Chair
Rishi Reddi
Rishi Reddi is the Director of Environmental Justice for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Before taking up this post in December 2019, she spent 25 years working as an environmental lawyer at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), and at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Region I, practicing in the areas of regulatory development, enforcement, administrative appeals, and grant development. She co-founded MassDEP’s first Environmental Justice Committee in the mid-1990s and established the agency’s internal language resource bank, which facilitates communication between the agency and Massachusetts residents with limited proficiency in English.
Rishi has worked in a broad array of substantive environmental areas, including Wetlands and Waterways, the Clean Air Act, and RCRA. Most recently, she advised state programs in developing and implementing regulations under the Massachusetts’ Global Warming Solutions Act, helped to develop and implement the Massachusetts grant program resulting from the national Volkswagen Settlement, and was the lead attorney for the Massachusetts’ Low Emission Vehicle Program.
Rishi has served on the Board of Directors of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), a national civil rights organization, and served as the Massachusetts Legislative Coordinator for Amnesty International. She is also the award-winning author of two works of fiction, Passage West: a novel (2020) and Karma and Other Stories (2007).
Members
Kalila Barnett
Kalila Barnett is a Climate Resilience Program Officer at the Barr Foundation. Kalila has over a decade of experience in community organizing around affordable housing, land development, and environmental justice. She served as the Executive Director at Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) for eight years. Before joining ACE in 2009, she worked as a Senior Organizer at Community Labor United. Kalila has a bachelor’s degree from Bates College, where she studied American Studies and Spanish, and a Master of Public Policy from the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning School at Tufts University. Kalila currently lives in Hyde Park and enjoys walking along the Neponset, listening to podcasts, and cooking for friends.
Madeline Fraser Cook
Madeline Fraser Cook is a bi-lingual urban planner with a strong commitment to affordable housing and community based economic development. As a recognized leader in green development and planning, her recent focus has been on ensuring that sustainability is fully integrated into housing and economic development projects. A native Spanish-speaker, Ms. Fraser Cook has worked extensively with low-income Latino communities. She has a keen understanding and enthusiasm for the importance of stakeholder engagement in creating and maintaining vibrant communities. As the Director of Government Investments and Technical Assistance at Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), she manages LISC’s HUD Technical Assistance portfolio and advises its local offices on various aspects of housing and community development including disaster recovery and sustainability and climate resilience. Prior to joining LISC, she was a senior consultant to TDA Consulting where she engaged in Department of Housing and Urban Development projects and technical assistance nationally. She also served as market consultant for the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), where she advised RMI on engaging owners of affordable housing portfolios in ambitious energy efficiency strategies while incorporating inclusive economy goals for minority-owned contracting businesses.
Melissa Harding-Ferrettii
Melissa Harding-Ferretti is the elected Chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe located in Plymouth/Bournedale, MA. In her role as Tribal chairwoman, she has worked on the many initiatives and challenges that indigenous communities face in society today. She is passionate about educating the non-native public about the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe and its rich, well documented history. She co-taught an undergraduate course on Indigenous Women’s Leadership and Tribal Nation Self Determination alongside at the University of Massachusetts Boston and was recently elected as a Select Board Member in Bourne, MA. Melissa is the first Wampanoag woman to ever hold this role, and quite possibly the first ever Wampanoag person to ever be elected as a Selectman in this municipality. She is a licensed Real Estate Sales Associate, notary public, and does freelance research, consulting, and bookkeeping.
Cheryll Holley
Cheryll Holley is the Sonksq (female leader) of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band. As Sonksq, Cheryll advocates for economic and social justice in all aspects of her community including producing and distributing healthy foods, creating and encouraging connections for Nipmuc artists, pursuing land back opportunities and promoting cultural education for Nipmucs of all ages including language reclamation. Holley co-founded and currently serves on the board of the Nipmuc Indian Development Corporation (NIDC) – an Indigenous non-profit dedicated to the well-being of all Nipmuc people and the stewardship of Nipmuc homelands. Holley served for ten years on the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs and is the former director of the Hassanamisco Indian Museum located on the tribe’s Hassanamesit Reservation. As a former nurse, she is one of the original architects of the Nipmuc Women’s Health Coalition which was the first organization in Massachusetts to advocate for culturally appropriate health care programs for Indigenous people. A member of the Worcester Black History Project, Holley is also a professional researcher, writer, and speaker specializing in African American and Indigenous peoples of New England, a passion she shares by compiling genealogies and written family histories for descendants of New England’s communities of color. A mom of four and grandmother of eight, she currently lives in Worcester where generations of her family lived before her.
Caroline Hon
Caroline Hon is a leader in the New England Gas business, accountable for the asset, engineering, and work planning of the gas network to National Grid’s customers in Massachusetts. In her tenure at National Grid, she has served in various leadership roles in Finance, Shared Services, and Operations. Most recently, she was the Chief Operating Officer of the New England Gas Business, accountable for the safe, reliable, and affordable delivery of gas to National Grid’s customers in New England. Prior to that, she led the Gas Resource Management function at National Grid USA. In this role, she oversaw the management of the Gas Capital Investment Plan, the annual work and resource portfolio, emergency dispatch, and back-office management of capital and maintenance work orders. Prior to joining National Grid, Caroline was a consultant in Accenture’s Utilities Transmission and Distribution practice focusing on Work and Asset Management. Caroline is a Chemical Engineer and holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Namrita Kapur
Namrita Kapur is a Lecturer teaching sustainable finance at the Yale School of Management, and consults to several philanthropists, including the founders of one of the oldest venture capital firms and of a Fortune 500 company. She combines a unique mix of traditional finance skills from her time in investment banking with environmental, social and governance (ESG) impact assessment experience as a senior leader in the nonprofit space. Namrita is best recognized for being second-in-command in developing the products and platform of Root Capital, and for having developed Eileen Rockefeller Family Foundation’s approach to organizational development. In her philanthropic work, she has helped coordinate $75 million of annual global grant-making across 40+ funders worldwide to transition to a clean energy future. Namrita served as Board Treasurer of the Environmental League of Massachusetts from 2010-2016, holds an MBA and a MA of Environmental Management from Yale University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology from Princeton.
Lydia Lowe
Lydia Lowe is the Director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, which works to stabilize Boston Chinatown through community control of land, development without displacement, permanently affordable housing, and shared neighborhood spaces. Her four decades of community activism include co-launching the first immigrant worker center in the region, helping tenants preserve more than a thousand units of affordable housing, securing bilingual ballots for Chinese and Vietnamese voters in Boston, and leading the Chinese Progressive Association. She is a founding member of the Asian Pacific Islanders Civic Action Network (APIs CAN!), Chinese Progressive Political Action, the Chinatown Master Plan Committee, and the Greater Boston Community Land Trust Network.
Dr. Marcos Luna
Dr. Marcos Luna is a Professor of Geography & Sustainability and Coordinator of the graduate Geo-Information Sciences program at Salem State University. His research focus is on environmental justice and applications of geospatial analytic techniques to social and environmental inequities, particularly around energy and climate change. He has published research on the inequity of natural gas leaks, urban noise, transit efficiency and equity, energy, air pollution, and environmental policy. In addition to academic research, he works with community organizations and policy makers on a range of issues including residential housing and segregation, transportation equity, voter mapping and outreach, and climate change adaptation. He is a member of the Board of Directors for GreenRoots, Inc. an environmental justice organization based in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Peter Maathey
Peter Maathey serves as an innovation and transformation leader, strategist, business and technology consultant, and Program Manager as the Innovation Leader for the Institutional Division at Pacific Life. At his core, he is driven to help organizations solve real world problems by focusing on the humans in the middle. Before his current role, he held various positions with organizations that have spanned multiple industries, including financial services, health insurance, utilities, and consulting. Peter is also an active board member of the Whittier Street Health Center, whose mission is to provide accessible, high-quality health care and services that achieve health equity and social justice.
Patricia Spence
Patricia Spence is President and CEO of The Urban Farming Institute (UFI) of Boston, an organization dedicated to developing and promoting urban agriculture and engaging residents in growing food and building a healthier community. Prior to UFI, Pat had a successful career in corporate sales & marketing for Xerox Corporation and the Digital Equipment Corporation, and at WILD 1090 radio and WGBH-TV. Pat has also worked in education for the Boston Public Schools, developed the Educational Options Series for families and founded They Made It So Can I, The 5th Grade Speakers Series. Patricia grew up near the historic Fowler Clark Epstein Farm in Mattapan (headquarters for UFI) and comes from a family that has always grown its own food. She is passionate about passing these growing skills on to the next generation.
Ari Zorn
Ari Zorn is the owner of Devine Retail Cannabis in South Egremont. He is passionate about creating self-sustaining and inclusive economies in the Berkshires, while breaking cultural and racial barriers so we can all live amongst each other with respect. He has over 25 years of experience as a small business owner and is the first Black cannabis license holder in the Berkshires. Ari is also Vice President and Founder of Friends of Smiley's Pond and Blackshires Community Empowerment Foundation, a black community-owned empowerment platform. He is a Board Member of Berkshire Environmental Action Team, Vice Chair of the DuBois Sculpture Project, Assistant Land Steward for the Egremont Land Trust, and Co-Founder of Sessions Youth Empowerment Program , a sport and life-skills 7-step educational program for young men. Ari is also a member of the Great Barrington Rotary Club.