President of the Board: Diana Mabel Cruz
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Diana's roots to the neighborhood date back to the 1960s when her grandparents first immigrated from El Salvador to Koreatown. Having been raised just a few blocks west of Beverly and Vermont, Diana has seen several changes in her neighborhood and is committed to ensuring that future changes in housing, transit, and environmental initiatives benefit all members- especially the long-term POC and houseless community. At her day job, Diana helps build the organizational capacity of two community engagement offices at Occidental College. In 2017, she graduated from UC Davis with a B.S. in Sustainable Environmental Design with a focus on Participatory Urbanism. Since then, she has moved back home to continue learning, growing, and organizing with her neighbors. |
Board Vice President: Steven Simon
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A native of Fresno, California, Steven moved to Los Angeles in 2006 to obtain a master's degree in urban planning at UCLA. A former union campaign researcher and strategist, Steven now works at a non-profit organization in central Los Angeles that addresses the needs of disadvantaged workers. |
Board Secretary: Adriana Swain
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Adriana is Board Secretary for the Beverly and Vermont Community Land Trust, Project Steward at the L.A. Co-op Lab, and an independent campaigns and communications consultant. She is passionate about equitable community development, having worked as an organizer and communications strategist for several economic and environmental justice initiatives, including the Uplift Inglewood Coalition and the Social Justice Learning Institute. She holds a MS in Environment, Politics and Development from SOAS, University of London and a BA in International Development from the University of Sussex. |
Board Treasurer: Audrey Younsook Jang
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Audrey grew up in Koreatown and is glad to have found her way back home. She discovered the Los Angeles Ecovillage upon returning from an internship with a CLT on a rural island off the coast of Washington State. She wrote a public policy analysis thesis analyzing the alternative model of sustainable development demonstrated at the Ecovillage. Currently, she works to increase Korean American 2020 Census participation and civic engagement. Audrey aspires to join the burgeoning coalition of activists in all sectors organizing to transform mainstream land use patterns in Los Angeles, to solve the interrelated crises of climate change and homelessness. She is currently attending a dual J.D.-Masters in Urban Planning program at UCLA. |
Board Member: Jennifer Ganata
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Jennifer Ganata joined BVCLT in 2016 as a local community representative. Her involvement with the Eco-village intentional community dates back to 2008 when she was a resident for a short stay. Environmental justice and affordable housing issues are near and dear to Jennifer's heart. From 2006-2010 Jennifer was a youth community organizer in South East Los Angeles and the South Bay around environmental justice issues with Communities for a Better Environment. In 2010, Jennifer became a staff attorney at the Eviction Defense Network. Jennifer has a BA in Ethnic Studies and a minor in Urban Studies and Planning from University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Jennifer received a JD from City University of New York (CUNY), where she was trained through the Adult Defender Clinical program and an LL.M from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a focus on Critical Race Studies. She currently resides in the local community, and is an eviction defense attorney at Inner City Law Center.
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Board Member: Bobby Hawkins
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Bobby Hawkins and his family have resided on the land trust for six years. Bobby has over 30 years experience in residential construction and currently works with Altadena Energy and Solar Inc, providing alternative energy solutions via the sun. His interest in the land trust is to promote a sustainable model that does away with the harmful effects of the speculative real estate market, and to promote stewardship of the Earth. He is on the property management, and learning garden committees, and welcomes inquiries, suggestions, and support. |
Board Member: Jesús Hermosillo
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Jesús grew up in East Los Angeles, and holds a master's degree in urban planning from UCLA. He has lived in Koreatown since 2013. A former housing-rights organizer, union researcher, he is a campaign coordinator with the California Nurses Association (National Nurses United). |
Board Member: Arlene Hopkins
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Arlene Hopkins has a long-standing interest in land tenure, community building and cooperatives. Professionally she is an architect, evaluator and educator. Among her public service roles, she presently serves on the Board of the Santa Monica Public Library, is a member of the Resilience Thematic Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Graduate Women in Science, American Evaluation Association, American Library Association and the California Native Plant Society, among others. She maintains a trans-disciplinary approach to thinking boldly and with an empirical basis, about how we need to adapt and innovate our cultural systems to both regenerate ecological systems and the equitable commons. |
Board Member: Questa Gleason
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Questa wandered through a liberal arts education, theater production, biotech and the rest of the world before finding herself suddenly residing on Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust land. Since she was living there already, she thought she should get involved and attended one national land trust conference and two California community land trust conferences before being elected as treasurer to the BVCLT board of directors. She's an Aries, an aspiring Urban Planner and kind of a nerd. |
Board Member: Yuki Kidokoro
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Yuki Kidokoro is CJA’s Reinvest Project Director. After graduate studies in Urban Planning at UCLA, Yuki spent 15 years at Communities for a Better Environment as a Youth Organizer, Lead Organizer and Southern California Program Director. At CBE, Yuki developed the youth program and was active in many successful grassroots campaigns. Some of these victories include stopping two fossil fuel power plant projects in Southeast LA, delaying the expansion of the I-710 diesel truck corridor to allow for public process, and winning health protective policies at the city, regional and state levels. Yuki helped carry out CBE’s movement building work with the California EJ Alliance and with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance at the state and national levels. Raised in Southern California, Yuki helped create a 45 unit affordable housing cooperative at the Los Angeles Eco-Village in Koreatown where she lives with her partner and 2 cats. She currently serves on the Board of the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust and is trained in conflict mediation and group facilitation. Yuki enjoys biking, gardening, board games and thinking about community governance structures.
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