Board of Directors

Sophia is a 1.5 generation Filipina American who resides on the traditional lands of the Puyallup people. She works alongside communities in the areas of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, and climate justice as they do the brave work of imagining the world they want to build and animating others to join them in creating a more just society where all may thrive.

Sophia earned her B.A. in English, Master in Teaching, and Master of Communication in Digital Media from the University of Washington, and is currently pursuing her Ed. D. in Education Policy, Organization and Leadership with a focus on Diversity and Equity in Education and a Certificate of Specialization in Sustainability and Community College Leadership through the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Sophia is a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory®–a cross-cultural assessment of intercultural competence.

Sophia is no stranger to public service, as much of her life’s work has involved communication, advocacy and engagement in the areas of student success and educational access, immigration, economic justice, healthcare, poverty and homelessness. Before joining the State Board in her current role, Sophia led equity efforts in the P-12 sector and for a regional transit agency’s office of Civil Rights, Equity and Inclusion. She is thrilled to be co-creating alongside the marvelous folks at AASHE.

Jillian Buckholz is a dedicated sustainability professional with over 15-years experience starting sustainability programs from the ground up. She excels at being a connector, breaking down silos, and building relationships that bring people together to move ideas into actionable plans. Jillian has extensive experience designing, facilitating, and working with executive-level committees and working groups with a proven track record of implementing projects to meet specific sustainability goals. Environmental justice is at the center of her work, focusing on moving sustainability initiatives forward that support people and the planet.

Jillian is currently a Sustainability Advisor at Brailsford & Dunlavey, where she develops climate and sustainability actions plans for higher education institutions. Prior to consulting, Jillian was the Director of Sustainability at California State University, East Bay. As the first sustainability officer for the campus she was solely responsible for integrating the concepts of sustainability into all aspects of campus from academics to engagement, throughout the curriculum, operations and campus plans, and within administrative policies. Before coming to East Bay, Jillian worked at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) where she connected with subject matter experts to support the development of the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS), a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance. Jillian started her career as the first sustainability officer in the California State University System at Chico State, where she led the synthesis of cross-campus sustainability efforts into a cohesive, award-winning program.

Jillian holds a Bachelor’s degree from Ohio University in Environmental Geography, a Masters degree in Geography and Planning from Chico State, and is a recent graduate of the Harvard University Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership Program.

Chris Ewing is the Vice Chancellor for Infrastructure and Sustainability at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he manages over 12 million square feet of facilities and oversees an annual operating budget of $98 million. In this role, he is responsible for leading the Infrastructure and Sustainability team, which is responsible for long-range capital planning for the campus, architecture, design and construction, overall operations and maintenance of campus facilities and utilities, transportation services, workplace accident prevention and the creation of a safe working environment for campus employees, environmental health and safety, campus logistics and efforts around sustainability and resiliency.

Prior to his current role, Ewing served as the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Planning, Design and Construction. He joined CU Boulder in 2008 as Project Administrator/Owner Representative, acting as a liaison between project design and construction teams and campus clients. Before joining CU Boulder, Ewing served as an associate director of facilities for biopharmaceutical company Replidyne, Inc. Before taking that role, he was a project manager at a pre-construction and construction management consulting firm for biopharmaceutical clients. He started his professional career as an intern architect for an architecture firm that specializes in the design of health care and senior living facilities. 

Ewing was born and raised in Costa Rica.  He has a bachelor’s degree in environmental design (architecture) from the University of Colorado Boulder and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Colorado State University. His interests include camping, hiking, travel, reading and spending time with his family.

CEO and Founder of Generation Conscious, G.L., grew up near several waste transfer stations in Jamaica, Queens, and developed asthma as a result of their proximity to toxic, polluted ecosystems. They are a first generation college graduate (Amherst College) and are Trinidadian-Chinese.

Before starting Generation Conscious, G.L. worked as an Investment Banker at UBS, covering Consumer and Retail. G.L. realized that their greatest opportunity was to open the doors to others and bring environmental and economic justice to finance and business. They created a worker-cooperative art collective for dozens of artists without college degrees to increase their agency, pay, and financial literacy. Thereafter, they cut their teeth as a community organizer, inspiring thousands of volunteers to get out the vote in Ohio.  

G.L. lived and learned that communities most impacted by climate change and social inequalities are disproportionately underrepresented in sustainability professions. Further, zero-waste, plastic-free alternatives to U.S. hygiene products are expensive, inaccessible, and energy-intensive. With their environmental and social justice credo at heart, G.L. founded Generation Conscious to radically reject the systems and structures perpetuating racial and economic injustice; carbon, plastic, water-waste and pollution—replacing these infrastructures and their consequences with systems and structures that generate true sustainability, equity and accessibility.

Since launching, they’ve trained hundreds of first-generation, low income (FGLI) students as community organizers and product managers, equipping them with skill sets for the circular economy. These FGLI students have expanded the Generation Conscious zero-waste hygiene equity system to 20+ Universities across 10 states, enabling hundreds of thousands of students to refill their hygiene products without packaging or water. Generation Conscious is the winner of the 2023 Most Innovative Consumer company by the Reusies and is a certified M/WBE with the NYC Small Business Services.

G.L. is excited to connect with communities that are interested in dreaming up additive businesses that transition from extractivism to regeneration. They currently live in Brooklyn with their partner, Kim, and their dog, Kai.

Joseli Macedo is an educator, architect, urbanist, and leader with a wide range of experiences in the United States, Brazil, India, Australia, and Canada. Before joining the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary, she was Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Prior to coming to Canada, she was Head of the School of Design and the Built Environment at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Dr. Macedo has spent most of her academic career in the U.S. teaching and conducting research on sustainable human settlements. At the University of Florida, she served as Chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Director of the Center for International Design and Planning, and Affiliate Faculty in the Center for Latin American Studies and the School of Natural Resources and the Environment. She received a Fulbright-Nehru award in 2012 that allowed her to research settlements in India. Dr. Macedo has worked in the areas of sustainable cities, urban design, and international development planning for 30 years. She is the author of several publications on city design and urban form, urban ecology, land policy and land tenure, housing policy, urban planning history, and pedagogy. She has also served as an international consultant to the World Bank and to the GAIA Consortium in Brazil.

John directs the activities of the Sustainability and Engineering unit within Campus and Community Planning at the University of British Columbia. The unit is responsible for setting policies on resource and infrastructure management plans for both the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses. John oversees operational sustainability planning and reporting, creating incentives for sustainable behaviours among staff, faculty and students, green building programs and providing engineering services for land use planning and permitting processes. John is responsible for advising the UBC Okanagan campus efforts in climate action, sustainability and infrastructure management planning and ensuring alignment between the University Sustainability Initiative and Campus Sustainability.

John brings over 25 years of experience working for local municipal government, consulting, international agencies and higher-education working to advance sustainability policies and implementation strategies. While working in the Middle East, John led efforts in the design and implementation of an innovative green building and sustainability program which was awarded the “Best Regional Sustainability Initiative” by the World Green Building Council. John was also a sessional instructor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design teaching on the subject of Sustainable Master Planning and is currently adjunct professor for UBC’s Masters of Engineering Leadership in High Performance Buildings. He holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia as well as graduate studies at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.

Kristin has been advancing Stanford University’s sustainability agenda since 2012, and currently serves as the Director of Sustainability. Kristin’s work aims to transform the university’s climate and waste future and support the next generation of sustainability change management leaders. Kristin’s team is responsible for university sustainability storytelling and reporting, waste operations, living laboratory programs, culture change, climate and waste goals, and their regulatory and voluntary compliance. Prior to joining Stanford, she served as the first Sustainability Planner for the City of Palo Alto, where she developed and enforced the city’s green building and sustainable development policies, and as the Assistant Director for the Collaborative for High Performance Schools, a similar non-profit to AASHE, but for K-12 schools. She also has work experience at both the U.S. and California Environmental Protection Agency, and Natural Resources Defense Council. She received a BA in Communications and a BS in Environmental Design from the University of California, Davis and a Masters in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from Columbia University.

Ashwani Vasishth is part of the Environmental Studies Major, and is a faculty member in both the South India and Peru Study Abroad Convening Groups. His pedagogy is focused on Education for Sustainability from within a transdisciplinary framework, and within the context of a globalizing International Development paradigm. He has research interests in an ecosystem approach to urban ecology, in systems thinking and in the exploration of mental models.

He trained as an architect in India, with a particular focus on vernacular architecture and self-help housing in slums and squatter settlements. He subsequently received his Master’s Degree from MIT, Cambridge, in International Development. He worked as a regional sustainability planner with the Southern California Association of Governments in Los Angeles, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in Environmental Planning.

He has taught and practiced sustainability, in one form or another, for the past forty-odd years, in a wide variety of circumstances. While at the California State University, Northridge, he founded and established a robust campus sustainability program. When he moved to Ramapo College, he helped establish their Master of Arts in Sustainability Studies (MASS) Program, and became the founding Chair of the President’s Committee on Campus Sustainability. Since then, his work has ranged between sustainability pedagogy, campus sustainability, and community-level grassroots sustainability activism in Jersey City, New Jersey.

In addition to his work at Ramapo College of New Jersey, he currently serves as the President of the New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (NJHEPS) and leads the AASHE Center for Sustainability Across the Curriculum at Ramapo College of New Jersey.