Featured Speakers for Week 2: The Social Context of Your Community

Dr. Neenah Estrella-Luna is a researcher, educator, advocate, and consultant focusing on issues related to social justice, social relations, and democratic governance. She works with grassroots organizations and policymakers to develop and advocate for policies and practices that support social equity in law and policy. Dr. Estrella-Luna also provides opportunities to organizations and communities to learn how they can contribute to dismantling White supremacy and other structures of bigotry in their spheres of influence. She is also an active member of the Massachusetts Advisory Committee for the US Commission on Civil Rights. After 15 years in academia, Dr. Estrella-Luna is now the principal of StarLuna Consulting, an anti-racism and social equity research, education, and consulting firm.

Lucas McDiarmid is an outings leader with the Western Mass. Region of Latino Outdoors. He joined LOWMA in the Spring of 2021, helping to plan and execute the Region’s Latino Conservation Week celebrations. As a member of LOWMA, McDiarmid is an advocate for equality and accessibility in open and green spaces.

Since 2019 McDiarmid has been a staffer with the Massachusetts Senate, supporting communities in Central and Western Massachusetts. He is active in the community through his work with LOWMA, Big Brother and Big Sisters of Hampden County, and as a member of the Town of Palmer Conservation Commission. 

McDiarmid holds a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, in Political Science, and a master’s degree from Norwich University, in Public Administration.

Jackie Dias is the co-founder and Ambassador for the Western Massachusetts chapter of Latino Outdoors. She has helped to facilitate conversations regarding inclusivity in the outdoors in Western Mass since the inception of the chapter. As the Ambassador for LOWMA, Jackie manages the group's social media presence, where she advocates for science communication, rewriting the outdoor narrative, and outdoor recreation tips and tricks for beginners. Dias recently completed her Master's program in Environmental Conservation from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with a focus on Environmental Policy and Human Dimensions.

Marjorie Turner Hollman is a personal historian who loves the outdoors, and is the author of numerous Easy Walks books. She has been a freelance writer for numerous local, regional, and national publications for the past 20 years, has helped numerous families to save their stories, and has recorded multiple veteran’s oral histories, now housed at the Library of Congress. https://marjorieturner.com/easy-walks/

Featured Speakers for Week 3: The Climate Change Context of Your Community

Melissa Peters, AICP, is the Director of Community Planning for the Community Development Department at the City of Cambridge, MA. In her position, she manages a group of planners and urban designers responsible for long-range planning, with a focus on comprehensive, neighborhood, and open space planning. Melissa previously worked for CDM Smith in Chicago and Boston developing comprehensive, neighborhood, sustainability, and climate change plans for municipalities nationwide. She is an award-winning and passionate planner skilled in creating integrated urban solutions that balance goals of diverse planning disciplines.

Joshua Rapp is a Conservation Scientist for Mass Audubon where he leads the Forest Resilience Program. This includes managing projects that develop and promote resilient forests and enhance carbon storage through forest stewardship planning, carbon sequestration, and ensuring that forest management practices are appropriate for changing climate conditions to safe-guard water, wildlife habitat, and forest carbon stocks. Josh holds a BS in Geology from Duke University, an MS in Forestry from the University of Vermont, and a PhD in Biology from Wake Forest University. He has conducted research on forests and climate change for over 15 years in systems as diverse as the tropical Andes of South America, the Northern Rockies, and New England.

Featured Speakers for Week 4: The Financial Context of Your Community

Alexey Kalinin is a natural resource economist and a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard Forest. His current research is focused on economic impacts of land protection in New England. He received his PhD from the Nelson Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Jonathan Thompson is a Senior Ecologist at the Harvard Forest, a department of Harvard University. His research focuses on long-term and broad-scale changes in forest ecosystems, with an emphasis on quantifying how land use affects forest ecosystem processes and services.