My name is Ethereal Quintero. I’m a 2025 Activist Academy Alumni and stayed active in the Angeles Chapter 30x30 Committee as the Ballona Wetlands Campaign Steward. Now, I’m the 2026 Activist Academy Program Intern.
Seeing the many levels and strategies used within the Sierra Club to engage people with the outdoors and foster a connection to the ecology, climate and each other makes me hopeful for the possibility to spread empathy. Empathy has become an endangered interpersonal skill we risk to lose completely from our shared culture if it is not taught and fostered. We are not taught to build deep connections to the natural world; in contrast, we are socialized to fear, marginalize and devalue the natural world and each other. Yet, this tide is shifting and people now seek to reconcile their relationship.
The shifting tide in the Sierra Club to expand its empathetic and purposeful reach to reflect a holistic Environmental Justice approach makes me eager for what it can become. At this time in the world when communities are mobilizing for mutual aid and interdependence as an alternative to systemic isolation and competition, I think the Sierra Club is positioned to support these efforts in the Environmental Justice movement. I’m excited for the work I can support within the Activist Academy and how much power we can harness for lasting change in our local campaign efforts.
I’m bringing my growing repertoire of ecology and climate interpretative knowledge to the group. Sharing insight to the world around us, helps ground us in why Environmental Justice campaigns are important and pressing. I think knowing how the land, climate and interconnected species and systems around us are meant to function evolutionarily and geologically helps contextualize how we have deviated, what to campaign for, and how.
As an active community member, I have led and supported efforts to bring together people for dialogue, shared learning, and strategy planning. My experience facilitating community members in a wide breadth of topics from cooperative housing to food justice have equipped me with skills to support other activists in grounding and growing their organizing capacity. As the Activist Academy matriculates, I hope to bring my skills together to support in creating a meaningful and energizing space for developing Environmental Justice Organizers!
Since my own cohort of Activist Academy, I have delved deeper into organizing work with the 30x30 Committee and Ballona Wetlands. I am working to get into the nooks and crannies of information shared across dozens of organizations and community members. Before doing the Activist Academy, I had brushed off the importance of power mapping. But now, working on supporting the Ballona Wetlands and other initiatives across my work, I want to develop a discipline for going through a strong learning and mapping of the geography and the many decision makers and communities. Working with the 30x30 Activist Academy Campaign Action Team this year, I want to take my time and pass along the lesson of a well done research to know what work you are stepping into and alongside. My work with Ballona Wetlands continues and every week I learn about someone or something new!
I am already seeing and feeling it develop, but by the end of the 2026 Activist Academy, everyone is gleaming with joy and excitement. Everyone is responding with feeling safe, grounded, and interconnected. Despite working on campaigns that could lead us down a dooming mindset, successful facilitation with an action and reconciliation lens brings that shared joy and hope needed for community organizing to this year’s cohort. Since everyone is coming to the Activist Academy at a different level of exposure to community organizing, I think success would be everyone leaving the academy feeling better equipped to make change in their own passions. From the seasoned organizer to the first time protest participant, everyone will have grown in multiple skills to strengthen and or refine their toolkit.
Last year, the Activist Academy left me feeling hopeful for the future because we develop our organizing, interpersonal and campaigning skills alongside each other. Activist Academy was a place I built rapport and connection with peers looking for activating relationships. I feel reaffirmed in our collective vision of a more just future knowing I am not alone in this movement, but surrounded by empathetic changing forces.