REv. Dr. Joanne Leslie
Board President
The Rev. Dr. Joanne Leslie, Chair of the Board of the Jubilee Consortium, is a retired Professor of Community Health Sciences in the UCLA School of Public Health and has been a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles for the past 17 years. She has over twenty-five year's experience in international research with an emphasis on cultural factors determining health behaviors. She worked for many years on maternal, adolescent and child nutrition and other health issues in various countries in West Africa and Brazil, among other places. As a deacon, Joanne has served in several urban LA parishes from Inglewood to Koreatown. She was also the first woman chosen to serve as Archdeacon in the Diocese, a position she held from 2011 through 2017. Currently Joanne is the parish deacon at St. Mary’s Mariposa, she is on the Episcopal Public Policy Network of California organizing team and is a Trustee of Bloy House.
Juliana Serrano
Juliana Serrano is the Senior Associate for Peace & Justice and the Office for Creative Connections at All Saints Church in Pasadena. She joined the staff in 2010 and loves working with and for the communities in Pasadena, the Greater San Gabriel Valley, as well as the congregation. In more than eight years of engaging the local community, Juliana has been privileged to work alongside many faithful and dedicated activists, organizers and leaders, as well as elected officials, on efforts such as police reform; the fight for $15; immigrant rights; homelessness; health care access; reintegration; environmental justice; and more. Every day, Juliana strives to be a better advocate/ally to and co-conspirator with communities who are marginalized and oppressed by the dominant culture.
Michael A. Mata
Michael A. Mata has designed and administered community and faith-based programs for over 30 years, particularly in the areas of community development, congregational redevelopment, intercultural programs, organizational and leadership development, ministry/nonprofit management and community youth development. He directs the Graduate Los Angeles Program in Transformational Urban Leadership at Azusa Pacific Seminary and is the Community Transformation Specialist with Compassion Creates Change, Inc.. Prior to his current assignments he was the Urban Development Director for World Vision U.S. Program where he was responsible for guiding the department’s implementation of its Signature Programs Model (community transformation focused on community youth development). Mata was the Mildred M. Hutchinson Assistant Professor of Urban Ministry (the first endowed chair in urban ministry) and Director of the Urban Leadership Institute at the Claremont School of Theology. As an ordained minister, he served fifteen years as part of the pastoral team at Los Angeles First Church of the Nazarene (a multi-ethnic/multi-congregation church with a highly regarded community program and prominent youth program).
Tim alderson
Tim Alderson is the Executive Director of Seeds of Hope, the food justice ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, which grows and distributes food in over 100 communities of need across six Southern California counties. His lifetime in agriculture has included nearly 20 years as CEO of AgriGator, Inc., a multi-national soil amendment manufacturer, as well as numerous industry boards including the board of directors of the National Agri-Marketing Association. He was the founding chairman of the California School Garden Network and was appointed by two California governors to the board of the Schools Agriculture and Nutrition Program where he currently serves as President. He was also appointed to the California Department of Education School Garden Advisory Committee. Tim lives in Pasadena, California where he has served as Chairman of the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission and the Mayor’s Workforce Housing Task Force.
Catherine Wagar
Catherine Wagar has worked for more than thirty-five years with human service and nonprofit organizations. Besides consulting, she has held limited-term and transitional senior management roles for periods of six months to three years. As a consultant in private practice, she has specialized in training managers in basic administration, strategy development, board
development, fund raising and finance, with special emphasis on new or start-up grass roots organizations. An ordained Deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Rev. Wagar is currently attached to the parish of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Van Nuys. She volunteers one day each week as an Associate Chaplain at Olive View UCLA Medical Center. For the diocese, she serves on the Deacons’ Council. For the past year, she has been working with two L A -based nonprofit organizations to develop safe housing options for political asylum-seekers in the U.S.
Rev. Dr. Greg Kimura
Father Greg is the rector at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ojai. He grew up in a town north of Anchorage, Alaska and was ordained to the priesthood at the age of 25. He served as vicar and then rector of Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Eagle River, Alaska, while also serving other Episcopal and Lutheran (ECLA) churches in remote Alaskan villages where folks did not have a local priest to administer the sacraments.
In addition to his priestly pursuits, Fr. Greg has taught at the University of Alaska, Anchorage and, most recently, served as CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. While in the latter full-time role, he also served as adjunct priest at St. Cross Episcopal Church in Hermosa Beach.
Fr. Greg has a BA with honors in theology and philosophy from Marquette University, a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in philosophy of religion from Cambridge University, England. He resides in Ojai with his wife Joy, son Julian and daughter Lilly, all of whom are also very active at St. Andrews and in the Ojai community.
Mario Fedelin
In 2004 Mario served as an AmeriCorps member with City Year San Jose and City Year Philadelphia. After his service he joined City Year Staff in Philadelphia and worked with a national network to create a high school civic leadership program that united diverse groups of high school students to explore and serve their community. In 2007 Mario moved back to California to be a founding staff member of City Year Los Angeles. As a Program Director at City Year, Mario worked with schools in Boyle Heights, Pico-Union, South Central and Watts providing an outcomes-based service model to curb the high school push-out crisis. In 2014 Mario conceived of, designed and launched Changeist. Changeist mobilizes young people from all different walks of life, places them on diverse teams and immerses them in a 7-month civic action experience, exploring the issues they care most about. Changeist launched in 2015 with 75 middle school youth, and in 2019 was identified by the Governor’s office as the youth development model to scale across California to increase civic engagement for all Californians. With the support from California Volunteers, Changeist will engage more than 500 youth in 2019 and grow to over 1000 youth annually.
Mario currently serves as an Advisory Board Member for a Community Center in Pico-Union, Co-chair of the Invest in Youth Coalition, a graduate of SCLN’s Leadership LA, a recipient of the Comcast NBCUniversal City Year Alumni Leadership award and most recently was selected out of thousands of applicants from over 160 countries to be a 2019 Obama Foundation Fellow. The Obama Fellowship supports outstanding civic innovators from around the world in order to amplify the impact of their work and to inspire a wave of civic innovation.