Leadership Team
Leila Salazar-López, Executive Director
Leila (she/ella/ela) is a mother; proud Chicana-Latina woman; and passionate defender of Mother Earth, the Amazon, Indigenous rights and climate justice. Since 2015 she has served as the Executive Director of Amazon Watch, leading the organization in its work to protect and defend the Amazon rainforest and climate in solidarity with Indigenous peoples.
For nearly 30 years Leila has worked to defend the world’s rainforests, human rights, and climate through international solidarity and advocacy campaigns at Amazon Watch, Global Exchange, and Rainforest Action Network, where she joined the Board of Directors in 2023. She is also a founding steering committee member of the Amazonia for Life: Protect 80% by 2025 Initiative, a Daughters for Earth Advisory Board Member, a Latin America Advisor for the Global Fund for Women, and a Greenpeace Voting Member.
Leila has been recognized as one of the “100 Most Committed Latinos to Climate Action” in 2023 and 2024 by Sachamama, and as “17 Bay Area Environmentalists Making a Difference” in 2019 by Make it Better Media. She is a 1998 graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Leila lives in San Francisco, CA (Ohlone Territory) with her husband and two young daughters.
Follow Leila at @leila4justice.bsky.social
Paul Paz y Miño, Deputy Director
Paul (he/él/ele) joined Amazon Watch in 2007. He has an MA in International Affairs from George Washington University. Since 1995, he has volunteered as Colombia Country Specialist for Amnesty International USA and was the Guatemala/Chiapas Program Director at the Seva Foundation for seven years. Paul has lived in Chiapas, Mexico and Quito, Ecuador, promoting human rights and community development and working directly with Indigenous communities. Paul is also an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and served on the board of Peace Brigades International USA. He serves on the leadership team of the Protect the Protest Coalition, and is on the Board of Directors of Oil and Gas Action Network.
Follow Paul on BlueSky: @paulpaz.bsky.social
Christian Poirier, Program Director
Christian (he/él/ele) is a senior member of Amazon Watch’s team. Having coordinated the Brazil Program since 2009, Christian helped lead international solidarity campaigns to halt the construction of large Amazon dams and to call on the global private sector to cease its complicity in environmental destruction and human rights abuses in the Amazon. While managing Amazon Watch’s Paris office, he partnered with European NGOs on Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns. He has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of international development and advocacy, focusing on environmental, agrarian, and social justice issues. Prior to joining Amazon Watch, Christian assisted Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement and managed rural development and micro enterprise projects in West Africa.
Follow Christian on BlueSky: @cpeartree.bsky.social
Joseph Kolb, Finance and Accounting Director
Joseph (he/él/ele) has over 25 years of accounting experience. Prior to joining Amazon Watch he was the CFO at Xinet Inc. in Berkeley. He holds a BS in Humanities and studied Poetics at the New College of California.
Cyndie Berg, Director of Philanthropy
Cyndie (she/ella/ela) brings 20 years of experience connecting social impact organizations with the resources they need to fulfill their missions. She first worked at Amazon Watch from 2008-2011 and rejoined the team in 2023. Previously, she served as Associate Director at Room to Read, a global education organization, and as Chief Partnerships Officer at Splash, an organization focused on water, sanitation, and hygiene in Asia and Africa. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and currently lives outside of Seattle, WA. When not working, she loves to be outside, hiking, surfing, and snowboarding.
U.S. Staff
Mariola Fernández, Administrative and Database Specialist
A native of Santiago, Chile, Mariola (she/ella/ela) spent much of her early childhood living in exile with her family in Canada surrounded by musicians and political activists. Her family returned to Chile when she was nine years old. She earned a masters degree in business from Universidad de Chile in 1998 and worked as a Financial Analyst until she immigrated to Berkeley, CA, in September of 2002. She started volunteering for La Peña Cultural Center and joined its staff as Operations Manager in October of 2004 until August of 2013. She also worked as an Assistant Producer for the documentary film Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi.
Cinthya Flores, Multimedia Communications Manager
Cinthya Flores (she/her) is a Chicana Latina born and raised in the Bay Area, a daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, and a passionate advocate for Indigenous rights. She has a background in social work and business development experience with Maya Quiché women in the highlands of Guatemala where she learned the critical role of authentic storytelling. At Amazon Watch, she uses her creative marketing and organizing skills to create genuine engagement opportunities for our supporters.
Follow Cinthya on Twitter: @floresdelmundo9
Kevin Koenig, Climate, Energy, and Extractive Industry Director
Kevin (he/él/ele) is a leading expert on resource and rights conflicts in the western Amazon basin, having worked for over two decades with Indigenous peoples in the defense of their territories and rights throughout the region’s rainforests. From the frontlines to the corporate boardroom, Kevin has collaborated with Indigenous peoples in challenging the extractive industry, government development policies, finance for mega-infrastructure projects, and demand-side U.S. oil consumption, winning important victories and setting legal precedents. He has also worked to advance climate solutions, including working for Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in launching the historic Yasuni-ITT proposal that sought to leave almost 920 million barrels crude permanently in the ground. He lives with his wife and children in West Marin.
Angela Martínez, Amazon Defenders Fund Director
Angela (she/ella/ela) has over three decades of activism and international field experience accompanying Indigenous, Afro-descendant, LGTBIQ+, women, and youth-led movements in the Abya Yala (Latin America and the Caribbean). She has worked on rights of nature and environmental justice, civil and political rights, and sexual health and rights through mobilizing solidarity, ethnographic and qualitative research as accompaniment, advocacy, and capacity building. Angela’s roots trace back to the Hñähñu people of Hidalgo, Mexico, where both her grandmother and mother were born. She holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Sustainable Management from The New School.
Mary Mijares, Corporate Campaigns Manager
Mary (she/her) is a first-generation immigrant born in the Philippines and raised in Richmond, CA. She is passionate about the intersection of human rights and corporate accountability focusing on environmental justice and weaponization of technologies. Mary recently earned a B.A. in Global Studies and a B.S. in Business Administration from U.C. Berkeley. She previously worked as an investigative disinformation researcher for the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law and is active in Philippine-based grassroots organizations working to uplift indigenous rights and international social movements.
Andrew Miller, Advocacy Director
Andrew (he/él/ele) brings three decades of human rights activism and international field experience to his work as Amazon Watch’s DC Advocacy Director. Since joining Amazon Watch in 2007, he has provided strategic accompaniment to Indigenous partners from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, facilitating rights-centric advocacy at Washington DC-based institutions such as U.S. executive offices and Congress, the multilateral banks and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He travels regularly to the Amazon region and offers commentary to media such as CNN, Democracy Now, Al Jazeera English, CNN en Español, and the BBC World Service. Previously, he held several positions at Amnesty International USA, served as an “unarmed bodyguard” in Colombia with Peace Brigades International, and led capacity-building efforts for southern Sudanese community-based organizations through Mercy Corps.
Follow Andrew on BlueSky: @amazonmiller.bsky.social
Amanda Moran, Foundations and Grants Director
Amanda (she/ella/ela) joined Amazon Watch as its Foundations and Grants Director in 2019. Amanda has been an environmentalist since she was a child, campaigning for Citizens for a Better Environment in the dark times of poisoned drinking water in California’s Silicon Valley. Amanda is inspired by her colleagues at Amazon Watch, and Indigenous partners in the Amazon struggling to sustain their cultures, territories and very lives in the face of destructive extractive industries. Amanda is a proud member of the board of Zaccho Dance Theatre in San Francisco’s Bayview, and has a side project of helping stressed out urbanites relax as a certified Jivamukti Yoga teacher.
Caelin Weiss, Donor Engagement Manager
Caelin Weiss (she/her) has worked in environmental nonprofit fundraising since 2018. She grew up on Abenaki land in Vermont and earned her bachelor’s degree in human rights and environmental justice, with a focus on Latin American studies, environmental science, and WMD nonproliferation. Caelin joined Amazon Watch in 2021 after following their work for years as a leader in decolonizing fundraising and direct support to Indigenous leaders and communities. In her spare time, you might find her painting, by a river, or doing a crossword puzzle.
Michael Zap, Web and Online Content Manager
Although he’d often rather be digging ditches than in front of a computer, Michael (he/él/ele) is a practical activist who sees the internet as a valuable tool to level the informational playing field and allow people who would ordinarily be silenced to speak out and be heard. He’s fluent in Spanish, Javascript, and PHP.
International Staff
Leny Olivera Rojas, Amazon Defenders Fund Associate
Leny (she/ella/ela) comes from a Quechua farmer family; her maternal side is from the High Valley (Arpita Tarata), the first established farmers’ unions in Bolivia. Leny, studied Sociology at the University of San Simón in Cochabamba. Since 1999 she has been an activist in Bolivian youth organizations supporting social movements, particularly water, gas, coca leaf, and natural resources. She was part of the historical movement of the War of Water in Bolivia. Currently, she is involved in autonomous feminist groups and spaces with a class and anti-racist perspective. She worked at the Center for Democracy from 2007 to 2020. Leny co-founded a collective called Terra Justa, where she held the position of Director. She speaks Quechua, Spanish, and English.
Brazil
Ana Carolina Alfinito, Brazil Legal Advisor
Ana (she/ella/ela) is a lawyer and sociologist with a decade of experience working alongside Indigenous and Indigenist organizations in Brazil. She has done extensive research on themes such as the criminalization of Indigenous leaders and the implementation of Indigenous land rights in the Amazon and in the Center-West of Brazil. Before joining Amazon Watch, she was program officer at the Oak Foundation, where she helped develop a program focused on advancing the implementation of territorial and socio-environmental rights in Brazil. At Amazon Watch, she is responsible for developing, supporting, and monitoring legal strategies aimed at upholding the rights of Indigenous peoples and collaborates in the Defend the Defenders program.
Ecuador
Sofía Jarrín Hidalgo, Western Amazon Advocacy Advisor
Sofia (ella/she/ela/isotopía) collaborates with various organizations and research networks that work on the impacts of external financing, projects of investment and abuses of corporate power in Latin America. She supports Indigenous organizations and peasant communities affected by development projects, infrastructure and extractive industries, with advocacy and reporting strategies that make it possible to expose and demand mechanisms for comprehensive reparation and access to justice against systematic violations of human rights and the rights of nature.
Nathaly Yépez Pulles, Ecuador Legal Advisor
Nathaly (she/ella/ela) is a lawyer based in Quito, Ecuador. In her professional career, she has worked as a defender of human and collective rights, in several national civil society organizations, particularly with vulnerable populations such as the Amazonian Indigenous peoples. She stood out in her role as advisor to the Constitutional Court. In addition, she has extensive experience working with LGBTQI organizations for the recognition of same-sex marriage in Ecuador.
Peru
Raphael Hoetmer, Western Amazon Program Director
Rapha (he/él/ele) is a proud father and a firm believer that creativity, collaboration, and grassroots organizing can change the world. As a researcher, organizer, and educator, specializing in political ecology, Indigenous rights, and in participatory and intercultural methodologies, he has collaborated with a variety of social movements and communities around the region. Before working at Amazon Watch, Rapha was the Strategy Advisor for the Americas at Amnesty International, Program Coordinator for Peru at Broederlijk Delen, and the director of the Peruvian action-research center Program on Democracy and Global Transformation. He published several articles and a book, elaborated a variety of reports and policy papers, and edited seven volumes on social movements, human rights, democracy and extractivism.
Vladimir Pinto, Peru Field Coordinator
Vladimir is based in Lima, he works directly with Peru’s Amazonian Indigenous peoples in the defense of their rights and in support of their organizations. He is a lawyer with a Masters Degree in political science and for the last twenty years has been working on issues of extractive industries, Prior Consent as a right of Indigenous peoples, the right to territory and isolated Indigenous peoples. He has served as a legal advisor to various Indigenous organizations, as well as Program Coordinator for Oxfam, within the German Cooperation, the Andean Community of Nations, and within various Peruvian non-governmental organizations. In his free time, he enjoys literature, chess, and cooking.
Ricardo Pérez Bailón, Peru Communications Advisor
Ricardo is based in Lima, Peru. He holds a degree in Social Communication from San Marcos University, he has worked to strengthen Indigenous peoples’ organizational capacities to reach public opinion and decision makers with their own demands, proposals and worldview. During his career, Ricardo has published reports and campaigned internationally about Indigenous defenders, Amazon deforestation, multilateral development banks and climate policies.
Board of Directors
Atossa Soltani (Director, President of the Board, member since 1997)
Atossa Soltani the founder and board president of Amazon Watch and served as the organization’s first Executive Director for eighteen years. She is currently a senior strategist for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, working to protect one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Atossa is the Hillary Institute 2013 Global Laureate for Climate Leadership and recipient of the 2014 Hillary Step Prize. She is currently producing her first feature-length documentary film titled The Flow about learning from nature’s genius.
Follow Atossa on Twitter: @asoltani
Kenneth Greenstein (Director and Chair, member since 2015)
Ken has been an environmental and social justice activist for 40 years. As a solo tenant attorney and with his S.F.-based firm, Greenstein & McDonald, he helped tenants secure in excess of $70 million. Ken was on the Board of Directors of International Rivers, Bay Area Community Law Foundation, Breathe, and the National Lawyers Guild. He lived communally for 13 years and helped purchase and put two housing coops and collectives in trust. Ken was student body president at U.C. Santa Barbara.
Mario Molina (Director and Vice Chair, member since 2020)
Mario grew up in the highlands of Guatemala and has a deeply-rooted respect and relationship with the mountains and outdoor culture. He previously served as international director at The Climate Reality Project, where he designed the organization’s climate leadership trainings and oversaw its post-Paris Agreement international strategy. He has spoken widely on climate policy including for the World Bank, IBM, the Mexican Senate, the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change, and various global stages.
Richard Wegman (Director and Treasurer, member since 2009)
Richard’s activism spans 47 years of volunteering and working for peace, conservation, health, music and the environment. Holding a BS in marketing and an MBA in finance, he brings astute knowledge of business to his work. Currently, he is Development Director for AfricaASAP, an organization that is helping to save Elephants in Africa. He also serves on the Boards of Amazon Heart of Yoga, Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs, and EarthTones.
Adeline Cassin (Director and Secretary, member since 2015)
Adeline has dedicated her life to merging the art of storytelling with the power of technology to inspire the world about this magnificent planet we call home. Adeline has been an integral leader in the launches of CNN in Latin America, Discovery Kids, Home&Health, and Discovery Digital, educating and engaging millions with the fascinating world we live in. When taking a brief respite from dreaming up the next way to empower audiences into positive action as game changers for our collective future, Adeline can be found in the Amazon, where her heart resides.
Michelle Chan (Director, member since 2009)
Michelle is the Vice President of Programs for Friends of the Earth and founder of BankTrack, an international NGO network. She has served on the Board of CERES, the Council for Responsible Public Investment, and the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment. She is also a founding member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index Advisory Committee.
Jade Begay (Director, member since 2020)
Jade Begay is a film director, narrative and communications strategist, and a climate and Indigenous rights activist and writer. Jade is also a facilitator and trainer in diversity and inclusion work. At the foundation of Jade’s work is her life’s purpose to support First Nation communities in restoring ecological balance and protecting their cultures. Her camera, her communications skills, and her passion for justice are her tools for amplifying Indigenous and marginalized people’s voices and movements. Currently, Jade is the Creative Director at NDN Collective, an organization dedicated to building Indigenous Power.
Patricia Gualingua (Director, member since 2024)
Patricia is a Kichwa Indigenous leader from Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon and a member of Mujeres Amazónicas, a collective of Indigenous women who defend the rainforest, life, and their cultures for future generations. The people of Sarayaku have kept oil development off of their ancestral territory for decades, and in 2012 they won a historic ruling at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which declared that the Ecuadorian government had violated their rights by authorizing oil exploration and militarization in Sarayaku without their consultation. Patricia is a leader in the global movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and in advancing Sarayaku’s visionary Kawsak Sacha or “Living Forest” proposal calling for legal protection of the forest as a Sacred Territory, Biological and Cultural Patrimony of the Kichwa People of Ecuador, free from oil, mineral, and lumber extraction.
Kathy LeMay (Director, member since 2023)
Kathy has worked as a global social change fundraiser and philanthropic advisor for more than 25 years. She started her work in 1993 when she traveled to the Balkans where worked with women survivors of rape-genocide camps. She returned home and traveled the country sharing the stories of what women and children were enduring in the war and as a volunteer helped to raise a quarter million dollars for food, medical care, trauma counseling and for women to testify at the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. Since then, Kathy has traveled the world, raising $175M for global social change, with an emphasis on supporting grassroots women leaders. She’s a published author, sought-after public speaker, and in her spare time, an alpaca farmer.
Tracey Osborne (Director, member since 2023)
Tracey Osborne is Associate Professor in the Management of Complex Systems Department at the University of California, Merced and the founding director of the U.C. Center for Climate Justice. She conducts research on climate change mitigation in tropical forests and climate finance from an equity perspective. She has worked on these issues globally with extensive field experience in Mexico and the Amazon. She received her PhD from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.
Favianna Rodriguez (Director, member since 2023)
Favianna Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and social justice activist based in Oakland, California. Her art and praxis address migration, gender justice, climate change, racial equity, and sexual freedom. Her practice boldly reshapes the myths, stories, and cultural practices of the present, while healing from the wounds of the past. Favianna’s work serves as a record of her human experiences as a woman of color embracing joy, sexual pleasure, and personal transformation through psychedelics as an antidote to the life-long impacts of systemic racism. Her signature mark-making embodies the perspective of a first-generation American Latinx artist with Afro-Latinx roots who grew up in Oakland, California during the birth of hip hop and the devastating war on drugs. In addition to her expansive studio practice, Favianna is the co-founder and president of The Center for Cultural Power, a national organization igniting change at the intersection of art, culture, and social justice.
Felipe Viveros (Director, member since 2023)
Felipe (he/him/they) is British-Chilean multimedia artist, strategist, and consultant specializing in narratives, program design, and activism. He has worked with governments and organizations globally and has served as the Board Chair of /The Rules, a global network of activists, coders, researchers, and artists addressing the root causes of poverty, inequality, and climate change. Throughout his career, Felipe has championed epistemic justice and Indigenous peoples’ rights and co-founded Choose Earth, an Indigenous-led fund and storytelling. Felipe is a Bertha Fellow, a member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative, and a commissioner for the Sacred Headwaters Initiative. He holds an MSc in Holistic Science from Schumacher College in the UK.
