Past Fellows

Denise Aparicio Dominguez (she/her/ella)  – Society and Environment

I’m born and raised from south central LA and am passionate about fighting for environmental justice in urban communities. I’m interested in going into the environmental policy field through law school and hope to have a career in a public agency. Outside of academics, I enjoy spending time outdoors with my friends, completing movie marathons, and walking my husky.

Yesenia Valverde (she/her/ella)  – PhD Environmental Science, Policy, & Management

I was born and raised in a Costa Rican household, surrounded by the vibrant Latinx community of San Diego’s South Bay. I have a background in tropical ecology with field experience in the rainforests of Costa Rica, Panama, Hawai’i, and Malaysia. With my PhD, my focus has shifted to agricultural landscapes and their management for ecosystem service production. I’m interested in agroforestry as a pathway in Central America for a just and equitable vision of forest landscape restoration that works to center smallholder farmers.

Luis Anaya (he/him)  – PhD Candidate, Environmental Engineering

I have an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin in Civil Engineering and a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley in Environmental Engineering with a focus on water quality. My research focus is on developing water treatment processes for water quality improvement and promoting resource recovery to encourage a circular economy of nutrients and resources in general from wastewater. I am currently working on my dissertation, so the little time I have left is spent on short hikes around the bay with my partner and working out to de-stress.

Río Vargas (they/them)

Río is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning along with Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. They are currently working as an Agricultural Labor Researcher with Federico Castillo, an Environmental Science Lecturer and researcher at UC Berkeley. Under Castillo’s project, Río is researching the socioeconomic impacts of California’s heat wave and the COVID-19 pandemic on agricultural workers in the Central Valley.

Estela Montiel

Estela is a recent UC Berkeley graduate in the interdisciplinary major of Conservation and Resource Studies.

Yelisa Ambriz

Yelisa Ambriz is a recent UC Berkeley graduate in History with a minor in Chicano Latino Studies at the University of California Berkeley.

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Giselle Serafin

Giselle is a first generation graduate from Ontario, California who studied Environmental Science with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice. 

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Zeltzin Angon

Zeltzin a UC Berkeley graduate in Geography and Society & Environment with a minor in City Planning.

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Leilani Gutierrez-Palominos

Leilani Gutierrez-Palominos is a UC Berkeley graduate in Molecular & Cell Biology with a minor in Global Poverty & Practice. 

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Camila Custodio

Camila Custodio is a Puerto Rican, UC Berkeley graduate in in Ethnic Studies, with a specific focus in Latin American studies.