I am an artist, community organizer, educator and outdoorswoman.

I have spent over 25 years creating art across multiple mediums, and building community movements, organizations, and programs that support joy and connection to the outdoors, and build social and ecological justice in our world.

Artist

Through my work as a  multi-disciplinary artist, I tell stories that are often left on the margin, build power and joy in community, and makes visible our deep intertwinement with the natural world. 

I am the author of the book, Just Enough, a Journey through Thailand’s Troubled South, available through Silkworm Books and the University of Washington Press. Written as a memoir, it recounts the lives of Malay Muslim villagers in Thailand’s rural Pattani province - teenage metalheads, impoverished fishermen, Islamic school teachers, children and elders - as they negotiate the wrenching impacts of violent civil conflict and rapid globalization. I co-produced and co-directed the short documentary, Recruitment Day, which follows one of the book’s main characters, and was broadcast internationally on Al Jazeera English’s Witness program.

As a musician, videographer, performer, and producer, I have created and led the Green Guard intergenerational eco-hip hop collective which created and performed a body of work based on in-depth group explorations of Oakland’s landscape and natural history; the solo hip hop act Mira Manic; and the blog Surfer Grrrls Brasil, producing original video, music, and written content celebrating women of color in surfing and the outdoors. I wrote the theme song for the award-winning, internationally screened,  feature film, It Ain’t Pretty, about the wave-making women who surf San Francisco’s notorious Ocean Beach.  

I have performed at the Freight, Berkeley as part of the International Day of Body Music, Oakland Museum of California Friday Nights, The New Parrish, Ruckus Revival, Sistar Cypher at Qilombo, Solespace, and University Federal da Bahia, Brazil. 

As a teaching artist with CalPerformances out of UC Berkeley, and  Play For Change (formerly Boomshake), I teach music for community connection and uplift to young people in Oakland and Berkeley. I hold a Certificate in Digital Video Production from New York University.

I am currently working on an autobiographical theatrical comedy, featuring rhyme, music, and pageantry, which interrogates the societal pressures faced by girls at the onset of puberty, and celebrates a friendship that defied the narratives.

Organizer

I am the founder of Salted Roots, formerly operating under the name Brown Girl Surf.  As the co-founder and later executive director of Brown Girl Surf, I initiated and launched Brown Girl Surf’s community programs, which over 9 years grew into the Salted Roots grassroots community movement.  This movement, fiercely centered in BIPOC leadership, advocacy, and the principals of community organizing, has significantly shifted surf culture in the state of California and successfully advocated for critical reforms in public access to state beaches, while welcoming hundreds of girls, women, and non-binary folx of color to see themselves as surfers and ocean stewards.  Prior to that I developed and managed several innovative youth programs centering environmental leadership in BIPOC spaces, working in partnership with United Roots, Urban Peace Movement, Urban ReLeaf, and Growing a Global Heart. 

I continue to work as a community organizer in my Oakland neighborhoodof San Antonio, where I was the founding coordinator, and strategic advisor to Friends of San Antonio Park, a coalition dedicated to building the power of working families in determining the future of the park and neighborhood. In Oakland’s biggest budget deficit year in four decades, we secured 4 million dollars for a park improvements envisioned by community members. 

My work has been featured in the SF Chronicle, NBC Bay Area, PBS Northern California, The Root, East Bay Express, High Country News, KQED, and on NPR’s Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan. I have been recognized as an ESPN W Everyday Hero, and as an Audobon Toyota TogetherGreen Fellow.

Educator, Outdoorswoman, and Environmentalist:

 I have worked as a naturalist in the Marin Headlands with Naturebridge, an outdoor recreation guide for East Bay Regional Parks, and a program designer for Oakland Parks and Recreation.  Before this I was a lead teacher and community forester for Yale University’s Urban Ecology Initiative, in New Haven. I have worked in national parks, in local community gardens, in play yards, and in grade school classrooms, as a full time teacher, a science specialist, and an urban forester.  I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Brown University, a Master’s degree in Environmental Science from Yale’s School of the Environment.

Earlier in my career, I worked in Asia, as a program officer for the IUCN’s Asian Forest and Wetlands programs, working with community and government leaders to develop environmental policies to support ecosystems and livelihoods in the Mekong River basin.