Meet Our Team

Executive Director & Co-Founder

Jameka Hodnett is a passionate and dedicated advocate for climate justice. She combines her skills of campaigning and lobbying to fight for policies that reduce carbon pollution, create green jobs, and jump-start the transition toward a clean energy economy. Currently, Hodnett is leading Rise to Thrive, where she furthers climate policies that are clearing a pathway for a just transition. She has also been working to ensure that the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Justice40 reach historically underinvested-in communities as a Local Climate Action Policy Fellow with Elemental Excelerator and the African American Mayors Association.

Previously, Hodnett served as National Director of Campaigns at Dream.org, where she led state and federal IRA implementation. She also served as Executive Director of Climate Equity with A/B Partners, where she led a multimillion-dollar climate disinformation war room campaign for the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund. She has also served as Deputy National Organizing Director at ACLU, where she led the organizing team to mobilize ACLU’s four million members to pass legislation; Head of Field Organizing & Campaigns at 350.org, where she worked with the organization’s 150 local groups to pressure legislators to phase out fossil fuels at the federal and state level; Deputy Director of Civic Engagement at the League of Conservation Voters where she restored access to the vote for over 1.4 million people; and Director of Programs at DC Solar United Neighborhoods, where she implemented DC’s Solar for All Program that aims to bring the benefits of solar energy to 100,000 low-to-moderate-income families in the District of Columbia. Hodnett has a JD from the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law and a BA in International Affairs and Climate Policy from Trinity University.

Vice President of Government Affairs

Natalie is a sustainability and policy expert with extensive grassroots organizing, fundraising and campaign experience. She has been named as one of The Hill's Top Lobbyists in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Natalie has served on the board of directors of the Power Shift Network and Young Voices for the Planet, and currently serves on the boards of the Partnership Project, the Student Conservation Association, and Care About Climate. She has a Master of Science in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability from the Blekinge Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Policy from the University of Maryland College Park. She is the chief program officer for the international youth climate organization Zero Hour. Natalie works with youth across the country to build a powerful and inclusive movement of activists leading the way to a just and sustainable future. Natalie has worked at some of the largest and most influential environmental organizations, such Sierra Club as the National Dirty Fuels Lobbyist, as Policy Director at 350.org, as the Senior Director of Climate Solutions at the Wilderness Society, and as the Climate Campaign Director at Greenpeace USA. Today Natalie serves as the Vice President of Government Affairs for Rise to Thrive and works to build an environmental movement that truly fights for the people most harmed by fossil fuels and impacted by climate change.

Board Member & Co-Founder

Chris (they/them) is a Black, Queer, Disabled, Puerto Rican/Cuban born and raised in Miami, FL. They have been organizing, training, and facilitating for over a decade throughout the South. They were raised by a single mother because their father was sent to prison when they were 3. They grew up loving the beaches, the everglades, and the sound of train tracks. When they started organizing they worked on multiple campaigns simultaneously, including trying to ensure domestic partnership for queer/trans people in Florida and working to elect Barack Obama for his first presidential term. They started their environmental and climate justice organizing after President Obama was elected to help ensure that nuclear power waste doesn’t end up in the everglades, oceans and in Black and brown communities. They currently hold the role of Training Director at the Sierra Student Coalition, which is where they got their first organizing training long ago. In this position, Chris is managing and creating curriculum with their team of trainers to ensure their summer program (Sprog) is a success. Sprog happens throughout the United States and Puerto Rico were young people train their community in leadership development, organizing skills, and political education. Chris also supports and works with M4BL’s Black Hive; where Black environmental and climate justice experts, organizers and artists come together to build the Black Climate Mandate for Black people across the diaspora. During their free-time, they love to read other people’s astrology, watch The British Baking show, playing with their 12 year old dog Brownie, and preparing themselves for the next step in their Ifá journey. 

Deputy Board Chair & Co-Founder

Ashley Robinson currently serves as the Political Constituency Director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, where she oversees overall strategy for constituency engagement and internal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. She provides DEI facilitation for equity consultant firms for a vast array of organizations and associations. Her passion for diversity, equity, inclusion has led her to figuring out ways to authentically imbed these principles into organizational culture - both externally and internally. She has also spent nearly the last ten years in the fundraising arena, most notably at progressive advocacy organizations, doing frontline fundraising with major donors, while working within these organizations and with fundraising associations to identify how to diversify philanthropy. A Baltimore native and proud DC resident, she obtained a masters of science at Columbia University in fundraising management and her bachelor of arts at Elon University. She enjoys all things Beyoncé.

Board Treasurer

Tené is a born and raised Washington, DC native who has a deep love for the city. As a single mom she is committed to addressing systemic issues within many institutions that have impacted her community.

She currently serves as Co-Chair on the Environmental Climate Justice Committee with the NAACP-DC Chapter. In this capacity Tene works on environmental justice issues impacting District of Columbia residents and families. This includes the campaign to Reduce Lead Exposure & Childhood Asthma. Which comprises more than 41 coalition partners working to promote and attain environmental justice and environmental equity in the District. Tene’s work includes outreach and education to residents in Wards 5, 7 & 8 which remain the most vulnerable communities in DC.

Since 2013, Tene has worked at the Sierra Club where she began her advocacy and movement building journey addressing systemic issues within the organization. While working at the Sierra Club Tene has served on the Staff Equity Team, The Black Action Team and The Pay Equity Working group and partnered with SC Executive Leadership in efforts to drive the organization’s commitment to equity, inclusion and justice.

Tene is lifelong learner and recently earned her Master’s degree in Human Resource Development from Bowie State University.

Senior Digital Strategist

Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Ivanna is the proud daughter of immigrant parents from Colombia and Chile. She draws strength and inspiration from her family back home - the teachers, the revolutionaries, y los campesinos. She joined Rise to Thrive this past summer as the Digital Strategy Advisor to manage our Twitter and Instagram channels and craft our quarterly newsletter.

A passionate advocate for social justice, Ivanna is dedicated to bringing an intersectional perspective to the spaces she organizes. She began her career during the 2016 presidential elections and continued growing in leadership positions on local, state, and federal electoral campaigns. Her passion for community engagement then led her to organize immigrant rights, reproductive justice, voting rights, and climate justice spaces in Miami-Dade County. She is deeply committed to seeing her community thrive and is happiest when having genuine conversations with folks on the ground. After the 2020 elections, she worked as a national campaigner at the state and federal levels, organizing at the intersection of race, climate, and economic justice. Ivanna currently works as the Campaign Strategist and Coordinator at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee where she designs human rights campaigns to support grassroots partners around the world, in the areas of climate and disaster justice, migration justice, and international accountability.

Ivanna earned an undergraduate degree in History and a minor in Italian Language and Culture from Florida International University. She loves reading a good book at the beach, taking her dog to the park, and snuggling with her cats on rainy days.

Board Member

Leah Clyburn has been a long standing community activist and organizer in the St. Louis Region for more than 10 years. Her love for Missouri is rooted in the longstanding relationships built throughout her childhood growing up as one of the few families of color in South County in the early 90’s to her diversified community in South City as a young adult. Leah also has a background in the healthcare system, which catapulted her into community organizing to challenge the unjust treatment for women of color and their families, children, immigrants and the poor. Her career in community organizing has included reproductive justice through a faith-based lens, School to prison, environmental justice & climate change movement, and statewide policy initiatives . She believes that when Black women prevail we all prevail. Leah is currently working as a Senior Training Partner with a Conservation Organization, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Connecting Points Consulting, the Vice President of Progressive Workers Union, and Board Member of Rise and Thrive.

Board Secretary & Co-Founder

Neha Mathew-Shah uses she/her pronouns and currently lives in Berkeley, CA, which is xučyun (Huichin) territory, unceded land of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people. Neha is the Co-Founder and former President of the Progressive Workers Union (PWU), and currently, Associate Director of Sierra Club's International Climate and Policy Campaign. Neha is a first generation immigrant to the US, born in Hyderabad, India and has lived in California, Washington D.C. and New York. She recently became a parent and is equal parts hopeful and anxious about the future.