Mitzy Clementina Bautista

Circle: Deep Democracy

Tukuy Ñukapi Ñuka Tukuypi. Everything is within me and I am within everything.
We are not a part of the cosmos. We are the cosmos.

Mitzy Clementina Bautista, Anka Uma Kuntur Sonqo (Eagle Mind, Condor Heart) (she/her), is a U.S.-born Quechua and Aymara resident of the Mahicantuck Valley, an Indigenous advocate and organizational management consultant committed to building regenerative, just, and life-affirming communities.

Umbrellaed under her practice Kaypacha, Mitzy has for many years supported organizations and communities advancing Indigenous-led approaches to climate action, systems change, and community wellness. Her work centers on bridging Indigenous values and ways of knowing with organizational and community development, working with foundations, NGOs, and networks on building relationships rooted in reciprocity, collective care, and right relationship with the natural world.

She co-founded Humanise, a design-thinking initiative focused on humanizing data for social issues and grassroots development, and co-produced Climate Mic Drop during the 2025 UN Climate Week, which amplified the voices of 70 frontline workers, Indigenous communities, and climate activists. She sits on councils supporting Indigenous-led gatherings for change, holds community spaces rooted in Andean ceremony and spiritual practice, and is connected to the Earth Angels Philanthropy Network and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.

She comes to the Good Work Institute with fifteen years of experience in program design, organizational development, and facilitation, having led workshops and talk circles across corporate, nonprofit, and community settings. Her work is an expression of a singular intention: to move us, together, toward structures built on equanimity, compassion, and right relationship.

Mariam Bhacker

Circles: Fiscal Sponsorship, Learning & Operations

Mariam (she/her) is a former nomad landed in the Hudson Valley, living on Munsee Lenape land in Newburgh with her husband and two cats. A cisgendered, middle class woman, Mariam is Omani and English, and has had the privilege to live in Oman, Malaysia, England, Vietnam, and the United States. Her mixed identity and early experiences of travel and home(s) have shaped her commitment to social justice and equity.

Belonging and inclusion are central to what drives Mariam’s work, starting with her academic grounding in global health with a focus on women and migrants’ access to healthcare. She has spent the last decade advocating for the rights of migrant workers in the Arab Gulf, both as a researcher and a grantmaker. She comes to Just Transition from this labor lens and from a long-standing love for the natural world. She started to write a book about endangered animals at eight years old, which consisted of copying and pasting facts about big cats from an encyclopedia CD-ROM. She has since learned about plagiarism, but still harbors the ambition of writing a book!

Mariam’s role as Operations & Fiscal Sponsorship Manager at GWI enables her to combine her enthusiasm for process and organization with a philosophy of care and connection to the people and projects she serves. She is excited to deepen her relationships within the Mahicantuck Valley and welcomes recommendations for hikes, swimming holes, music venues, bookshops, and food!

Holly Kelly

Circle: Development

“As we start to feel safe with one another and feel like we belong together, we can relax into appreciating the fullness of life and our place in this ecosystem. And we can bring our transformed and transforming selves to the necessary work of building a better society for everyone. What do we choose to build then? Who or what would our systems protect?” – Prentis Hemphill, What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

Holly (they/them) is a white, autistic, genderqueer and queer, working/conditionally upper class single parent. They’re binational and spent their childhood between England and Wisconsin. They’ve lived on Munsee/Lenape land since 2015 where they’re committed to nurturing deep community connections.  

Holly pursues passions: they’ve been a milliner, a sweet shop owner, an activist, and a photographer. Their most consistent professional love is connecting resources with mission aligned organizations, work they’re delighted to continue at GWI. Their current source of joy is creating arts and crafts and singing along to musicals with their little one. Holly’s friendships are the heartbeat of their life.

Holly joins the Good Work Institute with appreciation for the intentionality behind envisioning a more just society. As we live in uncertain times, they find comfort in this beacon of hope for our future.

Jennifer Montalbano

Jennifer Montalbano is the Development Steward at GWI focused on the design and implementation of development strategy, including institutional funder and individual donor cultivation. Jennifer began her journey in fundraising as part of the Advancement team at Sarah Lawrence College while pursuing a Masters in Women’s History. She believes wholeheartedly that we are living in a historical moment where inequities and destruction have come to the forefront of our collective consciousness and that the answers lie in people — in democratizing communities, wealth and work. For the past decade and a half, she has helped organizations fund these good and important collaborative efforts. She is passionate about connecting the people doing work toward a Just Transition with those who want to support it. Jennifer grew up in the Mahicantuck Valley and currently resides in Saugerties, NY with her wild spirited 10-year-old son and stubborn but loveable black labrador. She also practices yoga and was trained and certified at Shakti Yoga in Woodstock, NY.

David Brownstein

After twelve years working as a private wealth advisor on Wall Street, in 2002 David miraculously extricated himself from this soul-deadening work and came home to New Paltz with his family to realize a life dream – fully sharing in the care and parenting of his three children and creating a small family farm. Over the years, the Brownstein family (Three Suns Farm) have raised dairy cows, goats, chickens, bees, and fruits and vegetables in season. In 2004 David co-founded Wild Earth, a local nonprofit with a vision toward regenerating a living community culture centered around nature connection. David served as its Executive Director for nearly 20 years until 2023. Today, David continues reaching toward his vision, now through his Root Connections (rootconnections.org) practice; he offers mentoring, coaching, and collaboration rooted in place-based, relationship-first and village-making work and life ways. 

Massoumeh Emami

Circles: Greenhouse & Deep Democracy

Massoumeh Emami (she/her) was born in Iran and fled the Revolution shortly after with her family. She went from London, to Las Vegas, to Northern Virginia, to Lexington, KY, to NYC, and eventually to Kingston in 2013, where she lives with her husband, two daughters and pup. She played tennis at the University of Kentucky, and moved to New York after college where she set out on a 20+ year career in the film and TV industry. Mass (pronounced like the unit of measure) has produced feature films, commercials, and web series, and has worked on countless films and TV shows as a script supervisor, including The Squid and the Whale, and The Kite Runner. She is thrilled to have the opportunity to work locally in her community, bringing people together, as the Greenhouse Manager and a member of the Deep Democracy Circle at GWI.

Allison Lamb

Allison attended Montserrat College of Art, where she found her love for Design and Illustration. Over the last 10 years, Allison’s various positions have prepared her with a firm, well-rounded knowledge of the branding and marketing world. In 2013, Allison left her position as Creative Director with the Royal Bank of Scotland to join the multi-use skincare company, LIMEGREEN. With LIMEGREEN, Allison had the amazing opportunity to utilize her branding knowledge and showcase her driven personality to develop a successful business. In recent years, Allison primarily lent her creativity to organizations focused on social impact, entertainment, politics, and the arts. Allison lives in Newburgh, NY, but remains strongly connected to her roots in Brooklyn, NY, and North Carolina.

Kate Cox

Kate is Director of Development for the Bard Prison Initiative and has been with BPI since 2019. Prior to BPI, Kate worked as Capacity Building Advisor for the New York Council on Nonprofits and spent many years supporting community and national public radio and other story-telling endeavors. Kate completed a Masters in Social Work from Tulane University in 2017 and has 2 decades of experience across the non-profit sector- in philanthropy, capacity building, strategic planning, and project management.

Grace Lodge

Grace is committed to creating thriving places by ensuring the people who live in them have the power to design their own futures. Grace is the Director of Communications and Development at a Colorado-based nonprofit called Community Builders. Prior, she worked as the Communications and Community Engagement Specialist at the City of Aspen. Before moving to Colorado, Grace was the Community Engagement Manager at the Good Work Institute where she helped develop a network of over 150 local entrepreneurs, public servants, artists, nonprofit leaders and activists working to build a more equitable and regenerative region in the Hudson Valley. Grace is most inspired when working with communities to create a collective vision and plan to drive just and lasting change in their place.

Nejla Liias

In 2008, Nejla Liias founded Global Health Visions (GHV) to provide strategic guidance on the formulation and implementation of global health and development initiatives that aim to improve the lives and livelihoods of women and children. Prior to starting Global Health Visions, Nejla was an independent consultant for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in its Global Health Policy and Advocacy division. Before her work in global health and development, Nejla spent five years as a public finance professional at the Wall Street firms of Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan. Nejla recognized a need in the industry to provide access to exceptional consultants who could provide guidance on a range of development issues for short and long term projects. With GHV, she built a team of consultants with a wealth of expertise, skilled in a variety of areas from advocacy and communications to proposal formulation and in-depth research and analysis. GHV partners with and serves NGOs, governments, foundations, development agencies, and the private sector.

Nejla holds a Master of Public Policy with a concentration in International Policy and Development from Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy Institute, and a Bachelor of Science from Bates College.

Vonda Brunsting

Vonda lives in Beacon, and works with the Initiative for Responsible Investment at the Center for Public Leadership of the Harvard Kennedy School. In partnership with the Grantham Institute at LSE, she is launching a project on Investing in the Just Transition, which aims to build a clean energy economy that works for communities and working people. Previously, she was director of the Capital Stewardship Program Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Vonda served as a trustee on the SEIU Master Trust Pension Plan and on the board of the Council of Institutional Investors. Prior to joining SEIU‚ Vonda co-founded two community organizations devoted to leadership development and community change and worked on community finance initiatives at the University of New Hampshire and the Harvard Business School. She currently serves on the SRI and Investment Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Common Endowment Fund. She received her B.A. from Calvin College and holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.

Erica Brown

Native to Kingston, Erica believes that the strength of a community lies in the empowerment of its individuals. The Community Engagement Coordinator for Radio Kingston, Erica is passionate about working with nonprofits, focusing her energies on access, inclusion, and diversity. Erica is inspired by the development of interdisciplinary collaboration between local organizations serving as a Board member of the Kingston Farmers Market, committee member of Kingston Midtown Rising Connect, a member of the Ulster County Housing Advisory Committee, and an organizing member of the Kingston Community Land Trust. 

Erica is twice a graduate of SUNY New Paltz, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in Business (2010) and in Psychology (2016).