BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Kit Gordon
Board President
Kit was born and raised in Illinois and learned about the fragility of groundwater basins from her grandfather, an agricultural engineer. She moved to the Bay Area in 1983, excited to apply her Chemical Engineering education to the booming semiconductor industry. The birth of her daughter, Isabel, inspired Kit to start an organic skincare company to protect her daughter against the dangerous realities of drugstore products. The beauty of the hills and bounty of wildlife around her home in Los Altos Hills guided Kit to learn about native plants, water conservation, and stewardship of her local watershed. She is honored to serve on the board of Grassroots Ecology and volunteers with a variety of organizations including Green Foothills, Sierra Club, Santa Clara Valley Water District, and the Town of Los Altos Hills to protect and restore our watersheds. Kit is especially interested in Lehigh Quarry activities and the restoration of Permanente Creek.
Andy Fenselau
Board Vice President
Andy Fenselau is a strategic growth executive. He is currently the Global Head of Oracle Cloud Solutions Enablement at Oracle. Prior to that he worked as a marketing executive at Anodot, Elastifile, and EMC XtremIO. He has over 20 years of experience in board governance of educational and environmental nonprofits. In addition to being a board member of Grassroots Ecology, he serves as the Board President of Sustainable Schools International, an organization responsible for rural development and entrepreneurism in Cambodia. Andy has an MBA in High Tech Management from Stanford University, and a BA from Harvard. He lives in Sunnyvale with his wife and three kids, and loves hiking, scuba diving, and running with his dogs.
Casey Mullins
Board Secretary
Casey has been interested in environmental science since the 6th grade. Born and raised in Houston, TX, she and her siblings spent many days playing in the backyard and watching nature documentaries. She came to the Bay Area in 2016 to attend Stanford University, graduating with a BS in Earth Systems. Casey first got to know Grassroots Ecology as part of the College Internship Program in 2018 and was inspired by the staff’s dedication to supporting and uniting planet and community. She is currently pursuing a career in environmental communication, focusing on video and film to encourage awareness, curiosity, and empathy just as she experienced as a kid. Casey is thrilled to serve on the Grassroots Ecology board and give back to the organization that helped open her eyes to how our communities can work in tandem with nature.
Michael Wu
Board Treasurer
Originally from Los Angeles, Mike currently lives in San Mateo with his wife and two children and works as Deputy General Counsel at Carta. He began his career at BUILD in East Palo Alto and has also worked in corporate law at Cooley LLP in Palo Alto. Mike has a strong ethic to serve the community, particularly under-resourced communities. He has a passion for native plants, hiking, and getting outdoors with his family. Mike holds a B.S. in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.B.A. and J.D. from Northwestern University.
Barbara Camacho Garcia
Board Member
Barbara is currently a vegetation ecologist with the East Bay Regional Parks District. Prior to joining EBRPD, she was a Project Lead for East Palo Alto at Grassroots Ecology where she enjoyed working alongside community members to restore biodiversity and connect with the space. Barbara is from Teocaltiche, Mexico and her curiosity about the natural world led her to pursue a career in ecology. She studied Forestry & Natural Resources at UC Berkeley. Throughout much of her career, Barbara has centered environmental justice with a focus on bridging plant and people communities alike through habitat restoration and cultivating authentic relationships. She also serves on the National Parks Conservation Association's Next Generation Advisory Council.
Barb Erny
Board Member
Barb is a native of Cupertino, and remembers her first hike in Big Basin as a child when a ranger yelled at her for picking up a piece of lichen. She has never forgotten the lesson of the importance of preserving natural habitat. When Barb moved to Emerald Hills in 1999, she discovered Edgewood Park and decided to be a docent so she could teach others about the special place where she lives. As a physician she is fascinated by the Indigenous use of plants for medicine and realizes the importance of spending time in natural environments for both physical and mental health. To that end, Barb now works at Stanford nationally teaching the connection between climate change and human health. She got her MD from Stanford University School of Medicine after completing her BA at Cornell, and she practiced ophthalmology for 26 years at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Barb’s history with Grassroots Ecology dates back to 1995 when she joined Bay Area Action, and she is currently on the board of Acterra.
Jerry Hearn
Board Member
Jerry has been involved in the restoration activities now being conducted by Grassroots Ecology since the 1993 formation of the San Francisquito Watershed Council, an entity that later became part of Acterra’s Stewardship Program. As Vice President of the Grassroots Ecology board and an Acterra board member, he negotiated the spinoff of the Stewardship Program from Acterra and oversaw its transition into becoming Grassroots Ecology, an independent non-profit. He has served on many non-profit boards as well as local public committees related to environmental issues. He holds a BA in Anthropology with Distinction and Honors in Humanities from Stanford University.
Tina Hugg
Board Member
Tina is currently a planner with the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District where she manages a variety of public access projects across its preserves in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Before joining Midpen, she worked as a landscape architect in the Bay Area and on the East Coast. Tina has been a fan of Grassroots Ecology ever since working together on habitat restoration at Cooley Landing in East Palo Alto. She enjoys spending time outdoors hiking in open space, in the kitchen experimenting with new dishes, and at her community garden plot trying to grow the ingredients for those dishes!
Kaumudi Phanasalkar
Board Member
Kaumudi, originally from India, came to the US to pursue higher education and has since built a distinguished career in the technology industry spanning over 20 years. Motivated by a desire to address the widespread issue of loneliness across all demographics, she has recently transitioned to working with Villages of San Mateo County. Kaumudi has developed a deep appreciation for the great outdoors, which was fueled by a memorable year-long RV road trip with her husband. During their journey, they hiked through national parks, discovered off-the-beaten-path locations, and immersed themselves in nature. Now back in the Bay Area, Kaumudi is passionate about contributing to efforts aimed at restoring and preserving local natural habitats.
David Smernoff
Board Member
David is a founding board member of Grassroots Ecology. He was a founder of Bay Area Action and initiated the Arastradero Preserve Stewardship Project in 1996 that grew into the Acterra Stewardship program. He served as executive director of Acterra from 2000-2003 and continued to serve on the Acterra Board from 2003-2013. David worked at NASA-Ames Research Center researching advanced life support systems and now works to commercialize materials derived from photosynthetic bacteria. David received his Doctorate in Biology from Stanford University.
Garry Sotnik
Board Member
Garry is a sustainability scientist committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and intergenerational wellbeing. He supports communities and organizations with decision analysis, strategic planning, and cross-sector partnerships. Garry also develops AI-based decision support tools for adaptive planning and applies them and other scientific techniques in studying the relationship between micro-level human decision-making and macro-level social outcomes. Garry recently launched Complexity Group, an independent nonprofit providing research and tools that develop in communities, businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies the strategic capacity to transform societies. At Stanford, Garry teaches adaptation to climate change, decision-making, strategic planning, and transformative societal change. His prior work ranged from social protection and resilience in the Middle East to decision-making and adaptation to policy and climate change in the United States and Ukraine.
Japjit Tulsi
Board Member
Japjit leads the engineering organization at Carta Inc, a financial technology company. Prior to that he was Vice President of Engineering building the vision for AI and cloud computing at eBay. Japjit has over 20 years of experience as software executive at Microsoft, StumbleUpon and Google. Over the past decade, he has increasingly spent time building core capabilities in the new wave of AI. Japjit has been concerned about what kind of environment are we going to leave for our future generations. Additionally he is interested in how technology helps the environment improve versus degrade it. He has worked with Grassroots Ecology over the last 5 years as previous Board Member of Acterra and is excited about supporting Grassroots Ecology in its independent status. In his free time he enjoys traveling, flying airplanes, driving motorcycles, and spending time with his wife and two kids.
Bart Westcott
Board Member
Bart avidly explores the physical and conceptual worlds. He is the co-founder of Chicago Underwriting Group, a leading underwriter of directors' and officers' liability and other special risk coverages, where he served as the Principal for 14 years. In addition to being a founding board member of Grassroots Ecology, he currently sits on the board of Tuolumne River Trust. Prior to joining the Grassroots Ecology board, he served for 10 years on the board of Acterra, one of Grassroots Ecology’s predecessor organizations. He is a graduate of the Thunderbolt School of Global Management and Lewis and Clark College. In addition to spending his time supporting local environmental nonprofits, Bart enjoys ballroom dancing and traveling with his wife.