every second of it.
Clyzzel Samson (she/her)
King Conservation District
Clyzzel Samson (she/her), who also goes by Cly, comes from a family line of fishermen and farmers, from a small province in the Philippines. She is passionate about food justice and believes that access to healthy food is a human right, not a privilege. She was the political chair for the Filipino American Student Association at the University of Washington in 2016 and has focused her life in uplifting the Asian Pacific Islander community ever since.
Cly centers her activism in kapwa — the Tagalog word for togetherness. To her, food is
a physical and spiritual way to connect with communities, the earth, and past and future
generations. For a while, Cly did research in cosmology with a focus in dark matter
physics. She even went to NASA Space Camp where she completed astronaut training.
Tuvshinzaya “Zaya” Tumurkhuyag (she/her)
The Nature Conservancy
Tuvshinzaya Tumurkhuyag (she/her), who also goes by Zaya, just graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Resource Management. She believes that clean air and water is a basic human right and access shouldn’t be limited due to someone’s gender, race, or age. From her experience engaging with communities of color in South Seattle, she learned that environmental injustices can occur within a city. This realization inspired Zaya to work in the environmental justice area.
She has interned with Puget Sound Clean Air Agency and Sustainable Seattle. She has also worked as a field research assistant for Oyu Tolgoi, LLC and the University of Washington. Zaya loves to collaborate with people and the community in creating solutions. She enjoys yoga and hiking. She especially appreciates bonding with people on longer hikes
Former Green Pathways Fellows
Rheana Dale
Rheana (they/them) was an officer of the Congress of Racial Equity and co-president of their school’s Intersectional Feminist Club. After many trainings around racism via Tyree Scott’s Freedom School and a trip through Seattle Central College, they worked for the King/Seattle/Snohomish YWCA for a little over a year as a Program Coordinator for a curriculum that mentored and helped provide opportunities to Black and Brown femmes after school. Black liberation and queer/gender rights have been the most prevalent issues that have rooted Rheana into their work.
They’re excited to utilize their passion, creativity, and emotional intelligence to serve the community that they’ve come to love and consider home ever since stepping upon this picturesque, yet stolen Duwamish land. A self-proclaimed ‘student of life,’ they’ve no problem with exploring new parks or hiking trails. They feel that they learn a lot more in general when they are around nature. Rheana is a lover of every medium of the arts and spends most of their time daydreaming lyrics for songs or doodling sketches with colored pencils in their sketchbook.
Venice Wong
A child of the diaspora, Venice (they/them) finds their life overlapping in serendipitous circles. As a teen, they participated in a youth volunteer vacation with Washington Trails Association and spent the summer leading those very same trips. Venice studied geography and has dabbled in conservation and restoration work throughout Washington, Minnesota, and New England. They have been lucky enough to work for various nonprofits and government agencies such as the Student Conservation Association, U.S. Forest Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
You can find Venice taking trips up to Richmond for dim sum and the best Chinese pastries in the region. When not working outside, they can be seen enjoying the outdoors exploring beaches or reading with whatever four-legged friend they are caring for at the time.
Ashley Arhin
Born and raised in greater King County, Ashley (she/her) is a recent graduate from Western Washington University, creating an interdisciplinary degree that contextualizes how differing Black communities experience connections to land and place in the United States in the wake of enslavement. As a 1.5 generation Ghanaian living in America, Ashley finds her way back to knowing her roots by engaging with land.
She’s passionate about amplifying culturally responsive environmentalism grounded in a relational praxis that requires an active commitment to understanding ourselves, others, and our Earth through historical and contemporary examples. In the future, she plans to run an educational farm co-operative and use her educational privilege to utilize and culturally adapt skills and methodologies for Ghana’s environmental sector. Ashley describes herself as a curator and currently finds joy mapping, creating art, and writing as a continuation of freedom work.
Johanna Wasse
Johanna Wasse (she/her) is a Project Associate for the Earth Day Northwest 2020 team. Before this program, she worked at the Station coffee shop in Beacon Hill and catered with That Brown Girl Cooks. Being around and supporting POC spaces has always been important to her and she is glad to be a part of [the Green Pathways] program, “made by us, for us.”
As a new Green Pathway Fellow, she is currently working on different aspects of the Earth Day Northwest 50th anniversary event. She is very eager to focus her work on the Youth Summit, which will be taking place on Sept. 14. She has a background in group leadership as well as experience in facilitating events. Johanna is a second generation Eritrean American. She enjoys spending time outdoors, watching a good movie, and eating great food.
Our Current Green Pathways Partner Organizations
Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition is an organization involved in all aspects of the cleanup of the Duwamish River, working to ensure the cleanup meets community standards by restoring environmental health and protecting the fishers and families who use the river as well as reflecting the priorities, values and will of the people who live and work in the region.
Got Green a South Seattle-based grassroots organization led by people of color and low-income people organizing for environmental, racial, and economic justice. They cultivate multi-generational community leaders to be central voices in the Green Movement in order to ensure that the benefits of the green movement and green economy (green jobs, healthy food, energy efficient & healthy homes, public transit) reach low-income communities and communities of color.
King Conservation District a natural resources assistance agency authorized by Washington State and guided by the Washington State Conservation Commission. Our mission is to promote the sustainable use of natural resources through responsible stewardship.
Nature Conservancy is an environmental organization with a mission to protect the lands and waters on which all life depends.