Investing in the Next Generation of Urban Conservation Leaders 

America’s underserved urban communities face plenty of challenges, including a lack of adequate green and open spaces to play and sustain a healthy local environment. Community-based groups are working hard on the front line to make a difference, but they often have challenges of their own — including limited staff and financial and technical resources. 

The Conservation Fund is stepping in to help with our Urban Conservation and Community Fellowship program. The program connects dedicated professionals with nonprofits doing great work in urban neighborhoods around the country. That gives the nonprofits more resources and capacity while supporting the development of a new generation of diverse urban conservation leaders focused on community-based action.   

The program builds on The Conservation Fund’s ongoing urban conservation efforts to establish greenspaces and parks — creating more equitable and livable neighborhoods while supporting climate resiliency, healthy food access, job opportunities and cleaner air and water. Local partnerships are the key to success — we’ve partnered with more than 75 community organizations to advance urban conservation. 

We matched our first cohort of Urban Conservation and Community Fellows with four of our partner organizations — Greater Baybrook Alliance, Friends of Anacostia Park, West Atlanta Watershed and Durham Community Land Trustees.  

We’re excited to introduce the Fellows and know they’ll be great assets to these outstanding organizations. Please meet Mindy Jo, LaShawn Johns, Anna Clark and Meixin Wang!  

Mindy Jo

Greater Baybrook Alliance, Baltimore, MD

Greater Baybrook Alliance is a Baltimore non-profit community development organization whose mission is to act as a catalyst and conduit for equitable development and reinvestment in local neighborhoods and empower residents to strengthen their community. 

Mindy was born in California but has called Baltimore home for the past three years. As a UCC Fellow, she’s bringing her creativity and love of community service to focus on neighborhood revitalization in the city.   

She has been dedicated to public service since college, when she developed a water quality proposal in Indonesia. As a UCC Fellow at GBA, she is building “Friends” groups to bring people together in support of two Baltimore parks.   

She finds the journey rewarding — from creating Friends programs all the way to watching the community gather at local events they put on.   

“I just wanted to… build and keep momentum and drive alive to get the Friends group established, and now we are at a place where we can plan and execute successful community events. That has been remarkable,” she says.  

Mindy loves meeting neighbors and building trust with them, listening to their hopes and desires to inspire and inform her work.  

Mindy’s favorite part of the Fellowship program so far has been connecting with the local Boys and Girls Club to do “Planting with a Purpose.” she says the kids are incredibly dedicated and work hard to make their community blossom. She says she’s thrilled to see the kids become true stewards of the land and loves watching them feel a sense of pride and ownership over their gardens. She hopes that passion lives on.    

LaShawn Johns

Friends of Anacostia Park, Washington, D.C.

Friends of Anacostia Park enriches the lives of Washington, D.C. residents by preserving the city’s Anacostia Park and connecting surrounding communities to its restoration. 

Since 2001, LaShawn has made it her mission to cultivate environments where kids feel safe, loved and cared for. Her passion for youth mental health and safety through environmental stewardship activities touches everything she does as a UCC Fellow.   

She works with the Friends of Anacostia Park, promoting the park as a place of healing that gives people opportunities to be outdoors enjoying the unique activities the park has to offer. 

LaShawn is inspired by the engagement she gets with folks who come to the park. She enjoys encouraging them to try the programs her organization offers and watching their reaction when they try new things.  

“Some people have never fished, even having a whole river in their backyard, and going out there to catch a fish can be very exciting to the youth… and even sometimes the adults, because they have just never been able to do it,” she says. “Just seeing the joy on people’s faces from being able to be in a safe space in the park [has been great].”  

LaShawn appreciates the impact she makes on area kids through her work. “We had a group of youth who came out and participated in one of our park clean up days,” she says. “Afterward, someone went to throw something out of a van onto the ground and [one of the children participating in the cleanup] said, ‘I just cleaned this park up and we’re trying to save the environment!’ That warmed my heart.”  

Anna Clark

West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, Atlanta, GA

The West Atlanta Watershed Alliance focuses on growing a cleaner, greener, healthier and more sustainable West Atlanta, improving the quality of life within the West Atlanta Watershed by protecting, preserving and restoring the community’s natural resources. 

Anna became a UCC Fellow directly after earning her master’s degree from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. Her background includes a Teach for America position, which showed her that there are so many opportunities to help kids thrive and become the best version of themselves — and a lot of that has to do with community, built environments and how cities are planned.  

Anna has a passion for being part of the change and realizes the incredible impact of community-based work on people, neighborhoods and cities. As our UCC Fellow with West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, she is most proud of her work running the Great American Camp Out, an annual event geared toward first-time campers.  

“It is definitely a lot,” she says. “There were a lot of things that went wrong and a lot of things that went right [this year], but I remember there was a single mom who had spent probably an hour and a half setting up her tent for her and her daughter. I sent help and she said, ‘I’m going to try to do this on my own’ and felt empowered by the end to [camp] again with her child. That’s just a really cool community memory to be a part of.”  

Meixin Wang

Durham Community Land Trustees, Durham, NC

Durham Community Land Trustees provides stability for individuals and families with low to moderate incomes in Durham, North Carolina by developing, managing and advocating for permanently affordable and ADA accessible housing.  

Meixin lived in New York City and Washington, D.C. before moving to North Carolina. She always appreciated the greenspace access she had in those urban areas, which pushed her to pursue coursework in conservation, environmental justice and geospatial analysis.   

Through her position as UCC Fellow at the Durham Community Land Trustees, Meixin notes the common overlap in disinvested areas of a lack of access to public transportation, bike lanes and sidewalks, affordable housing and tree coverage. This inspired her to make a change.   

Today, she is heavily leaning into community engagement through her role. “Seeing how individuals in the communities respond to initiatives [we undertake] has been really cool,” she says. While it can be common for projects to use community engagement as a check box, Meixin has a much deeper connection and commitment to real, life-altering community engagement.   

Meixin enjoys watching how people and families from across neighborhoods interact with one another at celebratory events they host like community block parties. These block parties show just how invested locals are in the place they call home and how much they truly want to improve their community for themselves and their neighbors.