Our team at the Just Transition Alliance has been growing this year!

In March, we welcomed Lara Aumann as our new Administrative Assistant. Lara graduated from UC San Diego with a bachelors in economics. She is a passionate learner dedicated to leveraging economic principles for positive change in environmental and climate justice. Lara has attended the Coming Clean and Environmental Justice Health Alliance General Strategy Meeting hosted by Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles and the Indigenous Environmental Network Protecting Mother Earth Conference with us this year. As Administrative Assistant, she has been enhancing our development capacity and advancing critical administrative work for our organization.

In May, we welcomed Fernando Tormos-Aponte as our new Policy Lead. Fernando is a political sociologist who researches and fights for environmental, racial, and gender justice. He teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. Before joining JTA, Fernando engaged in activism as a student organizer in the Puerto Rican movement and aided organizing in the wake of Hurricane Maria by documenting a delay in restoring electricity to marginalized communities. As JTA’s Policy Lead, Fernando attended the Bonn Intersessional, SB 60, and provided an analysis of the state of just transition work at the UNFCCC. Fernando’s commitment to utilizing research as a tool for organizing will help us translate our just transition vision into policies grounded in the leadership of Indigenous, people of color, low-income communities and workers.