Natalie is currently the Program Manager at the Center for Creative Land Recycling. Inspired by the leadership of Chief Caleen Sisk and tribal members of the Winnemem Wintu tribe, Natalie was supporting community-scale programs for wellness and cultural preservation, as well as their advocacy efforts to restore the health of the endangered salmon and California’s waterways. She is co-leading fundraising, organizational development, and developing community-led resiliency programs. Natalie is a community planner committed to using participatory planning and strategic communications as tools to create equity for underserved, frontline communities. Previously, she supported the passage of policies to improve living wages, affordable housing, and green jobs while at The Center on Policy Initiatives, used online organizing tools in campaigns to safeguard food, water, and fish, and also worked on public health and alternative transportation programs while working in the public sector.

Her experience growing up in Rosemead and Ontario, CA, communities with poor air quality and many poverty-wage jobs in factories and truck-driving, have guided her commitment to a life-affirming holistic approach to community development and intersectional organizing. Prior to the pandemic, Natalie spent two years in an adult nature connection program to deepen her kinship with life and believes access to these opportunities for connection is critical to sourcing and sustaining our climate resiliency efforts. Natalie enjoys dancing and discovering her inner artist, deepening the lifelong practices of animal tracking, herbal medicine, birdwatching, and wilderness survival/sur-thrival, and cooking healthy meals with friends.