Expertise
Environmental Communication, Ecocultural Identities and Systems of Meaning, Community-based Research and Practice, Policy Development, Environmental Conflict Management, Ecocultural Pedagogy, Storytelling.
Bio
I am a research practitioner interested in environmental and intercultural dynamics of policy development and community outreach. Building on my international experience with Indigenous populations in Ecuador and Colombia to develop community-based decision and policy making processes, I design, apply, and facilitate identity-based participatory communication models for community building and conflict resolution. I am a Community-Based Research Faculty Fellow at CSU Channel Islands, deeply committed to community engagement. I am working on interdisciplinary projects that address beach justice in California and collaborate with a UC-CSU network dedicated to advancing K-12 climate literacy initiatives in the State. I co-edited two volumes, the award-winning Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) and Intersectional Activism in Environmental Communication (MSUPress, 2025). I am a native Spanish speaker from Ecuador. I earned a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of New Mexico, and M.A. in Organizational Communication from West Texas A&M University, and a B.A. in Sociology and Political Science from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador.