WorldBeat Center is celebrating World Water Day, Tuesday, March 22nd 1:30pm-30pm with a virtual presentation panel!
It’ll be an honor to have with us Trisha Mejia, Lucero Sanchez and Odesma Dalrymple. Each of these amazing women are contributing to solutions for water justice issues in San Diego.
From the Surfrider Foundation, we have Trisha. She will cover Clean Border Water Now Campaign focusing on the transboundary pollution issues along the US/Mexico. The presentation will include Surfrider’s mission, history of the issue, the environmental justice perspective, current solutions, and advocacy.
From the San Diego Coastkeeper we have Lucero. Her presentation will focus on threats San Diego faces such as pollution, aging infrastructure, climate change, and lack of funding. The presentation will also go over nature-based solutions and a look at ways the community can help create a more equitable San Diego.
USD Engineering Prof. Odesma Dalrymple, PhD will share about USD’s new Water Justice Exchange, which she co-leads, to ensure equal water quality and access for all.
About the Speakers
Trisha Mejia (she/her)
Based in San Diego, California, Trisha serves as the Clean Border Water Now Campaign Manager. Trisha has a science and public health background. She believes environmental health is related to public health, advocating for clean water, soil, and air as necessities to life. She worked at the GGU Environmental Law & Justice Clinic in law school, advocating for environmental justice in underserved communities. Trisha is dedicated to raising awareness of the severity of the pollution crisis at the U.S./Mexico border, advocating for clean water with key policymakers, and creating positive change in Southern California and Baja California communities.
Lucero Sanchez (she/her)
Lucero is San Diego Coastkeeper’s Community Policy Coordinator. She supports the organization’s policy and advocacy work through community engagement to ensure environmental justice and equity. Lucero holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Systems from the University of California San Diego, where she specialized in Environmental Policy. Lucero is a firm believer in the need for a multidimensional approach to solving the climate crisis that includes science, governance, and societal transformation. Prior to working with Coastkeeper, Lucero was a campaign organizer, working to elect and re-elect an environmental advocate to Congress.
Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, USD Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Odesma Dalrymple, is a proponent of education equity as a key mechanism for ensuring just social growth and development. As a trained engineering education scholar, Dr. Dalrymple’s professional and service work is focused on transforming engineering education and its public image; making it more inclusive, and socially connected. Towards that goal. Dr. Dalrymple has co-created and co-leads the Water Justice Exchange, and currently serves as the director of the Engineering Exchange for Social Justice (http://bit.do/ExSJ), both initiatives based at the University of San Diego, and focused on advancing efforts at the nexus of engineering, community engagement and social justice. She has also co-developed and co-facilitates, for the past 7 years, the successful STEAM (i.e., science, technology, engineering, arts and math) education outreach programs which serve underrepresented youth and communities , i.e., STEAM TEAM Academy, and the STEAM Youth and Community Conference. Dr. Dalrymple also serves as the chair of the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Action Committee.
Marissa Forbes, PhD is co-creator and co-leader of the Water Justice Exchange, a cross-campus, inter-community initiative fostering synergistic research, teaching and solutions for water challenges in the San Diego/Tijuana region. She is on the Leadership Team of USD’s Engineering Exchange for Social Justice, a community partnership-driven initiative for co-created, justice-oriented solutions to socio-technical challenges. Dr. Forbes earned her MS and PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder in Civil (environmental) Engineering, and conducts research that aims to advance water justice, including at the nexus of data science and water quality, and also conducts socio-technical engineering education research. Dr. Forbes previously served as lead editor of the NSF-funded TeachEngineering digital library (TeachEngineering.org, a free library of K-12 engineering curriculum). She is a former high school physics and engineering teacher and a former NSF GK-12 Fellow.
