Ivy believes in the fundamental connection between the human spirit and the natural world. She believes that nature holds all the resources and lessons necessary to begin one’s healing journey.

Ivy is a horticulturist, beekeeper, and abolitionist. She began working with nature when she was 14 years old and was running two community gardens in her hometown of Temecula by the time she was 17. Her passion for gardening followed her all the way to college, where she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in Society and Environment. It was in college that Ivy began to take an interest in the intersection between environmental racism and food justice. In her final years of college, she was chosen to participate in a Food Justice Fellowship at the UC Berkeley Gill Tract, which allowed her to travel across the Bay Area and build connections with local community gardens and farms to discuss the unique challenges that each farm was facing.

For the past three years, she has been an advocate for justice-impacted individuals with the organization Partners for Justice in the Compton Public Defender’s Office. She fought alongside her clients to reduce the harm of the carceral system both in and out of the courtroom.  While working in Compton, she began volunteering at the Compton Community Garden, where she focused on creating programs to address the needs of the most vulnerable in the community. As Director of Social Justice, Ivy combined her work with justice-impacted individuals and gardening by facilitating several workshops to address the unique needs of the community. She has co-facilitated workshops with the re-entry organization Hoops for Justice and Impact Justice.