Resting Safe core team members are listed below, alphabetically. To contact us, click here.
Lisa Fay
Lisa is the Board Chair of Right 2 Survive, and is a co-founder and former board member of Right 2 Dream Too, a houseless rest area community in Portland, Oregon. She has helped establish rest areas, tent cities, and tiny house villages in over a dozen US cities. Previously, Lisa worked in the nursing field for over 25 years, and is a grandmother, author, artist, educator, and activist.
Lisa Fink
Lisa is a PhD student in Environmental Studies and English at the University of Oregon. Her work focuses on environmental justice, immigration, race, epistemology, embodiment, multiethnic U.S. poetry, and digital humanities. A Fulbright alum (Mongolia ’06) and author of the poetry chapbook Her Disco, she has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Virginia.
Alex Gillow-Wiles
Community Researcher.
Erin Goodling
Erin is an independent researcher based in Portland, Oregon. Her work focuses on environmental and climate justice, homelessness and housing, popular education, and the political economy/ecology of cities. Previously, she worked for ten years as a teacher. She is a mother, artist, and avid gardener, as well as the Research & Development Director at the Western Regional Advocacy Project.
Chris Hawn
Chris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. They are a landscape ecologist, with a focus on using citizen science and informal STEM learning in support of environmental justice. Their research investigates the movement of resources and contaminants through habitats.
Laquida Landford
Laquida - “Q” - is a community health worker, community organizer, and all-around community navigator with roots in Los Angeles and Belize. She is a co-founder of the “Gentrification is Weird” Bike Ride, and is currently leading efforts to create an Afro-Village, a safe space by and for houseless Black women.
Anthony Levenda
Anthony is a human geographer and urban studies scholar focused on smart city technologies and data infrastructures, environmental justice, urban policy mobilities, and energy transitions. Anthony is an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma, in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. He has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a MS in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a PhD in Urban Studies from Portland State University. Anthony’s website.
Dillon Mahmoudi
Dillon is an Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is an economic geographer, focused on regional economic development and new forms of capitalist production, including the labor markets of the tech sector. In addition to using various quantitative and qualitative methods, Dillon leads critical and participatory GIS research. dillonm.io
Melanie Malone
Melanie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. Her research draws on critical physical geography to examine the biophysical, institutional, political, and cultural dynamics of environmental challenges. Previously, she worked as an environmental geologist cleaning up groundwater, soil, and sediment remediation in the Portland Harbor Superfund and other brownfield sites, as well as conducting large contaminant site histories. Melanie’s website
Nathan McClintock
Nathan is a geographer and associate professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. His research focuses on urban agriculture and food systems, environmental justice, and the uneven development of cities. He has a background in soil science and sustainable agriculture and has worked with a number of community organizations in the US and across the Global South. Nathan’s website.
Ibrahim Mubarak
Ibrahim is the Executive Director of Right 2 Survive, and is a co-founder of two houseless rest area communities in Portland, Oregon: Dignity Village and Right 2 Dream, Too. Ibrahim has helped establish rest areas, tent cities, and tiny house villages in over a dozen US cities. He is the Board Chair of the Western Regional Advocacy Project and a community organizer with the Portland Harbor Community Coalition.
Nava Rastegar
Nava is a masters student in the Geography and Environmental Systems department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is interested in soils, environmental justice, and the relationships between urban populations and their environments. Nava is a Baltimore native and has a BA in Global Environmental Change and Sustainability from Johns Hopkins University, and a certificate in Geographic Information Systems from UMBC.
“To enter and influence history in connection with other people is the need that aches in all our deepest selves. It is this uniquely human desire that is missing in the so-called ‘American’ materialism and individualism. We have not fulfilled our need to exercise social and political responsibility because we have been cast adrift in a sea of technological solutions. It is this need that we must now recognize, strive to nurture and incorporate into our struggle to change ourselves and the World in which we live.”