People sign up for the Green Foothills Leadership Program for a variety of reasons–to learn how to advocate for the environment, to develop leadership skills that will advance a career or make a community group more effective, to understand more about environmental justice, and to make connections with others who care passionately about the environment.

Another common reason for participating is to learn about careers in environmental work and get ideas about what paths are possible, in order to help navigate a career in the environmental space. That was the reason Monica Nanez enrolled in the Leadership Program’s very first cohort, in 2013-14. We recently caught up with Monica for an update on her career trajectory.

Q: Why did you sign up for the Green Foothills Leadership Program? What did you hope to learn, and what outcome or changes in your life or work did you hope would come out of the program?

A: I’m really interested in environmental work and I wanted to meet other folks in the space and learn about what they were doing. Getting to know other people gives you ideas for what you can do in your own work or what possible paths there could be for your own career. Just having connections for people in this field and related fields — at the time I worked in creating sustainable communities within affordable housing development and I thought it was really important to connect environmental sustainability and affordable housing development.

Q: What are you doing now, and did the Leadership Program help you get there? 

A: I recently accepted a new job with the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. I’m the External Funding Coordinator and my main job is to coordinate funding — to apply for grants, manage the grant reporting, to look for grants and to keep that all on track, with a focus on conservation of natural and working lands and connecting people to nature. The Leadership Program is a great space for people to see what other folks are doing in environmental conservation and get inspired.

For me, the majority of my career was focused on urban environmentalism but I was also interested in conservation work, and the Leadership Program was a way to learn about other fields within the environmental world that were different from what I was already doing.

My first full-time job was with Our City Forest in urban forestry and I worked there for seven years. For nine years I was Director of Sustainable Communities for an affordable housing organization, First Community Housing, where my job was to build green and healthy communities within our developments – I managed several projects and programs, such as community gardens, solar panel installations, improving recycling, water saving projects, energy saving projects, alternative transportation programing. After First Community Housing I worked for the City of San Jose’s Environmental Services Department writing grants for them and I also worked at the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition organizing educational events for the community.

Q: How did you get into grant writing?

A: The programs that I was managing at Our City Forest and First Community Housing were for the most part grant funded, and because I was the program or project manager, I was in charge of the grants. At First Community Housing I wanted to expand the programs for our residents and the way to do that was through grant funding, so I started applying for grants for community gardens, solar installation, bike programming — and grants quickly became an integral part of my work.

Q: What are some additional ways that the Green Foothills Leadership Program has been helpful?

A: A major focus (of the Leadership Program in 2013-14) was policy and understanding the impacts of policy on funding, and understanding the importance of advocacy on funding. We spent time learning about the importance and impact of knowing your local elected officials and state elected officials, understanding how advocacy works and how advocacy in that space can impact what you’re doing on a local level.

With First Community Housing I worked with other housers and residents to organize several advocacy visits to elected officials in Sacramento. We had talked about that at the Leadership Program, so it gave me some background and understanding of what that might be like when I actually did it (at my job).

The Leadership Program is a really great way to find resources that you didn’t know existed – like other organizations that are doing great and innovative work, models that you can use, learn from, and be inspired by, and networking connections.

Q: What’s most at stake when it comes to your core environmental issue? What are you most passionate about?

A: The most critical issue is connecting people to nature so that people understand and value the importance of a healthy natural environment and how that impacts the natural world and the human community. At the center of our environmental crisis is that– too many people don’t feel that connection to nature.

The Green Foothills Leadership Program is tuition-free, thanks to generous support from Applied Materials Foundation Community Fund, the County of Santa Clara, North Santa Clara Resource Conservation District (NSCRCD), Sand Hill Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Network’s California Wildlife Program, and Green Foothills donors. Please consider making a donation to support the Leadership Program.