TEAM
Megan Amaral
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Megan Amaral (she/her) has decades of leadership experience in mission-driven organizations. Her professional work has spanned the arts, education, community development, and sustainability, often at the intersections of these fields and with a social justice lens.
A “scanner” with a wide range of interests, she pursues some as work, some as a volunteer, and some as hobbies. She stumbled into education as a profession and now has 20 years post-secondary and youth education experience: administration, program design, curriculum development, community outreach, research, student affairs, advising, teaching, and mentorship. Higher education has been her focus, holding positions at Portland State University, California College of the Arts, and the University of California’s Santa Cruz, Davis, and Berkeley campuses.
Megan is knowledgeable across a breadth of environmental sustainability and social justice issues, and cross-discipline strategies. She managed UC Berkeley’s renowned Energy and Resources Group from 2014-2022. Most recently, she worked as Operations Manager and Acting COO for international climate justice network The Sunrise Project during the launch of their US nonprofit entity. Her commitment to social justice and curiosity about how we form identity grew from her own mixed and shifting identities around being Mexican and Norwegian, mixed-culture, mixed-class, and queer.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Goddard College and a Master of Science in Community Development from UC Davis, with a focus on community arts and culture. She believes the arts are key to both wellbeing and effective climate change action having witnessed the profound role they play in major culture and societal values shifts.
After growing up primarily in Minnesota she moved to Vermont, then Oregon, and then spent 15 years in California before arriving in British Columbia. She now spends time in both Chico, CA and Salt Spring Island, BC.
In addition to her professional work, she loves to hike, write fiction, dance, learn new crafts, dabble in various digital media, and help others tap their sense of play, creativity, and curiosity. She lives with her partner, daughter, dog, and two cats.