Staff
Angelica Cortes Mejia
Community Organizer Angelica was born in Guanajuato, Mexico and has lived in Portland for over a decade with her husband and son. She has a passion for combining community organizing, accessibility to healthy fruits and veggies, and environmental education. Angelica is heavily involved in Lents and East Portland and is a strong advocate for reducing barriers to engagement and participation. She also works with Growing Gardens as a Community Organizer.
Since becoming involved with Green Lents in early 2018, Angelica has played an instrumental role in increasing access for Lents Latinx community members. What she loves most about her job is constantly learning new things and meeting new people. In her free time, she likes to cook food, spend time with her family, and build community. email: angelica@greenlents.org phone: 971.266.4196 (office) |
Adam Brunelle
Executive Director Adam has been involved in the Livable Lents listening project since 2015, and was hired in 2016 to direct Green Lents' programs after he helped lead the creation of the Lents Strong action plan. Adam is a community organizer with a Master's in Urban & Regional Planning from Portland State University. Originally from South Carolina and Rhode Island, Adam has a five-year track record of incubating successful community projects in Portland at the grassroots level, including as a co-founder of 350PDX, a grassroots climate action organization.
Adam is committed to environmental justice, working to build partnerships and opportunities for community leadership. Since joining Green Lents, Adam has enhanced our programming to better engage people of color, renters, and people who speak languages other than English. He coordinates several projects, including the Lents Green Ring, our housing affordability work, and spends copious time writing grant applications and building relationships. email: adam@greenlents.org phone: 971.319.0444 (cell) |
Dasha Foerster
Development Manager Dasha joined Green Lents in May 2019 equipped with skills and training in nonprofit fundraising and development, community outreach and partnership building. Helping nonprofits serve their clients’ vision and needs through fundraising is her passion and joining Green Lents was a dream come true. Her other passion is to serve the Russian and Ukrainian speaking communities of
Portland through interpreting, community leadership and serving on Metro Parks and Nature Racial Equity Advisory Board. As a resident of SE community who is also a first generation immigrant she is inspired by Green Lents work and responsiveness to community needs. She especially appreciates the focus on reaching and including communities who are less likely to be heard due to strong barriers to channels of communication with the decision makers influencing their lives. email: dasha@greenlents.org phone: 971.266.4196 (office) |
Jasmine Co
Community Program Manager Jasmine joined Green Lents in the spring of 2019. Originally from Nevada, she has lived in Portland for nearly a decade, graduating from Portland State University with a degree in art, conflict facilitation, and systems science. Her broad professional background ranges from massage therapy to project organization and public outreach.
Jasmine is passionate about seeking innovative ways to move towards a more resilient and mindful way of living - and they're excited to be a part of Green Lents' focus on community engagement, sense of place, and environmental justice. email: jasmine@greenlents.org phone: 971.266.4196 (office) |
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Board Members
Elliott Moon
Elliott is recent resident of Portland and specifically Lents, buying his first home in September 2018. So far, he loves going to the farmer’s market, eating at the food trucks, walking his dog at Lents Park, and being part of the community. His favorite thing about Lents is Lents Park and the way it comes alive when it gets nice out. Elliott heard about Green Lents through the Community Tool Library and is excited about the wide range of projects they have undertaken. He has worked previously in jobs related to ecology, entomology, vaccine research, low income housing, behavioral health, and currently as a research analyst at Clackamas County Public Health Division. He is excited to bring this skillset to help Green Lents in any way that is needed. When not working, Elliott enjoys going for walks with his partner and his dog, watching movies, reading, playing video games, and hanging out with friends.
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Amy Lubitow
Amy first got to know the Lents neighborhood when she started sending her daughter, Hazel, to Manos Unidas Montessori. In getting to know the neighborhood through this experience, Amy focused some of her ongoing research on the Lents neighborhood. As a sociology professor at Portland State, Amy teaches classes and conducts research on Portland neighborhoods. She is particularly interested in how gentrification impacts residents in East Portland and engages community members to think about how we might make neighborhoods more livable for everyone. Since joining Green Lents in 2016, Amy has been helping to support grant writing efforts and to move along Green Lents' engagement with the Green Ring- a pedestrian and biking route that would connect neighborhood amenities in a more accessible way. Amy is most excited about helping Lents, and the broader East Portland community, build collective spaces to get to know one another.
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Rhesa Napoli
Rhesa is a new(ish) transplant to Lents, having moved here in 2008. She has enjoyed being a part of the Lents community, especially in the many ways her Lents neighbors show their generosity of spirit with shared resources. She was initially intrigued by Green Lents as an organization while volunteering with the Tool Library. Such a simple but brilliant idea of sharing tools amongst neighbors! She is appreciative of having benefited from many Green Lents projects, including enjoying books from Little Libraries around her block, eating berries from the Malden Ct. Community Orchard, and this year, even having volunteers plant native perennials in her garden to increase Pollinator Habitat.
As a lover of Lents, she wants to serve the community with her heart, skills, interests and experiences acquired throughout her life: she emigrated from the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, completed a B.S. Environmental Studies, and a Doctorate of Naturopathic Medicine, and regards gardening, healthy food access and community building as vital public health concerns. |
Katherine Selin
Katie is an urban planner, passionate about working with people to create great places. Lents is one of her favorite great places. She loves how people come from so many different backgrounds, yet find common ground to work together to improve this small, special corner of the universe. She got involved with Green Lents and the wider neighborhood several years ago as part of a project in graduate school. Since then, she has worked for GL and now serve on the board. She loves how responsive GL is to community needs and how enthusiastically the GL community supports a new idea for a project or event. She can't wait to see where it goes from here!
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Izzy Armenta
Records Keeper Izzy Armenta is a former Green Lents Confluence Fellow. During his time with Green Lents he helped coordinate Livable Lents outreach to better understand livability concerns and ways to address them using the community's voice as the guiding principle. After serving two exciting AmeriCorps terms he has gone on to join Oregon Walks as their Transportation Justice Advocate. His current role finds him working with YEJA youth leaders in mapping walking barriers East Portland youth face and identifying ways to advocate to address those barriers. When he's not working he also serves on the board of Confluence Environmental Center, watches cheesy horror films, and listens to punk records at inappropriately high levels.
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Green Lents welcomes people of all races, all religions, all genders, all countries of origin, and all sexual orientations in its programs and spaces. We prioritize the safety of our volunteers and constituents, and reserve the right to deny services or entrance to anyone for any reason that does not discriminate against the protected classes under Oregon state law (http://www.oregon.gov/boli/TA/docs/t_faq_protected_classes.pdf).
