Who We Are
Movement Generation is driven by staff, a volunteer Program Committee, and participants in our program.
Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan
Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan brings a love of soil, a passion for strategic thinking, (and sometimes her two lively little ones) to her work for long-term systemic change.
Over the last 15 years, Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan has played multiple leadership roles in the social justice movement in California. Most recently, she was Co-Director of the School of Unity and Liberation, a movement-building training center based in Oakland, California. Prior to that, she worked for more than a decade towards food justice in working-class communities of color. Michelle co-founded and served as director of the Center for Food and Justice in Los Angeles from 1997 through 2001, helping to develop farm-to-school programs nationally and organizing campaigns for food justice in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Michelle was also a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow.
Michelle became active in social justice work through anti-war and labor/community organizing in greater Los Angeles where she was born and raised. She graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in History, specializing in Women’s Studies in 1994 and an M.A. in Urban Planning in 1997. During her time at UCLA, she helped organize the campaign for union recognition of graduate student workers.
Contact Michelle: michelle@movementgeneration.org
Mateo Nube
Mateo was born and grew up in La Paz, Bolivia. Since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has worked in the labor, environmental justice and international solidarity movements. He has spent the last decade integrating concepts of popular education into his movement work.
Mateo is the current Director of the MG Justice & Ecology Project and is one of the co-founders of the project. Prior to joining MG, Mateo designed and facilitated political education trainings and conducted staff development workshops for grassroots and community organizations interested in growing their organizing, advocacy, and leadership capacities. He also served as the director of Urban Habitat’s Leadership Institute and served as the Northwest Coordinator of the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute. Mateo is a member of the musical band Los Nadies.
Contact Mateo: mateo@movementgeneration.org
Carla Maria Pérez
Carla is a dedicated mother and community organizer of Native/Latin American heritage residing in Oakland, California. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 1999 with a BS in Conservation & Resource Studies with an emphasis on Environmental Racism. She has worked on issues of environmental justice and sustainable agriculture with community groups from Yucatán, Mexico to Bay Area environmental justice communities such as Richmond and Bay View Hunters Point in San Francisco.
Prior to joining MG in 2007 as a Planning Committee member and co-founder of the Justice & Ecology Project, Carla spent 8 years as staff at Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) as a Leadership Training Coordinator, grassroots organizer and most recently as CBE’s Northern California Program Director. Carla is a certified Popular Education Trainer and Indigenous Permaculture Design Consultant. She is a climate justice organizer with the Mobilization for Climate Justice West and a member of the Ruckus Society’s People of Color Trainer Network.
Today Carla coordinates MG’s community eco-justice training program, manages the MG Trainers Network and leads MG’s Resiliency and Permaculture work. Carla’s hard work is done in dedication to her daughters and to the Spirit of Creation.
Contact Carla: carla@movementgeneration.org
Gopal Dayaneni
Gopal has worked for social, economic, and environmental justice through organizing & campaigning, teaching, writing, and speaking since the late 1980′s. He has been a campaigner for Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition on human rights and environmental justice in the high-tech industry and the Oil Campaigner for Project Underground, a human rights and environmental rights organizations which supported communities resisting oil and mining exploitation around the world. Gopal has also provided progressive organizations with support in Strategic Communications and Campaign Planning through the Design Action Collective and is an active trainer and organizer with the Ruckus Society and a member of the Progressive Communicators Network. Gopal is also an elementary and early childhood educator, working formerly as a teacher and as the co-director of the Tenderloin Childcare Center, a community based childcare center supporting children and families forced into homelessness.
Contact Gopal: gopal@movementgeneration.org
Dave Henson, MG Planning Committee Member & Executive Director of OAEC
Dave Henson is the Executive Director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC). He also directs the Ecological Agriculture and Sustainable Food Systems Program and co-directs the Intentional Communities Program at OAEC. With a background in environmental studies, sociology and law, Dave has worked for 27 years with many environmental organizations, including the Environmental Project on Central America, the Highlander Center, the National Toxics Campaign, and Greenpeace. He has lectured and led activist workshops around the US and in over 20 countries. Dave currently serves on the steering committees of the Wild Farm Alliance, the Genetic Engineering Action Network, Californians for GE-Free Agriculture, and the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy.
Contact Dave: dhenson@oaec.org
Ellen Choy
A proud Oakland resident, Ellen grew up in the LA area as the daughter and granddaughter of Chinese and Korean immigrants. Since graduating from UC Berkeley in ’07, she has been working to uplift and support the leadership of low-income communities of color in the fight to address climate change and build sustainable alternatives. Out of college she began as a program associate and director of the Climate Literacy Training program with the Environmental Justice & Climate Change Initiative. Since 2009, she has been a core organizer with the Mobilization for Climate Justice West. She also helped build a national coalition of young people of color in the US called Youth for Climate Justice, as well as worked at various youth development organizations in the Bay Area. Ellen recently worked as the Youth Program Coordinator for Mandela Marketplace, working with youth of color in West Oakland to increase access to healthy food in their community. She’s also an active member of HOBAK (Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans), a community radio producer on APEX Express (KPFA) and a hiphop/soul/funk DJ.
She’s constantly reclaiming her connection to land, joining the ranks with the DJs of the movement and staying fly in true West Coast style.
Contact Ellen: ellen@movementgeneration.org