Meet the Just Zero Team
Our country’s waste management practices are outdated and unsustainable – not to mention extremely toxic. Founded in 2022, Just Zero was born out of a strong desire to design and implement sensible waste policies that protect all communities across the nation because people and the planet deserve better.
But building a Zero Waste future isn’t easy – especially when we’re up against corporate polluters determined to keep us hooked on toxic waste systems that endanger public health and the environment.
Olivia Chabot
Communications Director
Heather Greenwood
Operations Director
Sakinah Jones
Communications Associate
Laura Orlando
Senior Scientist
Vanessa Zapata
Staff Attorney
Just Zero is governed by a Board of Directors with legal and fiduciary responsibility for the organization. The Board serves as guardian of Just Zero’s mission and operates in accordance with our Bylaws and Code of Conduct. The Board works closely with Just Zero’s senior team to develop and implement strategic plans, determine long-term visioning, and support fundraising goals.
Kirstie Pecci (President)
Just Zero
Toni Hicks (she/her)
J.D. Harvard Law School
A.B. Princeton University
Toni Hicks is a public interest attorney with significant nonprofit management experience. Toni was the Director for Public Service and Pro Bono at Boston University School of Law from 2019 – 2021. Prior to joining BU Law, she was the founding Director of the Senior Fellows Program at the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF). During an earlier stint as a CLF Staff Attorney, Toni worked on a wide range of environmental issues, from transportation policy and stormwater management to renewable energy and regional climate action.
She previously served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Appleseed Center for Law & Justice and as a Litigation Associate at Ropes & Gray. Toni is a volunteer nonprofit consultant with Empower Success Corps (ESC), where she also serves on the Board and co-chairs the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Committee. She currently serving as Board President at the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA).
Public Interest Attorney
Marcel Howard (he/him)
Zero Waste Program Manager, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA)
As a biracial and LGBTQ+ working professional, Marcel Howard has dedicated his life to dismantling white supremacy and anti-queer concepts within the broader environmental movement. Over the past eight years, he has become a thought leader and technical expert on climate change, environmental justice, and zero waste concepts throughout the US and Canada. Born and raised in a minority-majority community along the Chesapeake Bay in Southeast Virginia, Newport News, Marcel has always been deeply entrenched within the world of equity and justice.
Marcel is currently the Zero Waste Program Manager for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). He helps expand GAIA’s work in U.S. federal policy spaces with the goals of developing zero waste solutions and ending policies bolstering incineration.
Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA)
Mireille Bejjani (she/they)
Co-Executive Director of Slingshot
Mireille Bejjani is the Co-Executive Director of Slingshot, where she works with community groups fighting fossil fuel infrastructure and waste facilities across Massachusetts, facilitates the Fix the Grid campaign to overhaul the regional electric grid, and helps manage the overall operations of Slingshot. In her organizing work in Mass, she has helped stop a proposed biomass facility in an environmental justice community in Springfield, MA, aided in securing supplemental review of a waste processing plant in New Bedford, MA, and catalyzed the formation of a community group in Peabody, MA to lead on a clean energy transition.
Having worked with Just Zero’s team on a number of campaigns, Mireille is thrilled to be serving on the board of such a knowledgeable and impactful organization. Our waste system is deeply flawed and deeply harmful to communities, and Just Zero is doing important work to change that status quo. Mireille lives in Western Massachusetts and loves to go on hikes with their dog Rose. They hold a BS in Biology from Stanford University.
Slingshot
Sylvia Broude (she/her)
Co-founder and Senior Advisor, Slingshot
Sylvia Broude is a community organizer, facilitator, and strategist committed to building a multi-racial, cross-class movement for change. She spent sixteen years leading Community Action Works, a Northeast U.S.-based non-profit that organizes with communities to confront polluters and seed solutions. During a decade as Executive Director, she helped community groups win more than 100 victories for clean air and water, from retiring coal-fired power plants across the Northeast including transforming the Mount Tom coal plant into a solar farm and winning justice for plant workers, to halting hundreds of miles of fracked gas pipeline proposals, to closing and preventing polluting landfills and incinerators, to securing clean drinking water for for thousands of families.
Throughout, she joined communities together to organize for state, regional and national policy changes that advance solutions to the most profound climate and environmental crises we face, led by the people with the most at stake. She was a founding member of the Zero Waste Boston Coalition and an appointed member of the City of Boston’s Zero Waste Advisory Committee. She also has experience on grassroots political campaigns at the local, state and federal level. Sylvia lives in Dorchester, MA.
Slingshot
Just Zero
Our work at Just Zero is guided and counseled by our Advisory Board. The Advisory Board provides valuable input to support and strengthen the work we do. Its members embody the strategic vision, values, and mission of the organization.
Melissa Aguayo (she/her)
Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) US Coordinator
Melissa Aguayo currently serves as the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) US Coordinator. Passionate about the power of collaboration, Melissa works to create equitable and inclusive spaces to build community and drive change in the movement. From grassroots community organizing, community science, facilitation, bilingual educational programming, coalition and movement building, to policy and advocacy work, she brings a diverse skill set and a passion for bridging environmental and social justice issues for over a decade.
Along with her work with BFFP, she is currently a Garrison Institute Fellow, co-founder of the Reusable LA coalition, sits on the board of several organizations, and is the Treasurer for Sustain Our Future. In all her roles, she’s committed to centering environmental justice, uplifting the expertise of those most impacted, creating welcoming spaces, and driving systemic change. As a wife and Mother of two, Melissa is dedicated to doing her part in building a sustainable, socially just and equitable future.
Break Free From Plastic
Katie Ardrey Wolgast (she/her)
Senior Donor Advisor at the Alzheimer’s Association
Katie Wolgast is a development professional focused on utilizing philanthropy to drive change in environmental issues and health care systems. Currently, Katie is the Senior Donor Advisor at the Alzheimer’s Association, where she works closely with major and principal donors to help them achieve their philanthropic goals.
Previously, she served as the Director of Major Giving, Northeast at the Parkinson’s Foundation, where she raised funds to accelerate research and improve care for those impacted by Parkinson’s disease.
Katie worked as the Donor Relations and Events Manager at Conservation Law Foundation. It was there that she first connected with Kirstie Pecci and learned how exciting Zero Waste can be! She is thrilled to work alongside the incredible Just Zero team to push policy changes and help communities throughout the nation.
Katie has a Master of Public Affairs degree from Brown University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Global Studies from Hofstra University. She lives in New York with her husband and dog!
Alzheimer’s Association
Kendall Grace (she/her)
Development Information Systems, Coordinator The Rivers School
Kendall Grace is a passionate advocate for community service and activism. Kendall attended The College of Wooster, where she earned her BA in History and Anthropology in 2014. During her time at college, she was actively involved in various community service and social justice activities, which sparked her passion for giving back to her community.
Kendall is a seasoned development professional with over eight years of experience in fundraising and stewardship in the education sector, currently working at The Rivers School. Kendall has previously served as a member of the Boys and Girls Club – Berkshire Partners – Board of Advisors from May 2018 to May 2021.
Kendall’s passion for community service and social justice has been a driving force in her life, and she continues to look for ways to make a positive impact in her community. She believes that everyone has a role to play in creating a better world, and she is committed to doing her part.
The Rivers School
Isabel Harper (she/her)
Youth Activist
Isabel Harper entered the environmental nonprofit world as an Endeavor Foundation Environmental Fellow, interning with the Zero Waste team at Conservation Law Foundation. Since then, Isabel has worked with Beyond Plastics, The Vermont State Senate, and Bennington College’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She graduated from Bennington in 2024 with dual focuses in Political Science and Environmental Studies. Isabel is excited to utilize her background in youth activism in an advisory capacity at Just Zero!
Youth Activist
Lor Holmes (she/they)
Independent Consultant and Community Organizer
Lor Holmes dropped out of college and worked as a school bus driver and community organizer in Boston before earning a master’s degree in Community Economic Development. Lor is a lifelong practitioner driven by passion for anti-racist social, economic and environmental justice. Her life’s work has been in building innovative responses and demonstrating equitable solutions that serve people and communities.
At the Elizabeth Stone House in Roxbury, Lor started Boston’s first micro enterprise program, supporting low income women’s financial self determination. Then, as founding director at Harbor Communities Over Violence (HarborCOV) in Chelsea, she worked with immigrant communities to develop the country’s first permanent housing and economic development center for families affected by domestic violence. Lor has developed campaigns to address institutional and community racism and taught postgrad courses at Springfield College. Following the 2008 economic collapse Lor helped launch the S.U.N. Program, which enabled thousands of families to save their homes from bank foreclosure.
In Dorchester, Lor worked with low income community members to establish CERO Cooperative, a worker owned business providing commercial composting services to institutions and the food industry in Greater Boston. CERO provides good green jobs and rescues millions of pounds of food waste from landfill and incineration, instead to be re-eathed as compost, mitigating carbon pollution, revitalizing soil and supporting urban agriculture.
While Lor keeps pushing composting, circular zero waste economies and affordable housing, she strives to center family & friends, new adventures and singing with her community chorale.
Consultant and Organizer
Margaret (Mei) Li (she/her)
Cookbook Author and Food Waste Fighter
Margaret Li, aka Mei, is the founder of Food Waste Feast and the author of Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable Zero Waste Approach to Home Cooking. Her website and award-winning cookbook explore flexible recipes, smart strategies, and chef tips to help people eat better and fight food waste. Along with her two siblings, she co-founded Boston’s Mei Mei restaurant and wrote their family cookbook Double Awesome Chinese Food, named a ‘Book We Love’ by NPR. Mei currently lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband and two small children who love a good use-it-up smoothie and are slowly learning to appreciate broccoli stalks.
Follow Food Waste Feast on Instagram:
@foodwastefeast
Food Waste Feast
View Openings
Work With Us
Interested in being part of the Just Zero team? Learn about our virtual workplace and view openings.
Email Us
Media Inquiries
Interview Just Zero experts for your next story and discover how we’re advancing Zero Waste solutions.