Monica started as a volunteer with MRG Foundation’s Justice Within Reach annual event and found deep connection to Seeding Justices’ mission and value and supporting the great work of grantees across the state.

Monica’s experience includes social change communication, education and nonprofit management. Her work focuses on connecting people and organizations to mission driven causes and creating lasting community change. She cares for and works to implement change in education, healthcare and environmental justice issues and causes. When not volunteering or at work, you can find Monica hanging out with her family, running, laughing at good sitcoms and enjoying the local food and beverage scene.

Crystallee Crain Ph.D. is a public health scholar and human rights activist. She has academic roots in sociology, political science, and psychology. She specializes in exposing the layers of institutional inequality while supporting communities to shift ways of being and practice to improve life chances. By bridging the worlds of academia and activism, Crystallee’s body of work represents a collective need to strengthen our responses to violence through transformative means, the need for liberation, and a focus on healing as a revolutionary strategy for change.

Crystallee is the Founder & Director of Prevention at the Intersections, an organization that works to prevent violence through community-based research and people centers projects. At Prevention at the Intersections, she publishes two open access journals CATALYST and The Beauty of Black Creation. Dr Crain facilitates trainings with an emphasis on trauma-informed care, prevention science, and community capacity-building. Dr Crain is a Certified Neuro-linguistic Programming Practitioner & Coach and Hypnotherapist. She specializes in working with women of color and survivors of violence. You can learn more about her coaching and survivor work at www.crystalleecrain.org.

Tamia came to grassroots organizing after being diagnosed with breast cancer and post-traumatic stress. Her journey back to wellness without adequate resources taught her that the people most impacted by injustice must also be the ones who identify the problems and implement the solutions and inspired her to found a nonprofit in 2017, PDX Alliance for Self-Care, focused on improving access to care for her community. Her work during the pandemic, protests, and wildfire response of 2020 connected her with an invaluable mutual aid network and a vast community of first responders, healthcare providers, and activists. That experience continues to inform her consulting work at the intersection of health equity and climate justice.

Tamia finds joy in mentoring young people and helping BIPoC, LGBTQIA+, and neurodiverse students access educational and leadership opportunities. She is a passionate healthcare advocate in her role as a Community Health Center Board Chair and founding board member of BIPoC Paramedics of Portland.

Tamia is a die-hard fan of the one and only North London football team, Arsenal Gunners. She also enjoys dancing, gardening, hiking, doing yoga, and cooking for her loved ones in her hometown of Portland, Oregon.

Judith (jee-deet) is an Afro-Haitian American, female identifying, cis-gender, queer licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She currently resides in the lands of the Northern Paiutes, the Wascos, and the Warm Springs bands. Judith has gained a lot of experience in the field of mental health and continues to challenge her learning and education through seeking support in decolonizing mental health and the way she provides services, creates, teaches and supervises. She is also a university faculty member and is currently a doctoral candidate in a Marriage and Family Doctorate program specializing in program development focusing on increasing parent engagement with adolescents in residential treatment. Judith has years of experience working with outpatient clients through her private practice, Triune Health & Wellness, providing clinical supervision and development in the areas of systemic therapy and healing justice for mental health professionals seeking licensure, and working in Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Programs as a Nature-Based therapist and Family Program Manager for parents with adolescents in residential treatment. Judith is Program Director and Operations for Liberation Pathways Healing Space which focuses on seeding liberation through remembering, connecting, and healing for historically marginalized populations. For pleasure and joy, Judith enjoys Caribbean music and dance, singing and participating in community theater, traveling internationally and taking time to rest!

Ubaldo works as a community organizer with Columbia Riverkeeper in Hood River, conducting community outreach on clean water while promoting equity, inclusion, and diversity. Ubaldo has been an active member in the Latinx community in the Columbia Gorge, participating in projects that promote awareness on issues that are relevant to Latinxs in Oregon and Washington. In the last 15 years, he has launched and participated in multiple projects benefiting the Latinx community, including the local community radio station Radio Tierra. In his free time, he enjoys mountain biking, fishing, and hiking in the Columbia Gorge.

Ricardo Luján-Valerio is Portland City Commissioner Carmen Rubio’s Transition Liaison and Policy Director. Ricardo’s background covers immigration, education, election, and criminal justice policy. He previously served as Director of Advocacy at Latino Network, Policy Associate for the ACLU of Oregon, and as Legislative Director for the Oregon Student Association. Ricardo has been a leader in the passage of various state legislative priorities, such as HB 2015 (Driver Licenses for All) and SB 1008 (Youth Sentencing Reform). Most recently, he was a co-architect of the Oregon Worker Relief Fund, a multi-million-dollar disaster relief program for Oregon’s immigrant community. He previously served as Vice Chair of the City of Portland’s Open and Accountable Elections Commission. He was born in Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico, and graduated from Southern Oregon University with a BS in Business and a certificate in nonprofit management.

Esperanza Tervalon-Garrett is a queer, Afro-Puerto Rican woman, and a native daughter of Oakland, California. She is the founder and CEO of Dancing Hearts Consulting, LLC, a progressive consulting firm that curates innovative ideas, programs, and campaigns to challenge the status quo and test emerging strategies that change the political game to win long-term change for the people most impacted by systemic oppression.

Esperanza was the first woman of color to lead a 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4) & PAC collaborative civic engagement formation focused on mobilizing progressive voters of color in the United States. Her ability to build grassroots power in neighborhoods, at the ballot box, and at City Hall has earned her a solid reputation as a savvy electoral strategist, a seasoned political organizer, and a power-building innovator among Social Justice activists and philanthropic leaders. Esperanza is the co-chair of the Funders Committee for Civic Participation, a network of civic engagement institutions that moves $170 million to the field each year. They also served as the Statewide Campaign Manager for the Oregon Hard to Count Census Campaign that aimed to engage one million people.

Esperanza is married to wife Christine and her proudest accomplishment is her brilliant and tenacious son, Santiago. They live in a ranch in Central Oregon.

Abigail is the first generation of her family born in the USA to Filipino parents. Her paternal grandfather survived the Bataan death march and, via creative use of the GI Bill, in one generation shifted from subsistence rice farming in the rural Philippines to a family of teachers, lawyers, accountants, and nurses on three continents. And one granddaughter (me) whose vocation in life defies her family’s abilities to encapsulate in one word. 

Based in Portland, Oregon, Abigail has lived and worked over the past twenty years in the Philippines, India, Senegal, Kenya, Italy, Peru and Ecuador, with organizations like the United Nations, the Wildlife Conservation Society, The Lemelson Foundation, the Government of Uruguay, Portland State University and IMPAQTO, a social enterprise accelerator in Ecuador. She loves working in partnership with diverse groups of people to learn, co-create and re-imagine together the systems we work in. This is often through supporting the conditions that allow for power-sharing in philanthropy, community-led philanthropy, mentoring and coaching nonprofit and for-profit social venture leaders, and facilitation of global community impact networks organizing for racial and climate justice, healing, and thriving people and planet. She has also worked as a professional cellist and gymnastics instructor. Abigail earned a M.Sc. in Environmental Science from Yale, hold a B.Sc. in International Politics from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, and a certificate in International Law from the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar in Senegal. 

She love languages, is fluent in English, Spanish and French, and knows enough to get into trouble in Portuguese, Italian, Tagalog, Ilocano (Philippine dialects) and Wolof (Sénégal). When not in front of a computer, she grows food in her garden, sings with her teenagers only slightly off-key, accompanied by various musical instruments cluttering up the family room, dances with her husband or finds ways to get outside.

Jaylyn is a mother, educator, advocate for social justice and a member of the Confederated Tribe of Warm Springs (CTWS). She was raised in Simnasho, Oregon and is a traditional food gatherer for her Tribe. She is a mother of two beautiful children. Her Indian name is Alish (Ah-lish) which was given to her from her namesake; Margaret Suppah, her grandmother who raised her. Her passion is decolonizing education for herself, her children, her community, and always looks for ways to incorporate her culture into her home, classroom and programming. Jaylyn works for the CTWS as the Community Planner for the Health & Human Services branch advocating and advancing health equity practices and policies. She currently serves on the Oregon Indian Education Association board where she uses her voice to work towards equitable education for all students.

She developed the Papalaxsimisha program which incorporates historical trauma, healing, self-identity, cultural awareness, high school readiness, college and career readiness in a curriculum she and two other native teachers developed. Her background includes Cultural Awareness trainer, Traditional Health Worker, youth mentor, historical trauma facilitator, curriculum development and youth program development.