Angie Kaufman (she/her) is from El Paso, Texas. Her community and homeland on la frontera molded her; it’s where she found refuge in the Chihuahuan Desert and developed a passion fighting the injustices plaguing communities in the region and places like it.

Kaufman holds a Bachelor of Science and Arts in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. A concentration on neurobiological and affective capacities to forecast the future and a minor in philosophy shaped her approach to environmental decision-making and ethics.

After college, Kaufman worked in clean energy before pivoting towards law to focus on the foundations of environmental injustice. During law school, she co-led an initiative to enhance climate resilience in Vermont’s Upper Valley through the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship and supported youth policy engagement with The Climate Initiative. Before beginning her master’s at Yale School of the Environment, Kaufman worked at Vermont Law’s Environmental Justice Clinic and Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies Office in Bozeman, Montana. This summer, she’s supporting the New Mexico Environmental Law Center as a law clerk.

Through a multi-disciplinary community lawyering approach, Kaufman strives to help communities protect access to a healthy environment and enhance their ability to move through this world freely.

Kaufman anticipates receiving a Juris Doctorate (Vermont Law School) and Master of Environmental Management (Yale School of the Environment) in Spring 2027.

Audrey Snyder is a visual artist, chef, and interdisciplinary researcher based in Southern California. Her work cultivates relationships between ecology, infrastructure, and place-making through sculpture, installation, and food as site for public activation.

Her practice engages with land-based knowledge systems and site histories through collaborative, context-specific projects. She holds an MS in Regenerative Studies from Cal Poly Pomona (2023), where her thesis Tracing Transhumance examined seasonal shepherding across California’s wildland-urban interface, and a BFA from The Cooper Union (2013). Currently a Getty Research Institute Associate Scholar (2025-2026), she works with archival images and material culture to understand how communities have historically negotiated fire-adapted landscapes.

Her collaborative work with artist Joe Riley (Wastestreaming, Into the Ground, Passengers of Change) and the collective Futurefarmers (Seed Journey, Soil Procession, Victory Gardens) have been presented at Clockshop, the Guggenheim, Sharjah Biennial, and Artes Mundi 7. In 2024-25, she was a participating artist in Getty Pacific Standard Time: Art and Science Collide in partnership with UC San Diego’s Birch Aquarium. She is a member of the San Diego Creative Weavers Guild and works alongside Southern California’s fibershed networks of shepherds, weavers, and land managers.

Despite growing up on a farm in southeast Idaho, Cameron has long held a deep interest in urbanism and planning. After pursuing a degree in landscape architecture at Utah State University, he lived and worked as a landscape architect in Salt Lake City and was privileged to be involved in projects such as the Watercourse at Daybreak, the Rio Grande Plan, and the Ballpark NEXT design competition. He returned to school to receive a masters in urban design from the University of Michigan in 2024, gaining valuable experience and understanding of urban thinking across the U.S. rust belt and parts of Europe.

Cameron’s design approach is landscape first, bringing his background and love of natural spaces to the heart of urban fabrics. He is passionate about transit, brownfield remediation and redevelopment, as well as in historic and habitat preservation. He prides himself on striving to bridge the gap between demands of growing urban populations with the critical need for resource management, habitat preservation, and open space creation. In his spare time he enjoys hiking, running, sketching, and taking on complex baking recipes.

Euwan Kim is an incoming Earth Science PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she will develop statistical methods for assessing and managing water resources. She is particularly interested in studying how climate extremes influence groundwater-surface water interactions and their downstream effects on regional agriculture, energy systems, and community water security.

She graduated with a B.S. in Earth and Climate Sciences from Duke University in 2024. Throughout her undergraduate education, she worked at several public and private environmental agencies on projects ranging from scientific research to lobbying. At the United States Department of Energy, she developed an algorithm to isolate and quantify the effects that mining and climate oscillations have had on southeastern New Mexico’s groundwater resources. She later completed an honors thesis examining how irrigation and oil and gas activities contributed to the decline of the High Plains Aquifer. Since July 2025, she has been studying hydrogeologic modeling at the British Geological Survey, focusing on hyporheic processes under variable climate conditions.

Originally from New Jersey, Euwan has lived and conducted fieldwork across the United States for several years, experiences that have exposed her to the country’s diverse natural and cultural landscapes shaping water resource management today.

Kelsey is a n Agriculture Biology student and conservation practitioner who has called the San Luis Valley home her entire life. Farming has always been a part of her world. Her grandfather ran a cattle operation, and she spent much of her childhood riding in tractors during hay season, soaking up the rhythms of agricultural life long before she understood the science behind it. Although he has since passed, she often thinks about how much he would love to see where her life has led; pursuing agriculture and conservation as a career is something she knows would have made him proud.

She currently works as a lab assistant in a CSU Extension pathology program, studying potato diseases through diagnostic tools such as ELISA testing and molecular assays. She also serves as a District Conservation Technician Assistant with the Mosca-Hooper Water Conservation District, where she works at a wind erosion monitoring station and coordinates the Bringing Farmers Together project, supporting producer-led conversations around soil health, water use, and adaptive management. Last summer, Kelsey conducted independent macroinvertebrate field research along the Rio Grande from Creede to Lobatos to better understand how agricultural practices are impacting local waterways. She is drawn to work that is hands-on and collaborative, and to conservation that keeps both working lands and rural communities thriving.

Kethry Soares is a Masters’ student at Colorado School of Mines studying hydrology. She has a background in chemistry and semiconductor materials manufacturing and has since changed her career path to a discipline that has greater potential for direct positive impact related to environmental issues and community needs. She is especially interested in sustainable groundwater use and remediation of contaminated groundwater sources, as well as the social and political dynamics of water distribution and use in the western united states.

In addition to science, art has also been forever present in Kethry’s life and career. Aside from drawing and painting in her free time she also has experience teaching dance to adults and children and using movement and music as a form of expression and communication. She appreciates how art can create community and convey messages that are often harder to convey with science alone.

Leah Coe is a map maker and flower grower with Colorado roots. Growing up in the Front Range foothills of Golden, Colorado, Leah’s family land relied on well water that occasionally ran dry. With drought as a constant, Leah’s relationship to water is formed by her deep reverence for the resilience of arid landscapes. Graduating with a degree in Environmental Studies and Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (University of Colorado, 2019), Leah migrated south to the Four Corners region and began growing food with local market garden businesses around Durango, a time that led to becoming a Farmer in Training, then a staff member with the Old Fort at Hesperus. This former military fort and federal Indian boarding school has transformed into a high-elevation farm education hub. Seeking a technical application to pair with her hands-in-the-soil understanding of the high desert, Leah obtained her GIS certificate in 2021 (Fort Lewis College) and began mapping with La Plata Open Space Conservancy, Durango’s local land trust. Working with private landowners to conserve large swaths of agricultural and wild land and water in the Southwest, Leah’s understanding of conservation continued to shift toward a relational, community-based conservation paradigm. Her continued work in the environmental sector has honed her geospatial skills while expanding her understanding of the ongoing climate and culture complexities that shape Colorado’s high desert communities. Her intimate relationship with the deep canyons and winding rivers of the Southwest drives her personal practice of creating geospatial earth art, informed and inspired by water-carved contours.

Moneer Ba-Ahmad is a Moroccan-American designer and landscape architecture student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, originally from Fort Worth, Texas. His practice examines the social and spatial dimensions of landscapes across the southwestern U.S. and North Africa — their ecological conditions, material qualities, and cultural significance. Through research and design, he explores how these landscapes can reveal stories of migration, environmental change, and cultural exchange. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has previously worked with 2×4 as a brand strategist, developing design strategies for cultural institutions and civic projects worldwide.

Noah Silber-Coats is a researcher and educator with over a decade of experience working on issues related to water, energy, and agriculture. As a geographer with expertise spanning the environmental and social sciences, he has written for both academic audiences and broader publics in venues including the Water Alternatives, Journal of the Southwest, and Energy Policy. As a master’s student, he investigated conflicts over the development of hydropower in central Mexico, interviewing government officials, nongovernmental organizations, activists, and impacted communities. During his PhD, completed in 2021, he explored tensions surrounding the transition of cannabis to a legalized crop in Oregon. Since 2022, he has worked with the USDA Southwest Climate Hub, where he developed the Water Adaptation Techniques Atlas (WATA), a web-based tool that examines and shares solutions to water scarcity across the Southwest. Over three years, WATA has compiled more than 300 case studies covering a wide range of potential solutions and communicating their possibilities and limitations through carefully researched, concise narratives. He recently served as lead guest editor for a special issue of Agricultural Water Management focused on solutions to water scarcity for irrigated agriculture in the American West.

Stephanie McMorran is an interdisciplinary designer operating at the intersection of environmental policy, economic development, and community-centered architectural design. A graduate of the M.Arch program at Columbia GSAPP, she has since been a fierce advocate for the re-centering and inclusion of Afro-diasporic and Indigenous perspectives, practices, and ways of knowing in advancing new approaches to environmental design and climate adaptation policy. She previously worked for Adjaye Associates, where she led the development of the firm’s socio-political approach to building decarbonization within the context of the Caribbean and wider Afro-diaspora. As one of the first Black natural resource planners in the State of New Jersey, Stephanie was also the lead project manager on the State’s first bio-regional-scale visioning plan aimed at bridging regenerative design, economic development, water management, and conservation.

Xiaodong Yan (shyow-dong yen), He/Him, is a doctoral student of the Department of Communication at University of Colorado, Boulder. He is a research assistant at Center for Communication and Democratic Engagement. His recent publications appear in Digital Journalism, Asian Journal of Communication, and China: An International Journal. Before he relocated to the U.S., he grew up and lived in a small county of North China. Currently, He lives in Greeley, CO with his partner and cat.

He tends to conduct “real-world” problems-centered research that works toward transformative actions in everyday lives, cultivating reflective and usable praxis in societal local situations.  As an ethnographer who is committed to the field of applied communication, he probes into mundane “seen but unnoticed” interactional dynamics. His research interests primarily center on participatory deliberative democracy, environmental (in)justice. He draws on community-based research approaches to conduct collaborative projects with local communities to explore how micro-level situated communicative practices can facilitate and/or inhibit democratic values.

Based on his experiences of engaged place-based fieldwork, he investigates the dynamics of mini-public deliberation, facilitation, difficult dialogue, and conversation within different settings of group interaction. Currently, he is working on a transnational study between China and the U.S. about deliberative democracy within local communities.

Ximena Diaz Velasco is a freelance model maker, community engager, and landscape designer in New York City. Recent graduate of the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the City College of New York, she is now working as a community designer at Creative Urban Alchemy and a landscape model maker at Miniature World.

Before pursuing her master’s degree, Ximena’s undergraduate studies in international development laid the foundation for her commitment to social systemic change. She spent several years working with NGOs and government agencies, focusing on projects that reduce barriers to public spaces such as libraries and national parks for under-resourced communities.

Ximena aims to grow as a landscape designer and artist focused on designing public spaces that establish regenerative, localized water cycles and engage communities to strengthen healing connections to green spaces and water.