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Staff

Staff Biographies

Gustavo Aguirre

Gustavo Aguirre was born in Guanajuato, Mexico and immigrated to California at the age of 19, where he worked under a United Farm Workers’ union contract as a lemon harvester for 16 years. During his tenure at the company, he served as a steward and as the leader of the UFW worker committee involved in their contract negotiations and administration at his ranch.  As a worker leader, Aguirre volunteered for many union boycott and political campaigns. In 1986, he helped organize support for the last federal immigration reform law that provided amnesty to undocumented residents. He helped mobilize farm workers to walk precincts in Los Angeles during the 1992 and 1996 campaigns that elected Bill Clinton president, and the 1998 drive that elected Gray Davis Governor, as well as working for numerous other pro-union legislators.

Aguirre started working full time with the UFW in 1996 as an organizer in the union's strawberry organizing effort.  He quickly was named Regional Director in charge of UFW field operations in Southern California, and in June 2003 moved to Delano as the Regional Director of the San Joaquin Valley in Central California.  At the UFW convention in 2000, Aguirre was elected National Vice President, serving until May 2006.  He has negotiated and administered collective bargaining agreements and been involved in numerous organizing drives, promoting and developing staff and volunteer leaders, and taking care of all union business in his region.  As Regional Director and and Executive Board member as National Vice President, Aguirre had the opportunity to be part of the top UFW leadership team including Arturo Rodriguez and Dolores Huerta.

After his 10 years of service to the UFW, in June 2006 Aguirre joined the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment as Assistant Director of Organizing, focusing on pesticides and other environmental issues to protect the health of all communities.

Liza Bolaños

Liza Bolaños is originally from Visalia, California. She graduated from California State University, Fresno, and was accepted into the California Latino Legislative Caucus Institute for Public Policy, Senator Richard G. Polanco Fellowship. During the fellowship, she had the opportunity to work in both the Executive and Legislative branches of government in Sacramento, California.

Although, building on her student activism at CSUF, Bolaños’s entry into the environmental field and clean air issues was a logical progression from her University days and Sacramento experiences, her career almost took a different turn.  As a student intern, Bolaños increased student participation in statewide lobbying and grassroots efforts, and conducted strategic campaign planning and events coordination. Along the way she published articles on CSU student activities in local newspapers as well as student publications, all the while maintaining two jobs to support herself while attending the University. Upon graduation, at the urging of a mentor professor, she applied for a Sacramento Fellowship, in spite of the fact that no CSU graduate had ever been selected. She was making plans to re-enter the Central Valley job market when word came that she would be spending a year in Sacramento as the 2005-2006 recipient of the Richard G. Polanco Fellowship. The skills she acquired during her fellowship and her experiences in Sacramento prepared her for the newly created role of CVAQ Coordinator.

Bolaños happily returns to the Central Valley in hopes of contributing to the sustainable growth and sensible progress of the Central Valley communities. When not working she enjoys spending time with her parents, six brothers and sisters, and her ten beautiful nieces and nephews.

Ingrid Brostrom

Ingrid Brostrom, a graduate of the University of California-Hastings College of the Law, joins CRPE’s Delano office as an Equal Justice Works Fellow.  Her fellowship project, “Don’t Waste the Valley,” focuses on waste issues facing the Central Valley ranging from hazardous waste facility expansion to biosolid application on agricultural lands.  Before joining CRPE, Ingrid worked primarily on wildlife and land conservation issues.  She graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz with degrees in environmental studies and politics and interned with the Jane Goodall Institute, the Center on Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club.  She was an articles editor for the West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law and Policy and published a piece on protecting culturally significant wildlife using the National Historic Preservation Act.  Her focus shifted toward environmental justice after interning with the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment during her final summer in law school.  When not working, Ingrid enjoys traveling and learning about foreign cultures.  She also considers herself a rugby player for life.

Luke Cole on the Chukchi Sea with Kivalina IRA Council President Jerry Norton and Jared Norton.

Luke Cole
Director
San Francisco

Luke Cole directs the Center’s work. He represents low-income communities and workers throughout California who are fighting environmental hazards, stressing the need for community-based, community-led organizing and litigation. Through the Center, he also provides legal and technical assistance to attorneys and community groups involved in environmental justice struggles nationwide.

Cole has worked with dozens of community groups in local struggles across the United States. He represented Kettleman City residents in their successful efforts to stop Chemical Waste Management from building California’s first toxic waste incinerator in their community. Current cases include representing residents of the Inupiaq Village of Kivalina in northwest Alaska in a suit against the world’s largest zinc and lead mine, which has polluted the village’s water supply for years. Other recent cases include representing South Camden Citizens in Action of Camden, NJ, in a historic civil rights suit against the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection; the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe of Death Valley in its efforts to halt open-pit cyanide heap leach gold mining in sacred ancestral lands; Desert Citizens Against Pollution in the group’s successful challenge to tire burning in several cement kilns; and Communities for a Better Environment in a civil rights challenge to California pollution-trading regulations. Cole has been instrumental in halting the proliferation of mega-dairy farms in California’s Central Valley, and a key player in forcing local jurisdictions in California to study dairies’ environmental impacts and mitigate them.

Cole was appointed by EPA Administrator Carol Browner to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), where he served from 1996 through 2000 (including chairing NEJAC’s Enforcement Subcommittee from 1998 through 2000). He also served as a member of EPA’s Title VI Implementation Committee.

In 1997, the American Lawyer magazine named Cole to the Public Sector 45, one of “forty-five young lawyers outside the private sector whose vision and commitment are changing lives.” Berkeley’s Ecology Law Quarterly awarded Cole its 1997 Environmental Leadership Award for “outstanding contributions to the development of environmental law and policy,” and the American Bar Association’s Barrister magazine named Cole one of “20 young lawyers making a difference” for his pioneering legal work. Community organizations have also honored Cole for his contributions to the environmental justice movement.

Cole is the co-founder and editor emeritus of the journal Race, Poverty & the Environment. He recently published, with Professor Sheila Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement (NYU Press, 2001). His legal publications include “Empowerment as they Key to Environmental Protection: the Need for Environmental Poverty Law,” in the Ecology Law Quarterly, as well as pieces in the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the Journal of Environmental Law & Litigation, the Fordham Urban Law Journal, and the Michigan Law Review, among others. He has taught as a visiting professor at UC-Hastings School of Law, and also taught seminars on environmental justice at Stanford Law School, UC-Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, and Hastings. Cole graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and with honors from Stanford University.

Publications »
www.lukecole.com »

Caroline Farrell

Caroline is originally from Wellesley, Massachusetts. She attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Before going to law school, she taught English in Yokohama, Japan. Caroline graduated from Golden Gate University School of Law in 1999. She moved down to Delano in November 1999 to work on environmental justice issues in California’s Central Valley. She has quickly established a reputation as one of the Valley’s foremost environmental justice advocates, going toe-to-toe with agricultural polluters from Fresno to Bakersfield. She was instrumental in forcing Safety-Kleen Corporation to stop accepting radioactive waste at its toxic waste dump near Buttonwillow. Her advocacy helped CRPE win the Carla Bard Award from California Water Policy Advocates.

Catherine Garoupa

Catherine Garoupa was raised in Madera, California, and is a proud third generation Central Valley resident.  In 2001, she graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies (with Honors and Distinction) and a Minor in English, spending two semester abroad programs: in Delhi, India and Bayreuth, Germany.

Garoupa graduated with her Master’s in Social Work (MSW) from California State University, Fresno. As a graduate student intern, she worked with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Fresno Center for Nonviolence (FCNV) coordinating free educational programs and collaborating with other community-based organizations on issues of peace and social justice. FCNV honored her efforts with their 2004 “Way of Peace” award. During her second year placement at the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, Garoupa explored the functioning of local government, politics, and policy. She was also actively involved on campus through student organizations, by serving on the President’s Commission on Human Rights and Equity, and as an employee of the Central Valley Cultural Heritage Institute. 

Avinash Kar

Avinash Kar (Avi) joins CRPE’s San Francisco office as a Ralph S. Abascal Fellow from UC Hastings School of Law, where he graduated cum laude.  At CRPE, his project will focus on enforcing the New Source Review component of the Clean Air Act.  During law school, Avi focused on environmental issues and edited the West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law and Policy.  He has worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the law firm, Shute, Mihaly, and Weinberger, and has interned with the Environmental Protection Agency and with the Hon. D. Lowell Jensen at the federal district court in Oakland, California.  He did his undergraduate work at Williams College in Massachusetts and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in English.  Avi grew up in India, Botswana, and Massachusetts, studied abroad for a year at Oxford University, and speaks Hindi and some Bengali.  He enjoys cricket (the sport), the outdoors, reading, movies, jazz, and food.

Lupe Martinez

Director of Organizing
Delano

Guadalupe Martinez was born in Brownsville, Texas, and moved to California with his mother and family in 1964 after his father suffered a fatal tractor accident.  He soon started working in the field of the San Joaquin Valley, working for a variety of farm labor contractors.  Martinez left school at an early age to work to provide for his family.  In 1973, he met Maria Gallegos while attending night school.  They were married shortly afterward and have lived together to this day, raising three children, Esmeralda, Jorge and Jeraldo. 

While working in the grape fields in Ducor, Martinez met several organizers from the United Farm Workers, including Cesar Chavez. That was his first encounter with the Union and the taste for organizing and seeking justice never left him. He soon joined the UFW staff in Delano and worked as a full-time volunteer, tirelessly organizing farm workers for $10 a week stipend. In 1984 Cesar asked Martinez to move to Canada to help organize the grape boycott.  Because of his dedication and belief, Martinez moved his family to Toronto, Ontario, Canada where they lived and organized support for the UFW. Upon his return from Canada in 1988, he continued working with the Union including organizing the local community supporting Cesar’s “Fast for Life” in Delano. 

Arminda Montoya

Chief Financial Officer
San Francisco

With 20 years of accounting experience from working with both private industry and non-profit organizations, Arminda understands the needs of non-profits and the importance of ensuring proper presentation of financial information. In recent years she has worked closely with such groups as The Women’s Foundation of California, La Raza Centro Legal and CRPE.

Brent Newell

With generous funding from Equal Justice Works (formerly the National Association for Public Interest Law), staff attorney Brent Newell joined CRPE’s Delano office in 2000 to lead the Dairy Project as an Equal Justice Fellow. Newell has since established, and now leads, the Central Valley Air Quality Project, while continuing to work on factory farm pollution issues. Newell graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz and received his law degree from the University of Oregon School of Law.

Marybelle Nzegwu

Marybelle Nzegwu was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  She attended two years of high school in Watts, seeing firsthand economic and environmental injustice but not knowing how to address the problems she saw. She left Los Angeles at 17 to attend the University of California at San Diego where she majored in Political Theory and spent a year studying in Costa Rica. Nzegwu attended the University of California-Hastings College of the Law where she excelled in the Evans Constitutional Moot Court Competition and served on the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. During her first year at Hastings, she took Luke Cole’s Environmental Law class, where she heard the term Environmental Justice for the first time. After finding out more about the movement and about CRPE, she worked as an intern for CRPE both summers of law school. At CRPE, Nzegwu staffs the Civil Rights Project, working with CRPE’s civil rights clients nationwide and helping to build a coalition of supporters for a Civil Rights Restoration Act to restore the disparate impact standard to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.  When not working, Nzegwu has many interests, including playing the piano and learning the bass guitar.

Daniela Simunovic
Community Organizer
Delano

Daniela Simunovic works as a community organizer in Delano, working mainly on air quality issues.  She is originally from Santiago, Chile but has spent the majority of her life in the San Joaquin Valley.  Daniela holds a B.A. in Sociology with a minor in Justice and the Community from St. Mary’s College of California, Moraga. Before joining CRPE she spent a year working in Fresno as a part of Fresno Metro Ministry. While at FMM she worked on air quality issues, coordinated the New Leaders for Better Health Program, and published “Creando Conecciones,” a Spanish language consumer guide to social services in Fresno County.  She has also done union organizing. 

Bates

Bates is a native of Bakersfield. Caroline adopted Bates from the Bakersfield SPCA when he was five months old. Bates greets visitors to CRPE’s Delano office and keeps staff morale high and stress levels down.