STAFF
Dr. Catherine Garoupa, Executive Director
Catherine (she/her & they/them) returned as Executive Director in December 2019. In this capacity, they spearhead policy advocacy for clean air in the San Joaquin Valley in close collaboration with coalition members, and manage internal operations. Dr. Catherine has a long history working on social and environmental justice issues in the Valley, where they were born and raised. In 2006, they were hired as CVAQ’s Madera County Community Organizer, then served as Director from 2009 to 2011. They left to pursue a PhD in Geography at UC Davis, working on community engaged research projects and completing their dissertation on the movement for clean air and environmental justice in the San Joaquin Valley. After graduating in 2016, Dr. Catherine advanced efforts to end extreme extraction and plan a just transition off fossil fuels with Californians Against Fracking and Dangerous Drilling, and served on the CVAQ Steering Committee from 2018 to 2019. Dr. Catherine has taught social work, geography, and community and regional development at California State University, Fresno, UC Davis, and CSU Sacramento and is currently a geography lecturer at CSU Stanislaus and Columbia College.
Contact Catherine at catherine@calcleanair.org
Katie Valenzuela, Policy Consultant
Katie Valenzuela (she/her) was born and raised in Oildale, Kern County. She has spent more than two decades fighting for social justice through community organizing and policy advocacy. Before joining CVAQ, Katie ran a consulting firm focused on supporting environmental justice groups working on state policy, served as Policy & Political Director for the California Environmental Justice Alliance, and was the first consultant for the Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change. She has also held positions focused on youth development, statewide education policy advocacy, and advancing food justice. She has extensive volunteer experience in Sacramento where she helped organize the Sacramento Urban Agriculture Coalition and the Sacramento Community Land Trust, and was appointed to be one of Sacramento area’s first representatives on the AB 32 Environmental Justice Advisory Committee. Katie has a bachelors and masters degree in community development from UC Davis. She lives in Sacramento with her two dogs, Kevin and Chevy, and serves on the Sacramento City Council.
Dan Ress, Policy Manager
Dan Ress (they/them) is a graduate of Colorado Law and Kenyon College. Before joining CVAQ, Dan was a senior attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE), a community-based organization serving the southern San Joaquin Valley. Working out of CRPE’s Delano office, Dan focused on climate justice policy, especially oil and gas, carbon management, carbon markets, and just transition. Working in coalition, Dan helped pass SB 1137 (Gonzalez 2022), which will end neighborhood oil and gas drilling, and helped enact key legislative community protections for carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS), including a prohibition on using captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery, a moratorium on carbon pipelines, and a requirement for CARB to ensure that carbon capture and removal project operators minimize to the maximum extent technologically feasible all co-pollutant emissions. Additionally, Dan was counsel on CRPE’s second successful lawsuit to stop Kern County from greenlighting tens of thousands of new oil and gas wells with a single, faulty environmental review.
Prior to law school, Dan spent nine years as an educator in various roles, working with a wide variety of ages, populations, and subjects, from managing a Head Start and Early Head Start center in rural Ohio to teaching world history in a Title I high school in Denver to coordinating educational programming for a residential center in the Philippines.
Aaliyah Galindo, Policy Associate
Aaliyah Galindo (she/her) was born and raised in Turlock, and is a first-generation college student. She began her education at Merced Community College, where she received an Associates Degree in Geography. She continued to study at Clovis Community College before transferring to Stanislaus State, where she is currently an undergraduate student in the Geography and Environmental Resources program. At Clovis Community, Aaliyah participated in the Providing Opportunities Designed to Educate and Recognize (PODER) project, allowing her to research and present on the resurgence of Tulare Lake, and sparking her interest in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). She plans to use this knowledge to better serve communities in the Central Valley.
Contact Aaliyah at aaliyah@calcleanair.org