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Our country’s waste management practices are outdated and unsustainable – not to mention extremely toxic.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.
Kirstie Pecci
Executive Director
Peter Blair
Policy and Advocacy Director
Olivia Chabot
Communications Director
Heather Greenwood
Operations Director
Sakinah Jones
Communications Associate
Laura Orlando
Senior Scientist
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.
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
Kevin Budris (he/him)
Co-founder, Just Zero
Kevin Budris began his Zero Waste advocacy by bringing lawsuits against leaking landfills that were contaminating rivers, wetlands, and drinking water. He quickly realized that without the right laws, policies, systems, and solutions in place, we’d never escape the toxic, climate-damaging impacts of our outdated waste systems. But we don’t have to choose between burning and burying waste. Instead, we can redesign, reduce, reuse, divert, and compost our way to a just and equitable world.
A co-founder of Just Zero and formerly serving as the organization’s Deputy Director, Kevin worked closely with the directors to plan and carry out Just Zero’s strategic vision. He focused on strengthening both big-picture and day-to-day priorities to help Just Zero live its mission of implementing just and equitable solutions to our waste crisis.
Environmental 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)
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
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
ex officio member
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