Wendy Chou is a climate change advocate who works as the Coalition and Project Senior Manager at Acterra: Action for a Healthy Planet. In 2022, she participated in the Green Foothills Leadership Program. At the time, she was working as Acterra’s communications manager, and she wanted to gain more experience and training in advocacy and how to create change. She also was looking to connect with other environmental changemakers from around the Bay Area. The Leadership Program fulfilled both of those goals for her.

“My new position as Coalition and Project Senior Manager actually deals more directly with policy advocacy and I think that my experience in the Leadership Program helped me get more comfortable with this role,” Wendy said, adding that she is thrilled to be in her new role. “The coalitions that I am a part of are quite diverse, dealing with everything from equitable access to affordable electric vehicle charging, to electrifying homes and businesses, to food security and food justice. It’s pretty exciting.“

“I also really enjoyed getting to meet other advocates for environmental justice and sustainability through the program,” she said. “We are all stronger together and we can be each other’s collaborators. One initiative I’m working on, HomeGrown Bay Area, is focused on developing education and community programs for food justice and sustainable food systems locally in San Jose, and I am in touch with an alum from the Leadership Program through that group. Also I cross paths with staff at Climate Resilient Communities that participated in the Leadership Program.”

Wendy also found the Leadership Program’s focus on the intersection of equity and environmentalism extremely valuable. “I’m very concerned about how the coming revolution in sustainable food and energy will affect the broad segment of the population who have the least means and the most vulnerability to climate disasters,” she said. “We need to take action on the climate crisis, and we need to keep equity at the forefront when thinking about communities finding climate solutions….so the Leadership Program was helpful to me because we learned about the legacy and long-term impact of racially discriminatory policies — for example in Bay Area housing — which was something I hadn’t been as aware of before. I appreciated that we took time to learn about oppression and power dynamics in the context of working toward a more equitable society. ”

Wendy said that she highly recommends the Leadership Program, because, “It’s a great move for professional development, it’s free of charge in 2024, and you’ll learn a lot and make some good connections with folks. It’s valuable to have that facetime with other advocates. And importantly, you’ll learn about doing community engagement in a way that lifts up community members as experts whose views carry a lot of value, and you’ll learn about forming real partnerships. That’s one of the great lessons I’ve taken away.”