Our Team

Marcus Griswold, PhD

Marcus was exposed to environmental justice following an explosion of a chemical plant near a school where his mother taught in Curtis Bay, Maryland (“the day it rained rust”), giving him a firm grasp of the impacts of insufficient regulations and enforcement on vulnerable communities. He now sees this same issue in nearly every community he works in and hopes to support a shift in the relationships between communities and government.
Marcus has 15 years of experience translating science and policy to communities and bridging the language gap between communities and governments. His background includes watershed assessment and restoration, climate change, contaminated sites, environmental justice, community engagement, and GIS. He was a US EPA STAR Fellow, co-founder of Blue Water Baltimore, led an NSF-funded Climate Education program, and has served on the Board of a number of non-profits focused on environmental and disabilities empowerment. He has a certificate in Ecopsychology and coaching training through the CoActive Training Institute. Learn more on his LinkedIn profile.

Ana Vargas Lau_Resume 2020.jpg — Ana Vargas, LCSW

Ana was born in Southern California to two Mexican immigrant parents. Her passion for authentic, sustainable community engagement and social justice led her to fulfill her Master of Social Work degree from Washington University in Saint Louis. Her work experience promotes communication and cultural humility as avenues to increase trust, build capacity and mobilize alliances.
Ana strongly believes that when we work with communities, we must look at their potential to thrive and support efforts that ensure long-term community benefits. Ana has facilitated access to social services and advocated for culturally sensitive program delivery for highly marginalized communities across the United States. Ana also provides leadership and support for the implementation of an economic resiliency program for small disadvantaged businesses in the Bay area.

Arlin Benevides

Arlin Benevides is passionate about advancing equity & well-being by bridging expert knowledge with the experiences of community members. He has experience identifying community organizations, assembling coalitions, and developing and leading trainings with community organizations on self-advocacy and to facilitate resilience planning. He supports communities through coaching and mentorship, training, and support for project development. He supports capacity building workshops and trainings, stakeholder interviews, community needs assessments, meetings and project planning as well as plain language interpretation and translation to Spanish speaking communities. He has deep experience bringing environmental justice groups together in Marin and the Central Valley.

Carl Olton, Jr., M.A.

Also known as C.J., is a political scientist dedicated to enhancing the lives of disenfranchised youth. His problem-solving methods include public policy analysis and group organizing with skills in policy analysis, public relations, and creative writing. Most of C.J.’s research concentrates on social policy (health, education, crime, poverty, community/economic development, etc.). C.J. finds passion in learning more about consciousness, morality and spirituality, including holistic nutrition and mindfulness techniques. He supports capacity building workshops and trainings, stakeholder interviews, community needs assessments, meetings and project planning.

Sumeet Sandhu, PhD

Sumeet Sandhu, Founder, Climate Data Hub, is a seasoned technologist with 25 years of experience across: eCommerce/fashion, legal/IP, and telecom/wireless; data science/AI/ML, wireless communications, and speech processing; R&D, product planning, operations. She has founded and led initiatives that positively impacted millions of customers and products, led research that seeded new wireless standards, holds over 55 issued patents, and built an AI based Information Retrieval platform for patents at Elementary IP LLC.
She founded the working group Climate Data Hub in 2019 to serve communities taking action on Climate Change. CDH has organized multiple EU Climate-KIC Climathons, helped launch the non-profit ClimateVoice.org, won two Microsoft AI for Earth grants (one at Calm Waters), won a Stage 1 ConXTech Prize, and published in top AI conferences.

Yousef Kazerooni, Design/User Needs

Yousef Kazerooni, received his Masters of Human Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. As a product designer, he has worn many hats, helping teams with research, strategy, User Experience, team dynamics, and delivery. He has worked on a variety of projects from a small startup for device management, to a large corporation providing Market Research services. He has worked closely with Indi Young, one of the pioneers of the field of foundational research.
Yousef joined Climate Data Hub in mid 2020 to help the team with project management, design, and facilitation. Yousef’s goal is to be the voice of the user, ensuring that products align with user goals and needs.

Collaborators

As a small but nimble business, we collaborate on a regular basis with other consultants and small businesses to bring you greater impact and expertise in meeting your project goals. Key collaborators are below.

Kirstin Weeks, MS, LEED AP, LFA, WELL AP, CEM, GRP

Kirstin Weeks, Founder of Bio.Studio is a leader in sustainable and net-positive design. She works with interdisciplinary teams to create regenerative, resilient built environments where people and ecosystems thrive together.

Kirstin’s experience extends from sustainability leadership on mixed-use, office, civic, academic and landscape projects to city-scale plan development, research and cost-benefit studies.We collaborate to design a built environment where people and nature thrive together. We offer regenerative design leadership and ecological consulting for architects, planners, owners and cities. We are a trusted sustainability partner throughout the project life cycle, from visioning through opening.