TEAM

Mikelle Carver has been working with AVF since 2019. She is our trusted financial strategist, empowering the organization’s growth through numbers. She is a passionate advocate for agriculture and sustainable resources. To learn more about her, visit her LinkedIn page.

Rachel Hector is the Assistant Grants Manager at Capacita Consulting serving clients through project management, grant coordination, grant writing, and grant research. Rachel has a Master of Public Administration (MPA) with a concentration in Nonprofit Management from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has 10+ years of experience in the nonprofit sector working in direct service, education, program design, grants management, individual giving, and communications.

She is passionate about supporting organizations focused on promoting human rights, catalyzing change by addressing root causes, and accessing justice for populations who have been historically marginalized. 

Michael Foster is dedicated to advancing equity through empowerment evaluation. Throughout his career, he has worked on efforts to empower individuals from marginalized communities. He has worked for more than a decade as a consultant at the Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The overarching goal of the Leadership Institute is to build leadership capacity within and across Native American communities throughout New Mexico. Through this work, Dr. Foster has contributed his expertise in program evaluation and curriculum development.

Ana Puente Flores is from Mexico City. She came to NY in 2015 for her undergraduate studies at the City College of New York. There, she was a Skadden Arps Legal Honors Program fellow and a Beyond Identity scholar-activist.

As Institutional Development and Research Director at the Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), she researched femicide in Mexico City, as well as gender violence in post-war contexts in Southeast Asia. She helped build and found the program Beyond Identity: A Political Platform for Scholar-Activists.

In the summer of 2018–during the beginning of the family separation policy–she was a legal intern at the Dilley Pro Bono Project. There, she prepared detained families seeking asylum for their credible-fear interviews. She also led narrative practice workshops with immigrant youth in detention.

As a paralegal at KIND NY’s Detained Team, she created the first culturally relevant Know-Your-Rights training for tender-age children. She is currently a 2L at CUNY School of Law. With a fellowship from the Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice, she worked for the organization Lakota Peoples Law Project and helped write an amicus brief in support of ICWA for the case Brackeen v. Haaland in the Supreme Court.

She connected with AVF in 2023, while interning with elders Justice Cheryl Fairbanks and Chief Justice Robert Yazzie. In her organizing work, she seeks to open up a path for alternative spaces of care, mutual aid, collective storytelling, and cultural revival. Her political energy is geared toward migrant and indigenous folks fighting and thriving for the land, waters, and seeds. With her family, she stewards a community garden where they plant tobacco, maíz, and other plant medicines. Through this work, she seeks to reweave the present human dynamics towards sustainability, memory, collectivity, and balance.

Mary Vasquez-Slack founded My Versatile Secretary in 2004. She has helped businesses reclaim time by offering administrative support locally and virtually. In 2014, a posting and distributing service emerged under its own name berkshireFLYER.

For 15+ years Mary has been offering local and virtual office support; helping businesses behind the scenes. Her work experience ranges from corporate, to military (active duty) and higher education before starting her own business.

Mary has also been a dedicated volunteer in her community, for over 30 years; beginning with her kids wanting to play baseball and not having enough coaches. Mary stepped up at the Pittsfield YMCA and have continued to give back to my community ever since.

With over a decade of experience in Digital Marketing, Business Development, and Executive Assistance, Frances Anelle Nicole Bagnes is a seasoned professional known for growing startup businesses and expanding established companies. Her journey began in 2009 as an Executive Assistant, followed by roles at different SaaS companies, US Real Estate companies, and Business coaches. Throughout her career, Frances has demonstrated a remarkable ability to strategize, acquire clients, and develop businesses, leading to the growth of the different companies she has handled and setting up various Marketing and VA agencies.

Frances holds a degree in Accounting and possesses extensive experience working with QuickBooks, further enhancing her ability to manage financial aspects and contribute to the overall success of the businesses she engages with. With a deep-rooted passion for optimizing customer relationships, she is also a seasoned CRM strategist renowned for her adept management of customer engagement lifecycles. Collaborative, analytical, and forward-thinking, Frances is committed to leveraging CRM excellence to drive business growth and customer satisfaction.

Outside of work, she enjoys traveling with her family and exploring different sports with her kids, which often lends a fresh perspective to her professional endeavors. Frances is dedicated to building and developing businesses, and her passion for growing and expanding businesses continues to drive innovation and excellence in every project she undertakes.

AVF is grateful to have connected with Frances through her partnership with Earth Rooted Assistants.

Shannon Chada, also named Good Singing Woman, Mino Nagamowin Ikwe walks a path of uniting Culture, CommUNITY, and Nature. She is the founder and Executive Director of Full Circle Harmony Ministry, Academy of Holistic and Spiritual Arts a 501(C)3 organization.

​She serves her community as a compassionate Spiritual Leader, Teacher, Ceremony Keeper, Mentor, Artist, Singer, Chanter, Dancer, Drummer, and Sound Healing Musician. Shannon lovingly guides you inward to discover how you can implement positivity, passion, and purpose into your life. She empowers you with spiritual tools and the powerful healing of the heart. 

 She brings over 27 years of professional experience as Holistic Practitioner, offers personal and private group sessions, along with a variety of educational and spiritual workshops and events which inspire and honor each individuals own personal wellness and spiritual journey. 

Diana Chaplin brings over 15 years of experience in communications strategy and marketing for both nonprofit and startup organizations with a distinct passion for conservation and uplifting storytelling. Her background also includes publishing, leadership development, and graphic design. Prior to joining CRC in 2022, Diana was the Marketing Director at global reforestation nonprofit One Tree Planted during 5 years of its  early critical growth, establishing the organization as a media-savvy environmental brand and growing a robust internal team while funding the planting of over 40 million trees!

Roger Vanoro is an award-winning documentary film maker. He also is a counselor and healing arts practitioner. We are grateful to have his masterful skills to share AVF’s story. To learn more about Roger, visit www.rogervanoro.com

Yonah Sadeh has been making films since 2010. To learn more, read his featured article in Rural Intelligence.

ADVISORY CIRCLE

Chief Jake Singer serves as the Alliance for a Viable Future’s Spiritual Advisor

Chief Singer is a Dine Navajo Medicine Man, Sun Dance Chief, Ceremonial Leader and decorated Vietnam Veteran. He conducts many traditional ceremonies for his community and has been working for twenty-plus years on bringing awareness to support Native American Veterans, as the Commander of Walk with the Warriors, an advocacy and education organization for Native American Veterans. In that role, he walked across the entire continental United States and has held traditional ceremonies in Washington DC to bring awareness to this issue.

He helped to introduce a Bill into the House of Representatives, proposed by the first Native American Secretary of the Interior, Deb Holland, to officially establish November 7th as a Federally-recognized Native American Veteran’s Day holiday.

Chief Singer has been conducting ceremonial prayers for AVF and it’s Executive Director and Founder, Lev Natan, for the last ten years. He adopted Lev as his grandson, sponsored him as a Sundancer, and ordained him to pour the ceremonial sweat lodge.

Thomas Linzey serves as Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights. He is the co-founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, and is widely recognized as the founder of the contemporary “community rights” movement which has resulted in the adoption of hundreds of municipal laws across the United States. He also sits on the Board of Advisors of the New Earth Foundation. 

Linzey is a graduate of Widener Law School and a three-time recipient of the law school’s public interest law award. He has been a finalist for the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award, and is a recipient of the Pennsylvania Farmers Union’s Golden Triangle Legislative Award. He is licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania, and is admitted to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Third, Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. District Court for the Western and Middle Districts of Pennsylvania. 

Linzey is the author of Be The Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community (Gibbs-Smith 2009), the author of On Community Civil Disobedience in the Name of Sustainability (PM Press 2016), and the co-author of We the People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the United States (PM Press 2016). He was a co-host of Democracy Matters, a syndicated public affairs radio show broadcast from KYRS in Spokane, Washington. He was featured in Leonardo DiCaprio and Tree Media’s film 11th Hour and We the People 2.0 (Official Selection of the Seattle International Film Festival), assisted the Ecuadorian constitutional assembly in 2008 to adopt the world’s first constitution recognizing the independently enforceable Rights of Nature, and is a frequent lecturer at conferences across the country.  

Linzey’s work has been featured widely, including in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and the Nation magazine. In 2007, he was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “Top Ten Revolutionaries,” and he was named one of the top 400 environmentalists of the last 200 years in the two-volume encyclopedia, American Environmental Leaders (3rd Ed. Grey House Publishing 2018). He is currently working on a new book, “Modern American Democracy (and other fairy tales)” (forthcoming, Spring 2021). 

Margaret Behan is a Native American woman—Southern Arapaho-Cheyenne on her mother’s side and Northern Arapahoe/Northern Cheyenne on her father’s side—and a fourth generation descendant of an ancestor who was a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre. Behan is the founder of the Cheyenne Elders Council, a group of native healers and teachers, and a former member of the International Council of 13 Grandmothers.

The Honorable Robert Yazzie, Esq. supports AVF through a collaboration with the Life Comes From It Foundation. He served as the Chief Justice of the Navajo Nation from 1992 through 2003. He practiced law in the Navajo Nation for 16 years, and was a district judge for eight years. He is now teaching Navajo Law at the Navajo Technical University. He was the Director of the Diné Policy Institute of Diné College (Navajo Nation), developing policy using authentic Navajo thinking. He is the author of articles and book chapters on many subjects, including Navajo peacemaking, traditional Indian law, and international human rights law. He is a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law, an adjunct professor of the Department of Criminal Justice of Northern Arizona University and a visiting member of the faculty of the National Judicial College. He recently taught Navajo law at the Crownpoint Institute of Technology. Chief Justice Yazzie continues a career devoted to education in formal participation in faculties, lectures and discussions of traditional indigenous law at various venues throughout the world. He has a global audience and he has frequently visited foreign lands to share his wisdom about traditional indigenous justice and governance.

Wanonah Spencer is Shawn Stevens sister. She has attended the Indigenous Peacemaking Council in October 2022 and 2023, and received AVF’s first ever Mohican Ancestral Healing Fellowship to deepen her relationship with The Berkshires - her people’s homeland. She lives on the Mohican Reservation in Wisconsin. The Fellowship supported her leadership development and relationship-building with partner organizations in the Berkshires. She attended Kripalu’s Non-Profit Leaders Retreat and also offered workshops at the Flying Deer Nature Center. Wanonah’s long-term plan is to establish a sister organization dedicated to cultural revitalization and climate education on her reservation in Wisconsin.

Michael Johnson is a seasoned peace builder who draws on many years as a yoga practitioner for inspiration and inner tranquility. He has inspired people to take positive actions for peace through his writing, personal coaching, public speaking, documentaries, national and local media interviews and community events. 

For many decades, Michael has used his creative talents to create documentaries on social issues and global peace initiatives, including the United Nations International Day of Peace.

Daniel Roth is the co-founder of Jumpscale Consultancy. He is an experienced social entrepreneur, movement strategist, and integrative healthcare professional focused on sustainable development, indigenous cultural revitalization, and healing arts. Over the last two decades, he has launched over a dozen non-profit organizations, campaigns, and coalitions. Prior, he served as Director of the Cornell Campus Sustainability Office, started New York's first car-share business, and served as a Board Member of the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development. As a healthcare professional he brings together acupressure, Ayurveda, somatic movement therapy, and massage therapy. He has provided therapeutic services to uninsured clients at the Ithaca Free Clinic and served as a faculty member at the Finger Lakes School of Massage.

PARTNERSHIPS & COLLABORATIONS

• Design School for Regenerating Earth: We work with Joe Brewer, and the Design School, which is a global network of bioregional education organizers. We are building partnerships with Northeast organizers who we have been connected with through the Design School, including Wellspring Commons