Our Team
Co-Founder & Board Member
Maggie L. Fox
Maggie L. Fox is a consultant serving organizations, foundations and communities in the development and implementation of 21st century biodiversity, climate change and clean energy strategies. She is a veteran of numerous local, state, national and international environmental, political, legal and policy campaigns. Maggie is past President and CEO of the Climate Reality Project and the Climate Action Fund, with global campaigns training citizens leaders driving activism on climate change. She was the national President of America Votes as well as the Southwest Regional Director and Deputy Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Maggie currently serves on the boards of the Green Fund, the Alliance for Climate Education, Colorado State University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability and Mad Agriculture. Maggie began her career as a classroom teacher and community organizer on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations of Arizona and New Mexico. An avid outdoors woman, Maggie worked with the North Carolina and Colorado Outward Bound Schools and participated in numerous mountaineering and other outdoor expeditions around the world. She is the Co-Founder of Kinship.
Co-Founder & Board Member
Chelsea Congdon
Chelsea Congdon Brundige is a communication strategist and consultant for non-profits working on biodiversity, large landscape and river conservation, youth education, and film and video. As a producer with First Light Films, Chelsea embraced storytelling in film as a transformative experience to invite viewers to search beyond the boundaries of current narratives and discover new ways of living on this planet. She collaborated on environmental documentary films for public television, community outreach, schools, and film festivals. An expert in western water policy and river management, Chelsea worked with the Environmental Defense Fund in the Southwest US and Mexico and later led local stakeholder projects to improve river management, stream flows and water accountability in western Colorado. Chelsea serves on the boards of Western Resource Advocates and Blue Rising Together dedicated to education, advocacy and outreach around fentanyl poisoning, guns and high potency THC, and social media marketplaces threatening the wellbeing of young people. She is the Co-founder of Kinship.
Creative Director
Kelly McClelland
Kelly McClelland is a bi-lingual Creative Director, Rite of Passage guide, and a Nature-Based Psychotherapist. Infusing earth-connection with business and technology, she collaborates specifically with organizations that actively support social and environmental justice. Kelly has worked over 10 years in the marketing industry, leading global award-winning advertising campaigns, organizational strategy, and branding projects.
She is in the inquiry of how art, ceremony, land-based practices, and ancestral recovery can tend our earth, our culture, our kin. And help us embody the truth of who we are – divesting from the inherited stories, oppressive systems, and identities prescribed to us by society.
Kelly serves as a global educator for social and environmental justice programs in Central and South America for Where There Be Dragons. She is on the Justice Council for the School of Lost Borders and the Wilderness Guides Council, an international rite of passage organization. She is on the Board of Wild Mountain Retreats, a retreat center supporting activists and QT-BIPOC (Queer, Transgender, Black, Indigenous, People of Color). She is the Creative Director for Kinship and enjoys studying herbalism, birding, and playing in the surf, snow, and dirt.
Global Youth Biodiversity Network
Melina Sakiyama
Melina Sakiyama is a Brazilian biologist and holds a master’s degree in Environmental Management from Kyoto University in Japan. She has been involved in numerous research projects on biodiversity conservation and governance and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). She also volunteered for various social and environmental organizations. She is a founding member of GYBN and has coordinated youth participation in the CBD since 2012. Since 2014 she is coordinating GYBN’s Youth Voices capacity building and empowerment programme. Melina was awarded the 2020 MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity, a prestigious biennial international prize organized by the AEON Environmental Foundation and the CBD Secretariat to honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
Strategic Advisor
Andrew Schwartz
Andrew Schwartz is an American environmentalist, climate advocate, and community organizer dedicated to building equitable solutions to the climate crisis. With a background rooted in faith and civic service, Andrew’s work spans grassroots activism, interfaith collaboration, and international systems-level change. He holds an Masters of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary, where his early call to ministry evolved into a broader commitment to public leadership and environmental justice. Along with his work as an environmental and conservation consultant, he is the co-founder of FutureFaith and a senior policy advisor for the Common Initiative.
A Portland resident and proud parent, Andrew is inspired by the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest.
Program & Partnership Coordinator
Swetha Stotra Bhashyam
Swetha Stotra Bhashyam is the Global South Focal Point of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN), a youth network of more than 1 million members, 550 member organizations, and 40 regional and national chapters and the official youth constituency to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Since joining GYBN in 2012, she has been working on policy issues under the CBD and has mobilized a vibrant movement for biodiversity within the youth community, leading the effort to coordinate the creation GYBN’s many regional and national chapters. Swetha is a budding wildlife biologist from India and holds a master’s degree in wildlife biology and conservation. She has dedicated the past 9 years of her life to working with several grassroots and international organizations in helping to conserve biodiversity. In the future, Swetha hopes to channel her energy into working on international projects that are meaningful and impactful on the ground.
Global Youth Biodiversity Network
Christian Schwarzer
Christian Schwarzer is the Co-Founder of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN). He has a background in Political Science, focusing on multilateral environmental governance. He has participated in 49 rounds of UN negotiations, including 11 COPs and coordinated 28 delegations to UN meetings. Christian has 17 years of professional working experience in the NGO-sector. He has managed more than 40 projects, including 12 international conferences, 25 workshops and oversaw the growth of GYBN into a global movement, representing 1,25 million youth and young professionals in 172 countries.
Our Advisors
Anita Sanchez
Kinship Board Member
Dr. Anita Sanchez, Nahua (Aztec) and Toltec and Mexican American, international consultant, trainer, speaker for decades to Fortune 500 business, education and NGOs, is passionate about leadership, empowerment of women, culture change, diversity and inclusion. Her life work is bridging indigenous wisdom and science for business and societal renewal. Author of seven books includes international award-winning book The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times, Simon & Schuster. Find Anita Sanchez’s podcast “Four Sacred Gifts” on you tube or your favorite podcast app. She sits on Elder Councils: Wisdom Weavers of the World, Fire Circle Earth, The Well Being Project and a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, Evolutionary Leaders, and a Board member of the Bioneers Organization. Recent awards include 2022 Mogul’s Top 100 DEI Leaders, 2020 Conscious Company Media “World Changing Woman” and 2020 World Woman’s Foundation “Woman of the Hour inspiring one million girls to live their dreams and leadership. Anita leads an annual journey into the sacred headwaters of the Amazon. Dr Anita inspires people to discover and trust their gifts so that they become a life-giving force to all, people and the earth.
Oscar Soria
Kinship Advisor
Oscar Soria Oscar Soria is a global nonprofit executive with 30 years of experience leading international organizations and campaigns focused on human rights, environmental governance, digital accountability, and multilateral policy engagement. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Top Social, an advisory firm working with civil society leaders, multilateral institutions, and philanthropic actors on technology accountability, digital rights, and human rights advocacy.
He is also Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of The Common Initiative, an independent think-and-action tank focused on biodiversity-centered economic reform, rights-based approaches and global environmental governance.
Previously, Soria served as Campaign Director at Avaaz (2014–2023), overseeing global advocacy and crisis response across 194 countries, Director of Media and External Relations at WWF International (2012–2014), and held senior roles at Greenpeace International (1999–2012).
He began his career as a journalist and senior editor in Argentina, where his reporting on social and environmental issues was recognized by the Inter American Press Association. He later served in advisory and governance roles with Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the Holy See’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Sean Southey
Kinship Board Member
Sean Southey is CEO of the Canadian Wildlife Federation, one of the oldest and largest conservation charities in Canada. With over 30 years of experience in the international development and communications, Sean started his career with five years in the Canadian Ministry of Environment, followed by 12 years working with United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) environment team. In 2016, Sean was elected Chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Commission on Education and Communication (CEC). In this role, he worked tirelessly to enhance IUCN’s use of strategic communications for social change, leading the design and implemention IUCN’s #NatureForAll campaign and helping grow and support the work of the CEC and its 1,800 members.
Sean is a dual Canadian and South African citizen and has lived, worked, and traveled in over 125 countries. He holds a MSC from the London School of Economics and a BA in Economics from University of British Columbia, and has a wonderful daughter, Safia.