Staff
Angelica Cortes Mejia
Community Organizer She/Her/Hers 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) |
Dasha Foerster
Development Director She/Her/Hers 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) |
Kristin Berger
Operations Manager & Program Director She/Her/Hers |
Drew Gage Alcoser
Fundraising and Grant Advisor Volunteer They/Them/Theirs |
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Kristin, a native Michigander, has lived in Lents for 23 years, raising children and chickens. A former artesian with Lent’s Trillium Artisans, co-host of the Lents Farmers Market Poetry Series (2011-2019), Kristin's passions at Green Lents are volunteer engagement, gardening aid, food & climate justice.
Kristin is also the author four books of poetry and essays on Climate Change, urban gardening, and parenting. Kristin is proud Mom to two Franklin High School students, and spends her spare time with her family camping, hiking and poking around Oregon. She loves to garden, can peaches, save seeds, and share veggies and eggs with her neighbors. email: kristin@greenlents.org phone: 971.266.4196 (office) |
Drew came to Green Lents with a passion for community climate change adaptation. “My grant writing goal is to bring the reader on a journey—lived as a humble curiosity; writing to tell the story of Green Lents’ projects.” Drew enjoys camping, electro-ambient music, experiencing/practicing art, and Diet Coke.
email: drew@greenlents.org phone: 971.266.4196 (office) |
Board Members
Izzy Armenta
Co-Chair He/Him/His Izzy 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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Amy Lubitow
Board Member She/Her/Hers 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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Cole Berryman
Board Member They/Them/Theirs Cole joined Green Lents during the summer of 2021 and was shortly after voted on as a member of the board of directors. They are pursuing their B.A. in Economics and a minor in Music at Reed College, with particular areas of focus in environmental economics and public policy. Their prior experience includes serving as an Ambassador and the Musical Director for an international peace project focused on establishing artistic and environmental ties with Costa Rican students; working on a California ballot measure for which they received a letter of recommendation from Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg; founding and serving as Co-Chair of a multi-media arts collective; and developing an official student coalition at Reed dedicated to assisting and uniting students recovering from substance abuse, sober students, and their allies. In their free time, Cole enjoys writing and playing music, hiking, cooking traditional global cuisines, reading, and studying Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism.
Joel Dixon
Board Co-Chair He/Him/His Joel comes from a background of non-profit programming and joined the Green Lents board in 2020. Before settling in Portland Joel served as a children's camp director in Kansas. He now manages a home repair program serving low-income Portland homeowners and has worked with many homeowners in Lents towards housing stability. Joel is a resident of Lents and enjoys guitar, power tools and talking politics.
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Ryan Morris
Treasurer He/Him/His Ryan has been a Lents resident since 2019 and quickly found and utilized the Tool Library for weekend projects. After completing an MBA from Portland State University, he was ready to get more involved with his community and jumped at the opportunity to join the Green Lents Board, as Treasurer, in June of 2021. Ryan hopes his work as Treasurer will help Green Lents strategically meet residents' needs. Ryan has dedicated his energy to identifying efficiencies in operations management throughout his career, with a genuine priority to empathy in daily interactions. As a part of Green Lents, he hopes to continue to meet more of his wonderful neighbors; please say hi if you see him at the tool library or out for a walk with his wife and dog!
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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).
