Meet the team

Pittsburgh-bred, Bogotá based social justice organizer, facilitator, and researcher. An organizer for over 15 years, Zia entered into social movements at Oberlin College while earning her Environmental Studies and Comparative American studies degrees. Zia specializes in designing and facilitating risk analysis with a differential approach to best support front-line communities. Since 2016, she’s worked in international organizations dedicated to accompanying human rights defenders threatened by state-sanctioned violence by facilitating spaces to create holistic security mechanisms. Zia believes that collective safety is constructed through creating co-responsible, community-based alternatives to militarized protection mechanisms offered by governments and is deeply passionate about accompanying organizations and communities in constructing these agreements.

Ecuadorean activist, educator, researcher, and artist, with extensive experience working with diverse populations in Latin America and the United States. Chelsea is a skilled educator with a Master's in Community Development and Planning from Clark University. She is passionate about using popular education and artistic expression for collective empowerment, creative conflict transformation, and furthering social justice. Chelsea worked with Pachaysana for five years in higher education-based efforts to decolonize education through intercultural exchange and study abroad. As a scholar-practitioner, Chelsea is an active researcher. Her earlier work focused on the gendered impacts of extractive industries in communities of Latin America. Current projects center on transformative justice, epistemic pluralism, and gender dynamics in intercultural and organizational spaces.