People

Stephanie Ung is a U.S. American woman with Cambodian, Filipinx, and Chinese heritage. She was born and raised in the sunny suburbs of southern California (Chumash territory) and currently resides in Coast Salish land (Suquamish and Duwamish territories) that is known to many settlers today as Seattle, Washington. Stephanie most recently served as a Naturalist for Seattle Parks and Recreation, focused on community-based environmental education in the southeast region of Seattle. She currently serves as a Program Manager for the University of Washington GEAR UP Achievers, a college access program focused on students of color, low-income students, and/or first-generation college students. As an environmental educator, she knows that education is an important ingredient in the recipe for change on a local and global level. Stephanie serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee for the YMCA Earth Service Corps' Advisory Board and is an active member of the Environmental Professionals of Color-Seattle. Stephanie enrolled in the inaugural cohort of IslandWood and Antioch University-Seattle's Urban Environmental Education Graduate Program, in which she achieved a Master's degree in Urban Environmental Education (M.A.Ed). Stephanie finds solace in catching up with her family, making and eating delicious food with friends, and attending community events to stay engaged and connected. 

About Stephanie‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Sadhu for Green is an initiative created and led by Fellow Stephanie Ung and a Khmer community leader and former Buddhist monk, Prenz Sa-Ngoun. It is rooted in environmental education created for and led by members of the Khmer community, to bridge generations of the Khmer diaspora through education and connections to the environment we live in. Stephanie and her team facilitate workshops and coordinate environmental learning experiences to raise awareness of environmental systems impacting the Khmer community. Stephanie has worked closely with Prenz and other community leaders to host workshops at a local Khmer Buddhist temple called Wat Khemarak Pothiram, and have attracted a wide range of participants by combining workshop topics with meditation sessions and Dhamma talks. The Khmer community celebrated Sadhu for Green by focusing on environmental health at the 2nd Annual Khmer Community Potluck. Stephanie has invested ee360 mini-grant funds in community leaders who are enthusiastically carrying Sadhu for Green’s work forward with her support. Sadhu for Green will continue to grow and morph as more community leaders emerge and take the project in new directions.

Kit is the co-founder of one of the country's first urban outdoor preschools, the Fiddleheads Forest School at the University of Washington. In 2015, Kit founded the Washington Nature Preschool Association to support the regional growth of nature-based early childhood education and successfully advocated for the passage of the first licensing regulations for outdoor preschools in North America. Today, she continues her work to support the field as the Policy Advisor for the Natural Start Alliance, helping improve equitable access to nature-based early learning experiences and develop meaningful support for educators around the country.

A former secondary science teacher and the 2015 EcoRise Teacher of the Year, Abby Randall is committed to inspiring teachers to ignite passion in a new generation of green leaders. Abby was born in London, England, raised in Hingham, Massachusetts, and spent the last decade in Austin, Texas, teaching and designing curricula for a wide variety of K–12 science courses and alternative education programs. Abby holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Trinity College and an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

In her current position as Deputy Director, Abby oversees the implementation of a wide variety of leading-edge educational resources, including sustainability and design curricula, a workforce development program focused on green building education, teacher professional development,and a K–12 grant program that brings students' green innovations to life. Abby also leads EcoRise's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives and is responsible for leveraging and streamlinig technology to efficiently scale EcoRise's innovative programs to thousands of educators across the globe. In her free time, Abby enjoys tending her vegetable garden and backyard chickens, swimming in Barton Springs, hiking, camping, and traveling the world to visit friends and family.

About Abby‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Abby’s Community Action Project is a national Ambassador Program that aims to develop, empower, and recognize K–12 educators as leaders, changemakers, and champions of environmental literacy in their own communities. Abby’s partner organization, EcoRise, is a social enterprise based in Austin, Texas that began 11 years ago, serving one high school in East Austin. In the last decade, EcoRise has grown to support over 3,250 teachers across the country, with standards-aligned sustainability, design, and green building curriculum; professional development and support; and micro-grants for green student projects like this: https://youtu.be/JixDi-UH4FM. EcoRise plans to expand its reach to serve 4,000 educators in 10 high-impact hubs across the United States by 2020. As such, the goal of the Ambassador Program is to increase organizational capacity and grow the sustainability education movement using a community-based approach. You can learn more about the 2019-20 Ambassador Program and 2nd Annual Summer Institute and about EcoRise's Sustainable Intelligence Program at https://ecorise.org/si-program/.