ACAT Board & Staff
ACAT Board (in alphabetical order)
Christine Celentano,Board Member; Kenai, Alaska
Christine received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Natural Resource Economics from Colorado State University. She moved to Alaska in 1993 and began her career working side by side with talented and gifted Alaska Native leaders and tribal members as they sought to protect and preserve the lands to which they were deeply connected. Christine spent fifteen years working with Tribes within the Chugach Region, and Alaska statewide to address a variety of tribal environmental concerns, including pollution prevention, household hazardous materials and alternatives, contaminants in Alaska Native traditional foods, impacts of oil and gas operations in Cook inlet on traditional subsistence, facilitating tribal and federal government relations in these areas and enhancing tribal capacity for local environmental management through program development. She currently is working as an independent consultant on a variety of federal government initiatives to support capacity development for rural Alaskan communities. Christine followed the work of ACAT closely since its inception and joined the ACAT board in December 2007.
Roxanne Chan, Board Secretary; Anchorage, Alaska
Roxanne is a Chinese-American who is conversant in Mandarin Chinese. She holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s in traditional Chinese medicine. She is employed now as a registered nurse in Anchorage, having worked previously in health care positions in Nome and Barrow. Roxanne joined the ACAT board in December 2007.
Rosalie Kalistook, Board Member; Bethel, Alaska
Rosalie is a bilingual Yupik Eskimo who lives in Bethel in Southwest Alaska. Although Bethel is a hub city with jet plane service, the Alaska’s limited road system does not go there. A federally recognized tribe is located in Bethel, the Orutsararmuit Native Council, for which Rosalie is employed as the Tribal Environmental Coordinator. She and her family depend on traditional foods that they obtain by fishing and hunting and gathering plants and berries. Rosalie makes grass baskets, constructs fur skins into parkas, and sews traditional shirts and dresses (qaspeqs) for her family. She joined the ACAT board in December 2007.
Pauline Kohler, Co-Chair & founding ACAT board member (since 1997); Aleknagik, Alaska
Pauline is a Yupik Eskimo grandmother who lives off of the road system on a lake in the Village of Aleknagik (near Dillingham) in Southwest Alaska. Through her family’s concerns, she helped initiate a toxics project about the impacts of mercury and fuel contamination from mining along the Wood River near her home. She is retired but sometimes fills in as a clerk for her village.
Birgit Lenger, N.D., Board Co-Chair; Anchorage, Alaska
Birgit is a European-Canadian originally from Vancouver, British Columbia. She received her doctorate in naturopathic medicine in 2001. She emphasizes family medicine in her practice, which is located in Anchorage at the Natural Health Center, where her colleagues in alternative medicine are also strong supporters of the work of ACAT. Birgit joined the ACAT board in February 2004 and served for three years on the Fundraising Committee, before she was elected Co-Chair in 2007.
Kathleen Peters-Zuray, Board Member; Tanana, Alaska
Kathleen is a Koyukon Athabascan from Tanana which lies off of the road system in the Interior of Alaska. She began working for her tribe in 2000 as the environmental specialist. She interacts with state and federal agencies to assure that water and soil assessments are conducted and old contaminated sites in Tanana are cleaned up. She has been instrumental in eliminating plastic bags from Tanana, as well as junk cars, used batteries, and electronic waste. Kathleen and her husband have raised their children in the family fish camp, where they also run camps for kids and work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency. She joined the ACAT board in February 2004.
Lydia Olympic, Board Member; Anchorage, Alaska
Lydia is Yupik/Sugpiaqfrom the Village of Igiugig which lies off the road system in Southwestern Alaska on Lake Iliamna. Since 2006, Lydia has been working in Anchorage for the Wilderness Society, educating regulators about newly proposed governmental regulations regarding stream mixing zones and air rules, and how they affect tribes. She served her tribe for eight years working on the Tribal Council. As the elected Vice-Chairman of the National Tribal Operations Committee for the U.S. EPA, Lydia helped identify the high cancer rate among the Indigenous peoples of the United States. She was also elected to the Tribal Operations Committee (1999-2007) for the EPA and assisted in creating the Tribal Mining Advisory Committee to help tribes understand mining laws regulations. She is an active opponent of development of the Pebble Mine, a massive gold mine proposed near her village. Lydia joined the ACAT board in December 2007.
Harriet Penayah, Board Member; St. Lawrence Island, Alaska
Harriet is a bilingual Yupik Eskimo grandmother born in 1932 in the Village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska which lies in the Bering Sea. As an Elder of her village she serves her people as well as the ACAT board as a spiritual and cultural leader. She loves music and dancing, and taught herself to play the piano. She started playing for the Presbyterian Church in 1950 where she is a Sunday-School teacher. In 1989 when her son passed away, Harriet taught herself to play the guitar by remembering the way her son had played. She teaches children how to Eskimo dance, as well as ACAT’s director Pam Miller. Harriet attends meetings of the Restoration Advisory Board for the Northeast Cape abandoned military site, expressing her concerns about the health problems she has seen as a former health aide which are linked with military toxics. She joined the ACAT board in February 2004.
Patti J. Saunders, Board Treasurer; Anchorage, Alaska
Patti is a European-American who came to Anchorage in 1986 to serve as staff attorney for Trustees for Alaska and has been involved continuously, ever since, with the conservation community in Alaska. Since 1999 she has been working as Development Director for The Arc of Anchorage, where part of her effort involves raising awareness about the link between environmental contaminants and developmental disabilities. Patti joined the ACAT board in February 2004 and serves on ACAT’s Fundraising Committee.
Violet Yeaton, Board Member; Port Graham, Alaska
Violet is a Sugpiaq who lives in the Native Village of Port Graham which is located off of the road system in Southcentral Alaska where Cook Inlet meets the Gulf of Alaska in the Pacific Ocean. Violet serves as the tribal Environmental Coordinator for her people. The Sugpiaq people traditionally speak a Pacific Gulf variation of Yupik Eskimo. She has been involved with ACAT since 2000, traveling with ACAT staff to Washington D.C. and a United Nations meeting in South Africa to represent the concerns of her people about persistent organic pollutants that are contaminating the traditional foods in Alaska. She joined the ACAT board in February 2004.
ACAT Staff (in chronological order according to start date)
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| Pam Miller with St. Lawrence Island youth |
Pamela K. Miller; Executive Director; Anchorage, Alaska
Pamela founded ACAT in 1997. She is a European American. Since 2000, ACAT has been awarded multiple federal grants for which Pam has been serving as team leader and, for from 2005 through 2016, as principal investigator of a research team that includes faculty from four universities in Alaska and New York. These research projects rely on collaborative efforts with tribes in Alaska to address environmental health and justice issues. Pam Is a leader in Coming Clean, a national network of groups concerned about chemicals policy reform. She is one of the world’s foremost experts concerning the toxic pesticide lindane, serving two governmental organizations (United Nations and the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation) to address international concerns about lindane. She was instrumental in prompting the 2006 decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw agricultural products containing lindane from the U.S., the 2010 decision by the same agency to phase out uses of endosulfan, and the 2011 decision by the United Nations Environment Programme to ban endosulfan worldwide under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Pam is known for her work to prompt state, national, and international chemicals policy reform to protect environmental and human health in the Arctic. She was selected as a fellow for the Reach the Decision Makers program from the University of California San Francisco, Reproductive Health and Environment Program (2011); was invited to participate in an unprecedented White House Forum on Environmental Justice (2010); and selected to serve on an environmental justice advisory group for the Centers for Disease Control (2009-2010). In 2012, she received the Meritorious Service Award from the Board of Regents of the University of Alaska for her service to the community. She holds a master’s in environmental science from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (1981).
Lorraine Eckstein; Research Anthropologist; Anchorage, Alaska
Dr. Eckstein is a cultural anthropologist who volunteered for ACAT as a technical writer and researcher until joining the ACAT staff in 2000. She supports most projects with her administrative, analytical, research, and technical writing skills. She has forty years of experience in research administration and education with expertise in the application of economic, sociological, and psychological models. She taught anthropology and sociology at colleges and universities in St. Louis, the Seattle area, and Connecticut. She holds a doctorate from the University of Washington in Seattle (1990), a master’s from Washington University in St. Louis, and a bachelor’s from the University of Missouri.
Jesse Gologergen; Field Researcher/Trainer; St. Lawrence Island, Alaska
Jesse is a bilingual Yupik Eskimo who lives in the Village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island. He has been working part-time for ACAT since 2000 as Community Field Researcher conducting health and environmental studies for ACAT’s projects on the Island and training field researchers with ACAT in other Norton Sound villages. He worked as a health aide for his village and served as Mayor of the City of Savoonga. In the past ten years, Jesse has traveled extensively representing ACAT and St. Lawrence Island on environmental justice issues. From time-to-time he comes to the ACAT Anchorage office to assist staff with projects concerning his people. He serves as a trainer at ACAT’s annual summer (college-credited) Community Field Institute.
Charlotte Jane Kava, Mayor of Savoonga; St. Lawrence Island, Alaska
Jane is a trilingual Inupiat Eskimo who went as a new bride to St. Lawrence Island twenty years ago to live with her Yupik husband. She has served as a health aide in Savoonga, and currently is the Mayor of the city. Jane has been working part-time for ACAT since 2000 as Community Health Researcher—conducting health studies for ACAT’s projects on the Island and assisting with ACAT’s research work with other Norton Sound villages. In the past ten years, she has represented the people of St. Lawrence Island and ACAT at environmental justice meetings in New York, Memphis, Seattle, Vieques (Puerto Rico), Berkeley, Geneva, and Washington D.C.
Viola (“Vi”) Waghiyi, Environmental Health and Justice Program Director; Anchorage, AK
Vi is a bilingual Yupik Eskimo who was born in Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. Although her family moved to Nome, she grew up in both communities, traveling between Nome and the Island throughout her childhood. Vi was hired in 2002 to work in Anchorage to assist on the St. Lawrence Island environmental health and justice project. She became the Project Coordinator in 2004, which included supervising ACAT’s research staff on St. Lawrence Island. When her work on the Island expanded in 2005 to include fifteen Native villages in the Norton Sound region, Vi’s title was changed to Environmental Justice Community Coordinator. In 2009, she stepped into the position of Environmental Health and Justice Program Director to share responsibilities with the executive director for all of ACAT’s efforts. In 2010, she was awarded the Environmental Achievement Award in Recognition of Valuable Contributions to Environmental Excellence in Alaska by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. In 2012 leaders of Savoonga presented Vi with a certificate of appreciation “for the dedication and devoted service as an Ambassador of St. Lawrence Island for protecting our health and human rights.” She serves as a National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council member, which advises the director of the National Institute of Health. Vi is sought out repeatedly to speak at national and international meetings about ACAT’s work.
Morgan Apatiki, Community Field Researcher; Gambell, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska
Morgan is a bilingual St. Lawrence Island Yupik Eskimo who lives in the village of Gambell. He has been working for ACAT part-time since 2003 as Community Field Researcher in Gambell and with other Norton Sound villages affected by environmental contaminants. Morgan is knowledgeable about the environment and contamination problems in Gambell and, at one time, served as community liaison to the Army Corps of Engineers. He conducts interviews in Gambell for ACAT’s health assessment project. In this photo, Morgan is preparing a sample for ACAT’s Traditional Foods Survey for St. Lawrence Island. His wife, Lucy Apatiki, served as ACAT’s Community Health Researcher in Gambell from 2000-2003.
Eddie Ungott, President, Gambell Tribal Council; St. Lawrence Island, Alaska
Eddie is a bilingual St. Lawrence Island Yupik Eskimo who lives in Gambell, one of two villages on the Island. He has been working for ACAT part-time since 2007 as Community Health Researcher in Gambell and with other Norton Sound villages affected by environmental contaminants. As a youth, Eddie was one of the “Kids From Nowhere” (memorialized by their school teacher), who in 1984 was part of “the only team of Native Americans in U.S. history ever to win a national championship in academics.” In this photo he is working on a mapping project to show where contaminants are located in his village, as part of ACAT’s three-day training program in 2008 in Nome titled: Community-Based Environmental Research: A Field Institute. Eddie serves as president for the Gambell Tribal Council.
Antonio Huaiquivil, Manager, Mission-Related Businesses; Anchorage, Alaska
Antonio is a Spanish-speaking Mapuche Native from Santiago, Chile where he attended the John F. Kennedy Institute for a four-year degree in Human Resources. He subsequently worked for six years as a Human Resources Specialist for a bank and two other corporations. In 2003, Antonio came to Anchorage with refugee status to escape gender and ethnic discrimination. For three years, Antonio was employed by Catholic Social Services in Anchorage as Refugee Services Coordinator where he assisted refugees from Eastern Europe and other places throughout the world to find housing and employment in Anchorage. ACAT hired Antonio in 2009 to serve as Administrative Assistant in the Anchorage office. In October 2011, he was promoted to a managerial position, supervising ACAT’s Green Cleaning Team and helping to grow ACAT’s mission-related businesses.
Samarys Seguinot-Medina, Environmental Health Researcher; Anchorage, Alaska
Samarys (Sama) is a bilingual Puerto Rican who earned a master’s degree in science and environmental management at the Universidad Metropolitana in 2006, after which she served as a biology professor at the National College of Business & Technology and worked as an environmental consultant. She also is the co-founder of the Sierra Club Chapter in Puerto Rico. Sama is earning a doctorate in Public Health from the University of Puerto Rico. She first came to ACAT in summer of 2009 and again in 2010 to serve as a student intern. When her internship support expired in August 2010, ACAT hired Sama on a permanent basis as an environmental health researcher. She assists with the planning and implementation of ACAT’s annual summer Community-Based Field Research Institutes, and serves on ACAT’s research team in collaboration with the villages on St. Lawrence Island and other Alaska Native tribes.
Samantha Englishoe, Environmental Health Policy Coordinator; Anchorage, Alaska
Samantha (Sam) is Gwich’in Athabascan and Kaagwaantaan Tlingit and a lifelong resident of Anchorage. She graduated in 2008 from Seattle University where she majored in political science and pre-law. After graduation, Sam worked as a Public Policy Fellow in the Office of Representative Beth Kerttula and as a Rural Affairs Intern for Senator Mark Begich. She came to ACAT in January 2011 to work as an Organizer on policy and environmental justice issues. In March 2012 she was promoted to a Coordinator position. She facilitates briefings that ACAT conducts for legislators to inform them about the effects of toxic materials on human health. She represents ACAT to collaborating organizations nationwide to bring about chemicals policy reform.
Heidi Zimmer, Environmental Health and Justice Coordinator; Anchorage, Alaska
Heidi is an environmental scientist (European-American) who came to ACAT in October 2011 to work as an Environmental Health and Justice Coordinator. Heidi holds a master’s in environmental science from Western Washington University and a bachelor’s in biology and English with a minor in publishing and printing arts. Since her graduation in 2008, Heidi worked as an environmental scientist for a private firm conducting environmental site assessments and for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as a habitat biologist conducting hydrological assessments of culverts to evaluate potential fish passage, including field survey work, data analysis, modeling, and report writing. Heidi uses her writing and publishing skills to produce science documents for ACAT, and her research skills to assist the ACAT Research Team in the field.
Yussuf Hassan Arte, Worker: Green Cleaning Services; Anchorage, Alaska
Yussuf is a refugee from Somali, Africa who was brought to the United States three years ago through the refugee program of Catholic Social Services, which is sponsoring Yussuf in a training program funded by the Alaska Department of Public Assistance, which helps refugees learn to work in Anchorage. He came to ACAT in October 2011 to work on our Green Cleaning Team. He is learning how to be a toxics-free janitor and serves ACAT’s mission well. When Yussuf was growing up, he lived in a small town in Somali where his father kept cattle. Yussuf and his wife and children left Somali to escape civil war and took refuge in Kenya where they lived for six years in a refugee camp before coming to Anchorage. In Kenya he worked on an irrigation system. He and his wife have eight children.
Matthew Eidem, Team Leader: Green Clean Team; Graphics Designer; Anchorage, Alaska
Matthew is a graphics designer (European American) who came to ACAT in October 2011 to work part-time on graphics projects and to serve as a team leader for our Green Cleaning Service. He has two years of experience as an illustrator and advertisement artist, and won the 2011 Midnight Sun Oncology Video Contest for Cancer Screening and Public Service Announcements. In 2010 at the University of Alaska Anchorage, he was honored as “man of excellence” for community service, involvement on campus, and academic achievement. He has had a public gallery showing of art work. Matthew holds a recent bachelor’s degree in graphics design and history.
Holly Kent, Operations Manager; Anchorage, Alaska
Holly is an administrator (European-American) who has more than 25-years experience managing, directing, and consulting for non-profit organizations and businesses using her expertise in environmental science. Holly served as executive director for the Anchorage Waterways Council for nine years during which time she tripled the organization’s income and capacity and developed policies for accounting, financial management, personnel management, and communications. In 2011, Holly contracted with ACAT to write grant proposals until she became available to work full-time at the Anchorage office as ACAT’s Operations Coordinator (October 2011). By January 2012, Holly had proven to be such a competent administrator that she was promoted to Operations Manager. She has a bachelor’s in biology from the University of New Hampshire, and completed her course work for a master’s in environmental science from the University of Alaska.
Karla Brollier, Environmental Health and Justice Organizer; Anchorage, Alaska
Karla is Alaska Native (Ahtna Athabascan) on her mother’s side and European American on her father’s side. Karla was born in Alaska, but lived in Northern California, Colorado, and Hawaii during her childhood before returning to Alaska. Karla worked as an Energy Efficiency Specialist for the Alaska Building Science Network where she organized projects throughout Alaska that helped make small rural communities more energy efficient. Before that, she worked for the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage as a Cultural Program Coordinator where she was responsible for developing public programs. Karla holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature and philosophy from the University of Alaska Anchorage, where she is continuing her education, working on a master’s degree. ACAT hired Karla in October of 2011 to work as an Organizer.
Heather McCausland, Communications and Development Coordinator; Anchorage, Alaska
Heather was hired in January 2012 to work on communications and development projects, and to train and coordinate staff members’ use of ACAT’s database—SalesForce.com. Heather has teaching credentials in California and Alaska in business and computers, and in Alaska she taught technology classes at a high school in the Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Valley. She worked for the Mat-Su Borough as an archaeology assistant on a team with members of the Knik Tribal Council, the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council, and the Native Village of Eklutna. She was employed as outreach coordinator for the Mat-Su Valley Coalition, Friends of Mat-Su where she also served as a grant writer and produced environmental publications. Before coming to Alaska in 2008, Heather owned a small business in California for twelve years specializing in free trade gifts. Her bachelor’s degree is in anthropology from the University of California Santa Barbara. She worked toward a master’s degree in instructional development at San Francisco State University and comparative literature at Stanford University, where she also participated in actions that supported Native American issues.
