As Policy Director of PODER (2019-2025), I led campaigns that advanced policies combating environmental racism at the city, state, and national levels.

Led efforts to create and adopt the Environmental Justice For All Act.
The Environmental Justice for All Act (EJ for All Act) is comprehensive federal legislation aimed at combating environmental injustice by ensuring all people have the right to clean air, water, and healthy environments, explicitly prohibiting discrimination and disproportionate impacts on communities of color, low-income, and tribal populations from federal policies or funding. It seeks to achieve this by expanding civil rights protections (like Title VI of the Civil Rights Act) for environmental discrimination, requiring federal agencies to develop justice strategies, improving data collection, and giving communities a greater voice in decisions affecting their health.
I was a community expert and liaison for State of the Science and the Future of Cumulative Impact Assessment.
This report lays out an expanded, five-step process for cumulative impact assessment that is driven by ongoing meaningful engagement and includes a final step of monitoring and evaluation of decisions implemented. This report's authoring committee applied its recommended five-step process to eight case studies across different contexts and scales - including the region in Louisiana known as "cancer alley"; a tribal population in Colorado; the train derailment and chemical fire in East Palestine, Ohio; the Los Angeles, California wildfires; and the replacement of lead service lines across the nation - concluding that the recommendations can increase the effectiveness of actions to improve health and well-being.
I worked on introducing aggregate mining regulation and reclamation policy in the state of Texas.
I led a national effort to prevent the passing of the “Dirty Side Deal,” a policy written by the American Petroleum Institute to fast track fossil fuel projects and gut community and environmental assessment through NEPA. This included a social media campaign, organizing 200+ groups in the regional Gulf South states, coordinating with congressional and senate offices.
- Worked alongside a coalition of environmental justice group to ensure Justice40 funding goes to vulnerable communities.
- Organized Justice40 tour in East Austin
- Worked on Justice40 accountability campaign
- Led research and policy recommendation for zoning and land use changes.
- Passed a local ordinance protecting creeks on the East side and the Colorado River
Co-created the Healthy Homes campaign principles and policy recommendations.
Environmental justice communities — communities of color and low-income communities that experience adverse human health and/or environmental effects due to systemic prejudicial policies and underinvestment - live with multiple sources of pollution and health harms in addition to dangerous housing conditions and deferred maintenance. This, on top of deadly extreme heat caused by the climate crisis and resulting increasingly high energy bills, make lead exposure, asthma triggers like mold and pests, and indoor air pollution from fossil fuel appliances like gas stoves, even worse. We are committed to securing healthy homes for all by ensuring a holistic approach for safe built environments. This means that residents are protected from extreme heat and cold, and have homes that are free from pests, mold, lead, and harmful indoor air pollution. We aim to achieve this hand-in-hand with efforts to weatherize and electrify buildings to improve affordability and reduce pollution. This combined approach will improve overall health and well-being for environmental justice communities that face inequities in public and affordable housing.