I’m excited to announce that I’ve been selected to join the 2023 CEE-Change Fellowship cohort through the North American Association for Environmental Education!
“The Civics and Environmental Education (CEE) Change Fellowship Program is NAAEE’s newest initiative to support leadership and innovation in civics and environmental education across the country. NAAEE recognizes the value in bringing together environmental and civic engagement educators to learn from each other and collaborate to scale up our impact as we work to create a more equitable and sustainable future.
The CEE-Change Fellowship is a part of the National Environmental Education Training Program established by the U.S. EPA’s Office of Environmental Education, a national professional development program that has been building the professional capacity of educators since 1992. The program also focuses on building leadership skills and providing high-quality resources for the field. The Fellowship is also supported by a generous grant from the Cedar Tree Foundation.”

If you know me or have read my blog posts or listened to one of my rants, then you’ll know I am not on the path that I thought I would be on. There have been a lot of ups and downs and even side-to-sides but I’m learning to accept the paths life keeps sending me down. I’m really excited about this particular path that’s intercepting with the NAAEE CEE-Change Fellowship! And as someone who hasn’t neatly fit into any box, label, sector or really anything, I’m thrilled that this fellowship will bring a lot of new knowledge and new connections with people who have probably felt similarly in their own way.
As a fellow, I had the privilege of attending a Leadership Institute at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) in Shepherdstown, WV where everyone came together for a week-long knowledge-dump of everything climate change, environmental education, civic engagement, and lots of trivia (IYKYK)! We also had the honor to hear from renowned speakers, such as Kim Noble, José González, Leander Lacy, and past CEE-Change fellows, who have dedicated their work to environmental education (EE) and civic engagement (CE)!
Through this program, we all have the opportunity to design and execute a CE and EE Community Action Project in partnership with an organization that seeks to advance a more equitable and sustainable future. You can learn more about fellow projects at bit.ly/CEEChange. (Additional information on mine coming to a blog post near you soon!)
But I wanted to dedicate a post to my experience at the Leadership Institute and all the fun people I got to connect with, including the amazing NAAEE Staff that made all of this possible. I’m so inspired by everyone’s passions, goals, achievements, and participation in this fellowship. I’ve got a lot of people to look up to and I’m glad I have them by my side as we head on this path together.
Photo of fellows next to the Potomac River, WV. (Photo Credit: Ashley Herrmann) Selfie of fellows wearing NAAEE t-shirts. (Photo Credit: Jaeydah Edwards) “Not a white man” selfie with a portrait of Aurora Castillo. Fun group photo of all fellows attending the leadership institute.
The NCTC campus was a beautiful location that was thriving with wildlife, ripening pawpaws, and mosquitoes galore. It was refreshing to get the opportunity to travel to the East Coast after so long and experience 100+% humidity again!









It was a wonderful opportunity to get to spend a week in such a unique location and meet other fellow conservation and environmental leaders from around the world. NCTC holds a lot of wildlife conservation history and knowledge, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t attempt to also document the contributions of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pictured around the campus. Among the many portraits remembering many of the white men who have served our planet, were the below portraits I could find of non-white men and their accolades.



















