A Warm Re-Welcoming To Maya Jarrad

350PDX’s new Volunteer Coordinator is the amazing Maya Jarrad. For many of you, she probably needs no introduction, since she’s been volunteering with 350PDX in many ways for years. She spent a year revitalizing contact with the larger community through the monthly newsletter, emails, website, social media, and general meetings as the Communications Coordinator. She filled in for Adriana as the hub for the Portland People’s Climate March planning in 2014. Did you join us at the St. John’s Bridge during the ShellNo Blockade? She was a core organizer dealing with logistics and media for the kayaktivists and people on the land.

Maya first connected with 350PDX while co-organizing Reed College’s Fossil Fuel Divestment campaign. Coming from an environmental economics background, she wrote her thesis on the effect that proximity to watershed restoration projects has on property values in Johnson Creek. Quick summary? The verdict’s still out on the results, though, because her work revealed the need for better data on the locations of restoration projects, and was picked up by her thesis advisor and a professor at Virginia Tech for a NIFA grant study, on which Maya continues to do research. While in school, she was also a member of Reed’s famous (read: infamous) improv troupe, worked in the vegetable garden, took my acting class when she was a first-year student, and presented research at a few academic conferences.

After five plus years in Portland, she decided to return to her home in Vermont to spend time with her family, but 350PDX has lured her back. Given how much she has done as a volunteer, she is the perfect choice for Volunteer Coordinator. She is excited to develop training materials for volunteers, help them cultivate organizationing skills in order to increase 350PDX’s capacity for effective actions. And she looks forward to hearing from all of you out there who want to volunteer! Whatever your interests, she can find a place for you. Send her an email at maya [at] 350pdx [dot] org and you’ll be working for a great cause with a great person.

Welcome back, Maya

Kathleen Worley
Communications Team Member