Several aspects of Grace’s career have led to the founding of The Lupine Collaborative and her being uniquely positioned to cultivate this work. Her lived experience as a queer Black woman in these fields has pushed her to question, shift, and reshape the field into a space where we are reflected, celebrated, and trusted to lead, dream, and build. Secondly, Grace would be remiss to not mention the brilliant network and community of people who have and continue to support her to take risks, challenge her to think bigger, and influence the work to build capacity for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the environmental and climate space.

Her early work was as a park ranger at Lake Metigoshe State Park through the Student Conservation Association (SCA) and leading backpacking, climbing, and adventure courses with NOLS, Balanced Rock, Eagle Rock School, and GirlVentures. After leading the Sierra Club’s Inspiring Connections Outdoors, their national program to connect kids with the outdoors, she began to pivot toward working on the underpinning issues of environmental degradation and the climate crisis. 

Most transformative to Grace’s career and trajectory were the years that she was the inaugural director and ultimately, co-director, of People of the Global Majority in the Outdoors, Nature, and Environment (PGM ONE). In this role, she had the immense privilege of cultivating the largest gathering of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color who work in connection to the land. Created in response to that lack of spaces that celebrated, acknowledged, and uplifted BIPOC experiences, PGM ONE became a space where folks of color can dream, strategize, and connect. Under her leadership, the organization went from a volunteer organization to a non-profit that employed two co-directors and a leadership circle of 20. She created multiple funds including designing and administering the Black Joy Fund, rapidly distributing $30,000 in the summer of 2020, and the Queer and Trans People of Color Fund, designed to make PGM ONE more accessible to those communities.

As a consultant, Grace has worked with the top environmental & climate philanthropies and organizations to inform and shape their grantmaking approach, strategies, and practices. She advised the Doris Duke Foundation on their $1.2 million Building an Inclusive Conservation Movement Program and led the Diversifying the Conservation Field project that provided guidance for the foundation to determine its role and grantmaking focus. She advised the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation on their $10 million investment in the development, empowerment, and growth of emerging and active environmental justice leaders from throughout California. Grace led The National Wildlife Federation’s Women in Conservation program through a theory of change, advised on strategy of The North Face’s Explorer Fund, and led and successfully fulfilled the search for Patagonia’s first Environmental Justice Program Officer. 

Additionally, she has been brought into numerous other environmental, conservation, and outdoor research organizations including the Network for Energy, Water and Health in Affordable Buildings, Next 100 Coalition, Earth Island Institute, Meridian Institute to develop and sustain programming for those most marginalized in society.

In 2021, Grace was awarded an 18-month fellowship funded by the William and Flora Hewlett and Pisces Foundations that allowed her the time, space, and resources necessary to design the framework for what is now The Lupine Collaborative. 

Grace has served on the boards of GirlVentures, Cycles of Change, and currently serves on the advisory board at the Institute for Parks, People and Biodiversity at University of California at Berkeley. She has been featured by The National Wildlife Federation, The Headlands Institute, Save The Redwoods League, Bicycling Magazine, amongst others. 

In addition to world building, Grace is delighted by food, writing books, bicycles, and trying to travel everywhere with one bag. 

Learn more about Grace and her work here.