Staff
Daniel Adel, Online Communications Coordinator
For Daniel, a San Francisco Bay Area local, social and environmental advocacy is deeply personal. He has a strong sense of place shaped by his region’s majestic setting before California’s interior waterways and the vast Pacific Ocean. Raised in a working class, immigrant Bengali family, he developed a checkered identity and a knack to challenge dominant narratives of our world and society at an early age. His thirst for equity and justice came of age when he entered higher education and was introduced to its inspiring communities of organizers, their tireless work, and of others around the greater Bay Area. An advocate of many trades, he campaigned for fossil fuel divestment in the halls of San Francisco State University, and has marched to bring awareness to climate and environmental justice issues in his ancestral South Asia, and along the refinery corridor of the Northeast San Francisco Bay, where his hometown of Benicia, CA resides. A storyteller at heart, he has written for the publication Earth Island Journal, and has performed writing, communications, and social media outreach roles for Sacred Fire Foundation, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Bioneers, and Save The Bay. Daniel brings his passion to CSSC as their Online Communications Coordinator.
Silver Hannon, Fossil Free Campaign Director (former as of June 2017)
Silver works with fossil fuel divestment campaigns across California in addition to specific coordination duties with the Fossil Free UC campaign. Her passion is to support strong campaigns and develop student leaders dedicated to long-haul organizing around climate justice and social justice issues. During her time as a student at UC Berkeley, Silver was involved in many facets of the Fossil Free Cal campaign. The very tangible change-making power divestment holds and the commitment to solidarity with both environmental and social justice causes it is grounded in makes her work both invigorating and deeply meaningful.
CSSC Writing Program
Josh Cozine, Senior CSSC Journalist
My name is Josh Cozine and I’ve been in school for way too long.
I’ve pretty much lived in Northern CA all my life. Growing up, I always wavered between wanting to be a teacher or a scientist. I’ve been to four different colleges now and changed majors three different times, but it’s always had to do with one or the other. In the latter of my way too many years of college, while studying biology, I discovered sustainability as a course of study and have been hooked ever since. A lot of the reason I got into biology was my appreciation of ecology and the conservation of endangered species. Since studying sustainability, I’ve found myself more interested in the conservation of all things, but especially of the earth as a whole, functioning, system. While spending too many years in college, I’ve also learned to appreciate the impact to which well thought out, well researched, pieces of writing can affect people. It’s one thing to know the issues regarding sustainability as they stand these days, and it’s another to be able to effectively communicate these issues to others who may not know as much, or may hold contrasting views. I hope that here with the CSSC I might be able to do exactly that: share the issues and obstacles of sustainability, and hopefully solutions as well. Be they large engineering projects to bring electric vehicles to more people, or as small as tips to conserving water but still being able to grow a productive home garden.
So there’s just a bit of my past, here’s to the future!
Dylan Ruan, CSSC Journalist/Editor
The only thing I love more than reading a good story is writing one myself. As a science communicator, my goal is to break down complex information and distill it into relevant and useful content for my readers.
At UC Santa Barbara, I pursued degrees in environmental studies and communication to discover better ways of communicating environmental issues to the public. Over the course of my career as a science and environmental communicator, I learned that engaging the public in issues of sustainability is not just incredibly challenging, but also deeply rewarding.
I believe that using storytelling to spread applicable scientific knowledge is the best way that we can equip society to address the needs of our planet. The goal of my writing is to assist others to learn, grow, and be inspired by the stories I cover.
Drew Story, Senior CSSC Journalist
Drew is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in Chemical & Environmental Engineering at UC Riverside and is studying the aggregation and deposition mechanisms of engineered nanomaterials.
As the Public Relations Officer for the UCR Graduate Student Association, Drew has worked to institutionalize sustainability in the graduate student experience on campus.
Drew is passionate about the inclusion of science in the state and federal level policy-making process, and intends to use his scientific training to participate in the sustainable management of natural resources in the face of climate change.
Drew is the Editor in Chief of a science communication resource focused on southern California’s Salton Sea, and currently serves on multiple advisory committees under the California Natural Resources Agency regarding the Salton Sea Management Program.
Emily Ochoa, CSSC Journalist
Emily is a journalist for the CSSC Program. She plans on exerting her education later on in law school, she’s planning on becoming an environmental lawyer. She’s noticed that even on her campus, UC Merced, which stands as one of the country’s most sustainable campuses, sustainability is a topic that seems to be ignored by most majors. More specifically, ignored in her majors; Political Science and Sociology. Always placed at the end of the syllabus, environmental injustices and policies aimed at correcting them are rarely talked about. And she finds it impossible to ignore the environment when she have glowing sunsets and grazing cows right outside her classroom window. Emily wants to find a way to enhance the environmental beauty in big cities and provide information to anyone who wants to re-root themselves into Mother Earth. Working with the CSSC team, she hopes to talk about issues currently harming Earth right now, and equip others with the information necessary for joining the worldwide effort to sustain and preserve our environment.
SCHOOL: University of California, Merced
MAJOR: Political Science & Sociology
HOMETOWN: Los Angeles, CA
CONTACT: [email protected]
Kyle Ritland, CSSC Journalist
Kyle Ritland was raised by scientists in a small town in the forests of South Carolina, where he was taught to pick up trash whenever he found it. This habit followed him to Southern California, where he was impressed by the state’s progressive investment in sustainable energy and practices, but simultaneously overwhelmed by the littered freeways and smoggy skies. Since then, he has made it his mission to explore the major questions of conservation and sustainability (be they the most pressing or the most overlooked) to determine how the city might better coexist with the forest.
Kyle is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at UC Riverside and the Editor-in-Chief of the Santa Ana River Review, and hopes to use his background in writing to craft compelling narratives around the leading issues of sustainability, teaching what can be done, and inspiring the initiative to do it.
SCHOOL: UC Riverside
MAJOR: Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
HOMETOWN: Riveside, CA
CONTACT: [email protected]
Sara Eddy, CSSC Journalist
My name is Sara Marie Eddy and I am passionate about environmental policy and advocacy. I am a third year at California Polytechnic State University studying environmental earth sciences with a minor in law and society. I plan on pursuing a career in environmental and energy law, as I feel law is a powerful tool to shape our nation into one that is much more sustainable. My dream job would be to work on federal environmental policy and heavily integrate the science community into policy making. I feel that students have an incredible amount of resources and are an excellent medium for communicating the environmental agenda. I am thrilled to be able to spread the student voice and educate the community!
SCHOOL: California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
MAJOR: Environmental Earth Sciences
HOMETOWN: Olympia, WA
CONTACT: [email protected]
Lillian Zhou, CSSC Journalist
As a student at UCSB and as a human living on the planet Earth, I am always exploring the endless intersections between the environment and everything else that exists in our world. Although there is a myriad of paths to a sustainable society and even more diverse notions of what that society might look like, I have learned that one thing is clear: our efforts towards sustainability can only be successful through an interdisciplinary approach that considers how the health of the environment is inseparable from social, economic, and political issues. I believe a sustainable future is possible, but getting there takes empathy, communication, creativity, and compromise.
The topics I am most passionate about are climate politics, energy politics, and food justice. In addition to my schoolwork, I am also part of a project conducting research on environmental justice conflicts in the Global South. Through my work with CSSC, I hope to contribute to a more holistic sustainability movement and show that a better world can be reached by finding the common ground that empowers us to work together.
SCHOOL: University of California, Santa Barbara
MAJOR: Environmental Studies and Political Science
HOMETOWN: Los Altos, CA
CONTACT: [email protected]
Kristin Edwards, CSSC Journalist
I am a graduate student at UC Riverside pursuing a PhD in Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology. My current research involves comparing the physical characteristics of fishes with the demands of their environment and investigating how these will change as the environment does. It is important to me to be able to share with the public and underrepresented groups in particular the importance and excitement of doing research and I participate in outreach both through my department and through the Association for Women in Science. I have always been passionate about both writing and conservation, so I am excited to be able to combine those pursuits here at CSSC and engage with these incredible student efforts to make the world a better place.
SCHOOL: University of California, Riverside
MAJOR: Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology
HOMETOWN: Springfield, VA
CONTACT: [email protected]
Shanti Belaustegui Pockell, CSSC Journalist
Shanti was born in Morelos, Mexico, spent some time in the Bay Area in California, and went to a bamboo High School in the middle of a jungle in Bali, Indonesia. Although she may be from many places, she has found “home” amidst the glorious redwoods of Northern California. Although she best expresses herself through her writing, she also loves finding tangible ways to express abstract thoughts through visual arts, music, and stimulating discourses. Shanti is a passionate Environmental and Social Justice advocate, a firm believer in the immense power of storytelling, and seeks to attack issues through an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and inter-systemic framework.
SCHOOL: Humboldt State University
MAJOR: Environmental Studies (Emphasis in Conservation and Ecological Science)
HOMETOWN: Tepoztlan, Mexico
CONTACT: [email protected]
Joseph Kowalski, CSSC Journalist
Joseph Kowalski is an aspiring lawyer who hopes to work at the intersection of environmental protection and human rights, especially Indigenous Peoples right to clean water. He also hopes to make it as a writer, and writes everything from sci-fi screenplays to articles on social issues. He enjoys travelling, learning about different cultures, and laughing.
SCHOOL: University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law
MAJOR: Law
HOMETOWN: New Haven, Connecticut
CONTACT: [email protected]
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