Staff
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Angelica Cortes Mejia
Latina Community Lead She/Her/Hers Angelica was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, and has lived in SE Portland for well 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, Oregon Food Bank, and Leadership Policy Council. In spring 2023, Angelica received her Community Health Workers of Oregon certification.
Since becoming involved with Green Lents in early 2018, Angelica has played an instrumental role in increasing access for Lents Latino/a/x community members. What she loves most about her job is growing through it personally and together with the community members, and seeing happy faces of the people she reaches. Angelica shares that helping marginalized members of our community motivates her to continue developing her leadership. In her free time, she likes to cook food, spend time with her family, and build community. |
Dasha Foerster
Community 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 Ukrainian and immigrant communities of Portland through interpreting, community leadership and service on Metro Parks and Nature Racial Equity Advisory Board from 2019 through 2022.
Dasha became Green Lents' first Community Director in August 2022 and has since been a strong partner to our staff, board of directors, volunteers and neighbors in accomplishing our mission-driven goals and initiatives. As a resident of SE community who is also a first generation immigrant she is inspired by Green Lents' work and responsiveness to our community's needs. In her free time, Dasha can be found playing with her kids, gardening with her parents, doing fun and meaningful things out in our Ukrainian community, and making new discoveries in artistic, environmental and community spaces of our city and region with her husband, family and friends. |
Board Members
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Jody O'Brien
Board Member She/Her/Hers |
Lindsay Schmonsees
Board Member She/Her/Hers |
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Jody was a preschool teacher in Washington DC for almost 2 years while her husband finished nursing school. She loves children and enjoys working with families. She considered her students and coworkers as family and was devastated when a sudden health complication forced her to leave the position. After 1.5 years Jody was recovered enough to make the long journey back home to Oregon with her husband. In August 2020 they moved to Lents and fell in love with the community. She continues to recover, running with the neighbors, and walking her dog in the neighborhood. She has a goal to always be involved in the Lents community.
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Lindsay has been a Green Lents resident for four years and was excited to discover the Tool Library after having previously volunteered at the Northeast Portland Tool Library. With a background in journalism and communications and early experience in publishing, she enjoys putting pen to paper for the organization’s newsletters and events and is excited to bring a strategic vision for communications to the board. Always drawn to mission-driven organizations, she recently took a position as project manager at Cambia Health Solutions, a non-profit health plan provider with deep roots in Portland.
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Jason Naumann
Board Member He/Him/His Jason began volunteering with Green Lents Community Tool Library in the autumn of 2015. He has since supported the Tool Library and Green Ring with design, communications and development projects of many kinds through his professional skills as a graphic designer and brand development specialist.
Jason is passionate about reducing waste and increasing access to shared resources throughout Portland and beyond. He is currently working hard to integrate the many sustainable reuse programs across the city into East Multnomah County while supporting our developing Workshops program. |
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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 protected classes under Oregon state law (http://www.oregon.gov/boli/TA/docs/t_faq_protected_classes.pdf)
