Audrey Martin

Executive Committee and Group Hub Coordinator

Audrey Martin is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in the Bay Area, where she meets with adults and adolescents for individual, couples, and family work. Formerly, Audrey developed a training program for clinicians at the McAuley Institute at St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco, as well as serving as a supervisor, instructor, and presenter on various clinical topics at psychoanalytic institutes and non-profit organizations throughout the Bay Area. Within CPA-NA, Audrey focuses on groups like Climate Cafes that provide communities, organizations, and individuals an accessible, contained spaces to reflect on feelings about the climate crisis, emerge out of isolation and find renergy to engage with activism. Audrey currently manages the CPA-NA Hub for Facilitators of Climate Emotion Support groups, chairs the Hub Subcommittee, as well as serving on the Budget Committee and supporting Climate Cafe training of new facilitators.

“To put it bluntly, the work of denial is not necessarily easier than the work of nondenial.” - Donald Moss

Barbara Easterlin

Executive Committee President

Barbara Easterlin, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist, and was a member of the UC Berkeley clinical faculty until 2020. She employs evidence-based and mindfulness-informed approaches to improve couple and family functioning. With a master’s degree in environmental psychology and doctorate in clinical psychology, she has researched the impact of nature and mindfulness on individuals’ stress responses. The intersection of non-dual states of consciousness, compassion, and ecology is an abiding interest that informs her work on the psychological dimensions of the climate crisis. She is particularly interested in the psychological process of denial and the positive impact on mental health arising from emotionally-informed activist and social movements that confront the crisis.

“It seems there has been some disconnect between the clever mind and the human heart, love and compassion.” - Jane Goodall

Emma Nelson

Treasurer

Emma (she/her) is a pre-licensed clinical psychologist in Rochester, NY specializing in climate-aware therapy for individuals and groups. Her work bridges clinical practice, consultation, and activism in the service of a regenerative, socially just, and spiritually fulfilling human presence on this planet. Emma is interested in the deep transformation – intellectual, spiritual, behavioral, communal, & systemic – being asked of psychotherapists in this time; she is currently co-creating a postdoctoral fellowship (her own) with this work at the center. Within CPA-NA, she serves on the development and clinical support committees.

“Another way of being is possible. We are much more than what we have become.” - Vanessa Andreotti

Lise Van Susteren

Board of Directors

Lise is a practicing general and forensic psychiatrist in Washington, D.C., and is an expert on the physical and mental health effects of climate change. She has served as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University; She has also been a consultant to the executive branch of the US government, where she has provided profiles of world leaders. In addition to community organizing on climate issues, Lise has served on the advisory board of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, and now serves on the board of the Earth Day Network.

"I want to summon memory of my ancestors, and what they're seeing and saying to me right now, telling me to have courage. And then I envision my progeny turning around with hopeful eyes. I’m thinking that they are depending on the success of all that we do together.”

Natalie Thomas

Executive Committee (Canada)

Natalie Thomas is a Registered Psychotherapist and Professor of Philosophy. She specializes in working with trauma and grief, using Internal Family Systems Therapy. She is developing an IFS-Informed climate aware therapy model and has presented on IFS, ecotherapy and climate distress for various organizations. Natalie is also the Province Coordinator for Ontario. She has published work in the fields of animal and environmental ethics and is a Fellow with the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She loves walking and hiking with her dogs, and spending time painting and showing and selling her work at art markets and shows.

Sadie Forsythe

Secretary and Chair of the Climate Cafe Development Group

Sadie is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Working living and working on Pocumtuc land in Amherst, MA. Her work spans individual psychotherapy, guest lectures, trainings, and climate cafes that support individuals and groups in the work of metabolizing our pain for the world, building emotional resilience and reducing isolation in the face of our global polycrisis.  Within CPA-NA, Sadie co-developed our Deep Dive training program for climate cafe facilitators, serves on the public climate cafe facilitator team, and chairs the Climate Cafe Development Group.  She also holds a certificate in Climate Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

“May we look up at the night sky. May we let joy in. For we will be someone’s ancestors one day. If we do this right, they will inherit not our fear but bravery born of joy.” -Valarie Kaurs

Jenni Silverstein

Co-Executive Director

Jenni is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Infant Family Mental Health Specialist in Sonoma County, California. Her clinical work focuses on early childhood trauma and maternal mental health. Jenni provides nature-based therapy to children and their caregivers, designed to promote secure attachment, mutual regulation, and a shared sense of connection to the more-than-human. Jenni writes and lectures on trauma responsive care and the intersection of climate change, social justice, and early childhood. She is committed to strengthening relationships and fostering community resilience in all areas of her life.

"The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world... That is what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world." ~ Joanna Macy

Rebecca Weston

Co-Executive Director

Rebecca Weston is a psychotherapist, photographer, and activist living in metro-New York. In her clinical practice, her work is informed by a recognition that our senses of self, connection, and our sense of capacity are powerfully influenced by both internal and systemic aspects of our lives. She has expertise in attachment and trauma.

As a long time social activist with deep roots in clinical practice, Rebecca believes that emotion carries a story that is at once private and social; that change is at once individual and collective.

Radical hope is “hope that is sustained not simply by sheer force of personal conviction or by willful ignorance of reality or because of a privileged immunity from reality’s worst contingencies. Radical hope is secured - in its roots - by a metaphysics that affirms change and possibility, agency and power, novelty and creativity, and value and importance.” - Sandra Lubovsky

David Stack

Strategic Technology Advisor

David Stack empowers climate organizations through the strategic application of technology. For over a decade, he’s partnered with passionate business owners and non-profit leaders to help them achieve their revenue, fundraising, and growth goals. Prior to that, he worked on climate change and Earth system science at NASA, Princeton, and other leading academic research institutions. He’s driven by a deep-seated passion for climate action and mental well-being. You can learn more about him at davidstack.io.

"In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or back into safety." —Abraham Maslow

emily corbiere bates

Events Coordinator

emily corbiere bates (all pronouns) is a queer farmer, climate activist and Master of Divinity Candidate at Harvard Divinity School. Informed by their organizing with the Sunrise Movement and experiences of climate catastrophe on farms, they study spiritual care for farmers, activists and young people grappling with the climate crisis. They hope to explore the field of climate chaplaincy with specific interests rooted in acute climate disaster spiritual care, community resilience and rehabilitation of land connection in a decolonized context.

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." -- J.R.R. Tolkein: The Fellowship of the Ring

Hatie Parmeter

Hatie Parmeter (she/her) is a writer, editor, and second-year graduate student earning an MSE in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. She leads psych-sensitive, trauma-informed yoga and looks forward to serving the outdoor industry as a somatically minded therapist. When not running CPA-NA’s web and social media, you can find her hiking or paddling a canoe.

"And here you are living despite it all" - Rupi Kaur

Jenna Welch

Member & Donor Relations Coordinator

Jenna (she/her) is a nonprofit communications and community engagement professional focused on supporting climate‑aware organizations and the people they serve. Based in upstate New York, she co‑founded and co‑led a volunteer climate action group affiliated with the Climate Solutions Accelerator of the Genesee–Finger Lakes region and continues to support several local climate and justice initiatives as a digital communications consultant. Her commitment to this work is grounded in both professional experience and her role as a parent navigating the emotional realities of today’s polycrisis with her family.

"My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." --Adrienne Rich

Kelsey Philippi

Co-Chair of Curriculum Development

These experiences ultimately led her to psychotherapy, where she now focuses on themes of grief, loss, existential meaning-making, and trauma. Drawing from evidence-based and mindfulness-informed approaches, she helps individuals and couples navigate the emotional terrain of health challenges, identity shifts, and life’s inevitable ruptures with greater compassion and resilience.

Her work is grounded in an integrative perspective that honors the interplay between mind, body, and environment. She is particularly interested in how experiences of loss and disruption, both personal and collective, can open pathways toward deeper connection, embodiment, and meaning.

“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” ― Robin Wall Kimmerer

Maureen Fox

Development Coordinator

Maureen has spent her career dedicated to improving the communities in which she lived and worked, through raising funds and awareness for many important causes. Maureen began her career as a paralegal in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office where she worked on her first RFP/grant on reducing recidivism. She has written and secured hundreds of grants throughout her career and advised on many more. However, she considers herself a generalist, having successfully designed and executed many fundraising events, built major and planned giving donor relationships and worked on capital campaigns.  She is currently her own boss, taking on a variety of contractual assignments.  Maureen is co-president of the Grant Professionals of the Lower Hudson and grateful for the support and learning opportunities provided by GPLH and its members.