Venezia Ramirez is a first-generation college graduate and advocate for environmental justice. Her family is originally from Durango, Chihuahua, and Guanajuato, Mexico, and is now living in Gabrielino-Tongva Territory (Southeast Los Angeles County). Venezia is pursuing a Master’s in Sustainable Engineering at USC.
Her research focuses on air quality modeling to assess pollutant concentrations in East Los Angeles and South Bay communities. She is dedicated to empowering community members by helping them acquire resources, like air monitors, to track environmental conditions.
Venezia’s STEM journey began with a desire to improve her community’s health. After successfully organizing against a last-mile delivery facility near her home, she realized her ability to create change using her skills. As the daughter of two cleaning staff workers at USC, she takes great pride in being accepted into the USC M.S. Sustainable Engineering program.
As a woman of color and daughter of Mexican immigrants, Venezia brings patience and devotion to addressing the environmental burdens that affect her community. She advocates for vital resources like air and soil testing, often facing resistance from those outside her community. Venezia’s dual role as a researcher and community member drives her to fight for clean soil, air, and water for her loved ones, knowing the cause is personal.
Her career goal is to continue using engineering and environmental science to support environmental justice and empower communities.
Malyhea Haghshenas, known as Maly to her friends and family, is a third year Geography major with a double minor is Geographic Information Systems and Technology (GIS&T) and Environmental Systems and Society. Maly is interested in the intersection of corporate sustainability and accountability through the use of quantitative data collection and analysis from satellite technologies. She believes that the only way to truly solve global issues related to sustainability is to integrate an environmental consideration into all decisions and solutions corporations and development projects make. Besides the Corporate Partners Program, Maly is the Financial Director for Project W.I.L.D (Working for Immigrant Literacy Development) where she serves 1st-8th grade students in the local community to strengthen their English skills. She is also apart of the Global Development Lab at UCLA where she is working with the local community and an NGO, Love a Community, in the Atutur region in Kumi, Uganda to provide a rural wifi system and open source data collection system for the Atutur General Hospital. She also works for an environmental engineering consulting firm and provides her services for grant writing as well as GIS analysis. In her free time, Maly enjoys strolling through museums and gardening.
Shouhei Tanaka is a PhD candidate in the English Department, whose work focuses on 20th/21st-century literature, critical race studies, and the environmental humanities. He is a graduate student coordinator for UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) and a co-founder of the Environmental Humanities Research Group (EHRG). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Environmental Humanities, PMLA, ASAP/Journal, American Literature, Modernism/modernity, MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and elsewhere.
Kuhelika Ghosh was an English and Communication Studies student at UCLA. She is interested in the environmental humanities and enjoys volunteering for environmental conservation organizations such as TreePeople in her spare time. She grew up in Dubai and moved to Los Angeles to pursue her undergraduate degree. She is currently finishing up her senior honors thesis focusing on posthumanism and cosmopolitanism in Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being.
Ashley is an environmental policy advocate. Before dedicating her life to science and environment policy, she worked in the entertainment industry where she developed narrative storytelling skills in film and television and effective communication expertise with large teams. Her work history includes William Morris Endeavor, RWSG Literary Agency, and Groundswell Productions, and she worked on such projects as GIRL ON THE TRAIN (Universal), SNOWFALL (FX), and LARRY KING LIVE (CNN). Formerly, she was a Citizens’ Climate Lobby Congressional Liaison for House Representative Karen Bass (D – CA 37), and was a Fellow of President Obama’s Organizing for America. She is a photographer and designer who has a B.A. in Political Science, a B.A. in Telecommunication Arts, and a Certificate in Music Business from the University of Georgia. She is a first-generation American raised in Atlanta, Georgia with familial roots in the Caribbean.
Priyanka is a second-year master student in Environmental and Water Resources. She is a french student and did her first year of Masters in the french civil engineering school Ecole Spéciale des Travaux Publics, Paris. She is currently in a double-degree program at UCLA. Her interest in Water Management got triggered and developed through her annual summer trips to India during the summer monsoon season. As part of the Leaders in Sustainability Program, she is researching how companies can mitigate risk, increase sustainability along the supply-chain by third-party verifiers. After graduation, she would love to work in a sustainable water management project as an Engineer.
Outside of class, she likes working out and visiting California.
Amber Lam is a fourth year undergraduate at UCLA studying Environmental Science with a minor in Environmental Engineering. Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, she moved out to LA for her undergraduate degree. Following graduation, she has plans to enter the corporate sustainability sector and potentially continue on to pursue an Environmental Law degree. Within the Corporate Partners Program, Amber studied the rationale behind companies intrinsically making trade-offs between certain environmental efforts within corporate sustainability subdivision in hopes of understanding the role that sustainability plays in particular types of companies. Outside of the classroom, Amber serves as president of Bruin Club Tennis and the Communications Director for Sustainability Action Research during her final year at UCLA.
Carolyn Stephens graduated as political science major with a minor in environmental systems and society. She believes scientific research should be translated to accessible language and applied to both political will and strict environmental policy across public and private sectors. Her approach to environmental change through policy began as an elementary school student when she, unsuccessfully, lobbied the administration to stop using styrofoam in the cafeteria. In her time at UCLA, she worked on a variety of research projects ranging from legal theory to wildfire policy. Along with a passion for environmental justice and climate action, Carolyn is an advocate for those with disabilities, having completed 1,500 volunteer hours at the non-profit RAD (Rising Above Disabilities) Camp. When not occupied with schoolwork, Carolyn enjoys a variety of outdoor activities including running, rock climbing, yoga, hiking, camping, and backpacking.
Carolyn is currently working as a Trial Clerk for the United States Tax Court.
