Staff & Board

November 8, 2010

Staff

     Diana Copeland, Co-Director


    Diana has an extensive background in environmental justice advocacy, environmental project management, and community organizing. Mrs. Copeland earned her BS in Environmental Science and Tribal Natural Resource Policy at The Evergreen State College, watershed management at University of Washington Program in Streamside Studies, and her MS in Environmental Justice at the University of Michigan. She worked in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, connecting community leaders to solve environmental and health challenges in Rio's favelas (autonomous communities) before coming to EMEAC. She has been very active in forming coalitions between environmental organizations, community and environmental justice groups to win environmental justice and health victories. email: Diana
    Ife Kilimanjaro, Co-Director

    Ife has worked to strengthen organizations, institutions and efforts by and for black and brown people for the past 20 years. After completing her doctorate in sociology (focusing on race/class/gender relations and philosophy) at Howard University, Ife moved to Detroit to support teaching and learning at Michigan’s only historically black college – Lewis College of Business – as department chair and vice president.  Recognizing a need to support learning at younger ages, she served as principal of an African centered public school academy.  During that time, Ife was part of a team that launched University of Kmt Press, which later gave rise to African International, an online resource for left-of-center analyses of issues facing African people.  Upon leaving her educational leadership post, Ife returned to the grassroots activist realm of her earlier days and assumed various logistical roles during the planning and implementation of the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit.  She continues to participate on the Transition Team of the USSF; serves on the board of directors for the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network; assists local organizations behind the scenes to meet organization and funder-driven goals and reporting requirements; and supports groups and people seeking to do what is just and right toward the transformation of society. She is a mother and grandmother, student of life and history, reiki practitioner and life-learner of herbal medicine and natural healing. email: ife


    Dee Collins, Finance Director


     Dee joined EMEAC in 2012 as Finance Director.  With over 30 years experience in finance and accounting, she has worked for various non-profits in the Detroit Metropolitan area. Dee has also volunteered for numerous churches and non-profits to help with bookkeeping challenges. email: Dee


    William Copeland, Stand Up Speak Out Youth Program Coordinator


    William is an organizer and cultural worker from Detroit. He works as EMEAC's Stand Up Speak Out Youth Coordinator. SUSO works with the Detroit Institute of Technology (Cody HS), Nsoroma Institute, and the city-wide Youth Leadership Team. He is working with a group of Detroit activists to create the Whole Note Healing Collective, breathing this process one step at a time. He served as one of the local coordinators for the 2010 US Social Forum and participated in the 2011 Detroit 2 Dakar Delegation to the World Social Forum held in Dakar, Senegal. If there is an exodus from imperialistic institutions and Western philosophies, he hopes he does not miss the caravan while he is engrossed in video games. email: Will


    Priscilla Dziubek, Senior Engagement Program Coordinator
     
    Priscilla is a community activist involved locally in the international struggle for water as a human right, held in the public trust, as a precious resource.  She is coordinator of our inter-generational gardening program, Gardening Angels, and instructs environmental labs within Detroit Public Schools.  She is a master composter and was instrumental in establishing the Barbara Jordan school garden.  Currently, Priscilla is planning gardening activities for the summer months that will involve both students and community seniors.  email: Priscilla


    Victoria Goff, Detroit Future Communications Coordinator

    Victoria is a long time digital justice activist. She's done extensive online organizing that prioritizes the work of women of color, including co-organizing the very first Radical Women of Color workshop at the Allied Media Conference. She is also a published author with her work appearing in The Guardian, Make/Shift, and Bitch, among others. You can currently find her teaching social media workshops for the Detroit Future Program, or tweeting about everyday life in Detroit Future at @dcommunicates! email: Victoria Goff 

      

     Sonya Green, Multicultural Environmental Science and Arts Lab Coordinator
       

    Sonya, spiritually known as Sanaa Nia-Joy, is an informal educator with the EMEAC Greener Schools program. Prior to returning to Detroit and beginning her role at EMEAC, she worked with youth groups in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Howard University and a Ecopsychology Masters degree candidate in Naropa University's Transpersonal Psychology department. She is also a Reiki practitioner, Belly Dance instructor and nature lover. All of her work enhances the goal of helping people express their brightest self and have a closer relationship to the earth both of which will be healing for the earth and humanity. email: Sanaa 

      
    Charity Hicks, Food Justice Task Force Program Co-Coordinator


    Charity is part of the coordination team for the Detroit Food Justice Taskforce (2010). She is a writer, researcher, healer, artist, grower, organizer, and cross-pollinator. She is secretary of one the members of the Detroit Food Justice Taskforce, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (2006) and one of its founding members. She is point person on the coordination of the D-Town Farm Annual Harvest Festival every fall started in 2007. She studies and works on spirituality, medicinal herbs, and Afrikan traditional rituals/society/culture. Charity currently is serving with several groups in Detroit which include: Detroit Public Schools Health Council, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, Detroit Grocery Store Coalition Steering Committee, Detroit Food Policy Council, People’s Water Board Detroit, Future’s Taskforce of the Community Development Advocates of Detroit, Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit, the Green Taskforce Water Sub-committee, Detroit Peoples Movement Assembly group, and others. She is a Master Gardener via MSU Wayne County Extension and a member of the Sierra Club and several national environmental groups. email: Charity  

    Siwatu Salaama Ra, Stand Up Speak Out, Youth Leadership Team Coordinator

    Siwatu grew up in the movement, attending community organizing meetings as a child of a union organizer and one of Detroit's environmental justice pioneers. After graduating from high school Siwatu began her own career as an environmental justice advocate with an internship at the Belle Isle Nature Center where she worked on finding solutions to invasive plant species before joining the Detroiter's Working for Environmental Justice Youth on Patrol Against Pollution Program. In addition to gaining experience with clerical support and grant research at DWEJ, Siwatu became an assistant to the Green Jobs Training Program and conducted environmental justice toxic tours.

    In 2011,  Siwatu joined EMEAC as Youth Team Leadership Coordinator for the Stand Up! Speak Out Program. While at EMEAC Siwatu has attended trainings and conferences around the U.S. and the world on climate change, allied media, youth environmental justice tours while volunteering at the Cass Community Center serving food to the homeless. She played a support role during the 2010 U.S. Social Forum held in Detroit and was a member Detroit to Dakar delegation to the 2011 World Social Forum in Senegal.

    In June of 2011, Siwatu founded EMEAC's Young Educators Alliance (YEA) Team consisting of about a dozen youth and young adults from the city who advocate for environmental and social justice issues facing Detroiters. Since YEA's founding, Siwatu and the team have received the Spirit of Detroit Award for their role in organizing workshops at the 2011 Youth Green Summit, organized a clean up of Cass Park, held a Feed1 Teach1 community dinner to create public awareness around public assistance cutbacks and led workshops at the Seventh Annual High School Social Justice Forum at the University of Windsor in Canada. email: Siwatu 


    Kim Sherobbi, Community Partners and Facility Coordinator

    Ms. Sherobbi is a retired school teacher and community activist. For 26 years, she taught physical education for the Detroit Public Schools. Her involvement in metro Detroit neighborhoods has span for over 20 years. Kim has volunteered for numerous non-profit and government agencies such as Adams Butzel Recreation Center, Reggie Mckenzie Foundation, Money Matters for Youth, Detroit Parent Network, Birwood Block Association and Detroit Impact. She is excited about helping EMEAC build stronger relationships with the community. email: Kim 


    Lottie Spady, Associate Director, Remedia Program Director


    For the past four years, Lottie has been focusing on an immersive community-based transformational environmental justice media program, “Re:Media”. The Re:Media program integrates environmental education, multi-media production, media literacy, green technologies, popular culture, social networking, civic engagement and social consciousness as a means to trigger systemic change on individual and social levels. Participant's tell their own stories and make community educational tools around food justice, air quality, water access and affordability, and land use. Their work is showcased each year at EMEAC's Green Screen environmental film festival. The program has been deployed in SE Michigan to address environmental justice issues and to help make disenfranchised communities visible and vocal.


    Lottie also works with the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition and is on the leadership team for the Digital Media Economy Collaborative. Through these relationships, EMEAC works with community members around the belief that communication is a fundamental human right. We believe that by addressing issues around access, common ownership, participation, and healthy communities, we are working toward digital justice for all.


    A self proclaimed foodist, Lottie has worked in the Detroit Food Justice movement for the last three years, initially as a volunteer with the D-Town Farm and member of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. As the associate director for East Michigan Environmental Action Council she began to explore issues related to food security through the Re:Media Program as well.. Lottie is most interested in the cultural story of food, cross-pollinating justice movements and shaping an accurate narritive of Detroit through citizens journalism and community media production. Lottie was instrumental in the formation of the Detroit Food Justice Task Force. Her favorite foods in the spring are arugula, sunflower sprouts, and fresh vegetable omelets eaten outside. email: Lottie 

       

    2012 Board of Directors
    • Hugh McDiarmid Jr. - President. Environmental Journalist
    • Victor Arbulu - Treasurer
    • London Bell - Affirmations, Health and Human Services Coordinator
    • Talitha Johnson - Freelance Writer and PR Specialist
    • Adela Nieves - Vice President, Just Natural Healers and Rise Like Lions Productions
    • Dr. Mike Spencer - University of Michigan, School of Social Work, Associate Dean