team

Sarika Tandon, Principal

Sarika (Sah’-ri’-kah) Tandon is the founder of Rise Consulting.  She consults, speaks, teaches, writes, and collaborates at the intersection of race, equity, and environmental issues. Sarika is deeply committed to working for racial, environmental, and climate justice, and to center the inherent power, brilliance, agency, and well-being of communities of color.

In her work, Sarika partners with environment-facing organizations to re-imagine their programs and professional learning to center equity and to create racially equitable processes and outcomes.

Sarika is an Adjunct Faculty member at Antioch University New England Graduate School of Environmental Studies where she teaches courses about justice, equity, climate and the environment. She has served as co-advisor to Montpelier High School’s Racial Justice Alliance, and serves on the Advisory Boards of the Education Justice Coalition of Vermont, the Vermont Renew BIPOC Advisory Council, and has also served as a volunteer and advisory board member of the Montpelier Community Justice Center.

Sarika is a first generation Indian-American, who grew up in the suburbs of Rochester NY. Her family comes from the foothills of Himachal Pradesh. She earned dual degrees in Peace and Conflict Studies and Conservation and Resource Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was deeply inspired by the East Bay Area’s rich activist history. Sarika was able to pursue her twin interests in social and environmental justice while earning a Master's degree from Antioch University New England’s Department of Environmental Studies with a concentration on in Social Justice and Sustainability. She lives in the traditional and contemporary homelands of the Abenaki with her human family, 5 chickens, a cat, and a chaos-prone garden.

Emy Rodriguez, Senior Collaborator 

Emy Rodriguez has over 15 years of experience designing and launching programs which serve to engage, inspire environmental stewardship and advance equity and community driven change. She is dedicated to supporting people’s movements for justice and liberation, redistributing resources to frontline communities at the forefront of change and working to amplify their voices and stories.

Emy joined The Nature Conservancy’s Cities Network team at its inception in December 2014. In her role as Cities Network Deputy Director, she spearheaded the creation of several equitable grantmaking mechanisms, pushed for open discourse around racial equity via the development of the first Racial Equity Leadership Lab at TNC, was senior co-editor for the Field Guide to Urban Conservation and co-lead 8 successful Cities convenings. 

Before joining TNC, Emy led the Environment Program at Global Foundation for Democracy and Development, establishing conservation programs in Santo Domingo, which tackled food insecurity, waste management, and supported the self-determination of urban youth as the next generation of environmental leaders. Emy also successfully launched and served as the Programming Director for the DR Environmental Film Festival 2011-2014, which utilized the medium of film to raise awareness and create spaces for open dialogue on key environmental issues. 

Emy Rodriguez was born in Santo Domingo and raised in Holland, the Dominican Republic and the United States. She emigrated to the United States in 1997 as an international student. She holds a BA in Biology and Sociology from Wesleyan University and an MS in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Delma Jackson III, Collaborator

Delma Jackson III is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Whole Communities with a focus on story telling, campus engagement, and facilitation.  He is also a writer and lecturer on multiple social justice topics. He studied African-American Studies and Psychology at Eastern Michigan University and later obtained his Masters degree in Liberal Arts with a concentration in American & African-American Studies through the University of Michigan’s Rackham School of Graduate Studies. He has conducted research on Afro-European identity in the Netherlands in both 1999 and again in 2014—studying slavery in the Netherlands, 21st century migration and immigration across Western Europe, and the impact of racialized pop-culture on Afro-Dutch identity. 

He has lectured and/or facilitated workshops at New York University's, Tisch School for Performing Arts, Toledo University's Graduate School for Criminal Justice, the University of Michigan-Flint's School of Health and Professional Studies, the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE), the United States Conference on AIDS, and The Office of Sustainability at Dartmouth College. For several years, he facilitated a convening for Yale University’s Graduate School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and The National Convening of City Leads for the Nature Conservancy.

Marissa Barbieri, Collaborator

Marissa Barbieri is a strategic thinker with a passion for facilitating conversations that spark connection and help disrupt, heal from, and reimagine systems of oppression.  

Building on her experience with and love of designing dynamic learning environments, Marissa consults with individuals, organizations, schools, and school districts on their equity, diversity, and inclusion culture and practices. Marissa focused her Master’s Degree in Leadership for Sustainability on coaching and facilitation for racial equity and is particularly enthusiastic about supporting fellow white folks in their understanding of power and privilege. Her previous philanthropic work with The Bay & Paul Foundations fostered a broad systemic view of inequity and a deep appreciation for the holistic change possible at the intersection of environmental and social justice.

Adept in School Reform Initiative collaborative practices with a background in place-based learning and Education for Sustainability, she has partnered with folks ranging from middle school students to nonprofit leadership in creating opportunities for transformative conversations. This work includes individual and small group coaching, daylong learning opportunities and smaller, ongoing Communities of Practice, all focused on centering equity in service to the greater good for clients and communities. Marissa’s practice is rooted in the knowledge that communities small and large can thrive when the strengths, skills, and perspectives contained within them are known, appreciated, and called upon. 

Dewey Schott, Collaborator

Dewey is passionate about coaching social change leaders who bring a systemic oppression and racial equity lens to their work. He helps clients access their resilience and renew their energy so they can make courageous moves to transform the systems where they have agency. He works with clients to address their internalized dominance, transform their internalized oppression, and become aware of effects of systemic oppression on their body, mind, and spirit. As a queer white man he is called to work with white people in examining their internalized white dominance and to become more grounded and courageous in their anti-racism work.

Maria Estrada, Collaborator

Maria is an equity-minded strategic thinker with 15 years of experience in designing, developing, and implementing programs, curriculum, tools and workshops to advance a diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. In her last role as Deputy Director of Global DEI at The Nature Conservancy, she led the group that developed the Equity by Design Tool, an interactive resource for conservation practitioners to design and implement equitable strategies and achieve equitable outcomes in their partnerships.

During these times of collective fear, anxiety and unrest, Maria is a trusted facilitator leading groups in courageous conversations across their differences in pursuit of transformative justice-oriented work.

Maria’s tireless activism in her community was recognized in August of 2020 through her inclusion in a 5000-square art piece by Jann Haworth in downtown Salt Lake City honoring 250 women past and present who have made a difference in the state of Utah. Maria is a graduate of the Education Culture and Society Department at the University of Utah, ECS, one of the top social foundation programs in the US committed to the study and pursuit of anti-racist and social justice-focused education. She received her PhD from ECS in 2009.

Shadiin Garcia, Collaborator

Shadiin Garcia, Chicana and Laguna Pueblo, was born in the heart of Aztlán in New Mexico to a huge family that now includes 59 first cousins and 19 aunts and uncles. She has worked in the educational arena for over 20 years as a teacher, as a public-school administrator, researcher, a policy analyst, Indigenous education leader, and as a consultant. She has a Bachelor's Degree from Yale University in English with a specialization in education; a Master's Degree in Educational Leadership and a PhD in Critical and Sociocultural Studies in Education from the University of Oregon.  

Shadiin's work centers on indigenous education, educational and systemic equity organizational change, culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum, culturally appropriate research and community driven systemic change.  She works to counter the narrative of erasure and colonization through deep collaboration and authentic relationship building.

Shadiin lectures at universities, facilitates communities of practices, implements equity assessments, conducts research, offers 1:1 coaching on equity, decolonizes K12 curricular content, writes policy and more. Her company, Shoreline Consulting, believes in harnessing the strengths and assets that already exist in order to co-create the conditions to elevate the voices, perspective, and wisdom of those who stand to benefit.  She has served as the Executive Director of the Educator Advancement Council in Oregon and is currently Executive Vice President at the Metropolitan Group.