Get to Know Us: Q&A with Celeste Staples

Celeste was born and raised in San Diego, California where her love for the outdoors and good food was born. Whenever she gets to go home, she finds her way to Coast Boulevard: home to her favorite bench, which overlooks La Jolla’s blue water and the marine life who inhabit it.

Read on for more with Celeste!

When you first joined Seattle Parks Foundation, you started off as Tree Equity Network’s Project Manager and led the network for nearly a year. Recently, you’ve had a title change that comes with more responsibilities. What does your work with Tree Equity Network look like and how has your position evolved under your new role?
Managing the Tree Equity Network was an ever-changing, exciting challenge. As times, legislation, community members’ needs, and local champions of greenspaces grow and evolve, so does our work. It’s my job to pay close attention to each of these things and continuously build our vision and actions around them.

In my previous role, as Tree Equity Network’s Project Manager, I was focused solely on the above. Now, as the Program Manager of Urban Climate Resilience Projects, I get to continue all of that work while also managing a portfolio of fiscally sponsored projects that play important roles in Seattle’s climate resilience. Additionally, I get to help manage another initiative called Green Schoolyards, which is a budding cross-sector collaboration that seeks to make access to outdoor spaces and learning more equitable to students in Seattle by turning school blacktops into greenspaces.

All the moving parts of my body of work point back to one central idea for me: Accessibility, intersectionality, and empathy are non-negotiables when it comes to successful programming. To love and protect the outdoors, we must also love and protect each other too.

The advocacy efforts you lead require you to communicate with community members, organizations, and even city officials on a daily basis. In April, Tree Equity Network’s letter to the City Council offered thoughtful solutions to address some of the tree-related gaps in Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan. In May, Tree Equity Network’s letter to the City Council addressing CB 120969 was mentioned in The Seattle Times, supporting your stance that more trees need to be included in the Comprehensive Plan.

With multiple parties involved in the advocacy process, conversations can get complex and difficult to keep up with. How do you best communicate between the different groups you work with and what advice can you offer to community members who are new to the advocacy space?

Political advocacy is complex because the challenges our region and the people in it face are complex. When we create consensus statements, we name that everyone in the network may not completely agree with the final statement, however, we commit to remaining in alignment with our mission and our values as a coalition. Over time, we develop ideas, core points, and clear action items that eventually make up the statements. Overall, we aim for these statements to point to the fact that we need a more equitably distributed tree canopy and legislation that ensures it happens in a way that considers the needs of residents first.

If you are new to advocacy or feel new to the environmental sector— I hope you’ll come find me at a meeting or two.

In the network, it’s important to me that we start with an invitation of all levels of knowledge to join our conversations. We value lived experiences, ancestral knowledge, and academic knowledge all the same. Each one of these is connected to our tree canopy and sets the tone for how we advocate and what we advocate for.

Tree Equity Network consists of a wide variety of people and groups. Passionate community members, government agencies, policy experts, arborists, and more are represented within the network. Do you have any dream collaborators you think would be a great addition to Tree Equity Network?
Yes! I dream for all of King County to join!

But, while I work on getting us there, I would like to build more connections with the following:

• • Builders, developers and housing experts: we need density/affordable housing and we need trees. I believe in a world that has both, but we need partnerships and contributing voices that can help us dream up solutions with this in mind.
  • Long time residents: King County has a rich and complicated history. It’s changed a lot. We need the voices of those who have seen the progression of different neighborhoods and cities, who can speak to where we’ve come from and to help inform where we’re headed.
  • Black, Indigenous, People of Color: I’ve been a Black woman my whole life, I’m very good at it. I can speak to how many of us might feel in the outdoors, what kind of relationships I know we often have with green spaces, and how redlining has impacted our communities for many, many years. But I’m just one person with one voice, and it is imperative that we fill these rooms with more voices that represent all of King County. I hope to see a diaspora of diverse voices contributing to the network in the future.

This past year was a busy one for Tree Equity Network and yourself as you’ve transitioned from being their Project Manager to Seattle Parks Foundation’s Program Manager of Urban Climate Resilience Projects! What do you enjoy most about your job and what does the network have in store for the future?
The people really are the whole point. My best days are ones spent sitting with old, new, or potential collaborators in this work. And as often as I can, I try to bring these conversations outside into the spaces we are working to protect and preserve. There are a lot of really great people doing really great work— in the midst of hard seasons, I find that their commitment to their missions and to their efforts continues to show me that there is still hope for better days ahead.

Though I mentioned this before, it’s a lesson that bears repeating: Accessibility, intersectionality, and empathy are non-negotiables when it comes to successful programming. To love and protect the outdoors, we must also love and protect each other too.

So, as for the future of the Tree Equity Network, we will be continuing to center and place action behind those words.

For organizations, we know funding is a major challenge right now.
– We have launched a pilot granting program called the Tree Canopy for Climate Resilience (TCCR) Grant, where organizations can apply for small grants to support their tree planting, tree protection, youth education, and environmental stewardship programs and projects! Interested? Reach out to me at celeste@seattleparksfoundation.org.

For individuals, we know cost of living and access to food are major challenges right now.
– For every network gathering (not including volunteer days), stipends are offered to anyone who would like one.
– For every in-person network gathering (not including volunteer days), we offer meals in hopes of taking additional weight off of our participants’ busy days for at least a little while.

For many, the barriers of access to this work can be due to a fear of lack of understanding or language barriers.
– We are integrating a focus on civic literacy over the next year to bring us all to a shared base level of understanding and offer everyone the tools they may not already have.
– Separately, interpreters can be provided for anyone who requests one at registration.

The truth is, we cannot ask our neighbors to care about the tree canopy of King County without also considering the other challenges they face every day. Across the region, people are facing rising costs of living, housing struggles, more targeted attacks, political unrest, and lack of nourishment. While trees are the focus of this work, the point of all of it is the people.

Our future is bright— it’s full of people and we’re working to ensure that it’s full of trees.

You are often on an adventure somewhere in the world, showcasing your commitment to living a full life while still working hard rather than choosing between the two. Sometimes we can find you in a state park, other times we can find you in the Midwest, and many times we have found you in Southern California. Can you tell us about how you view this balance and why you find it important? Where are you headed next? 
Have you ever heard the saying, “How you spend your days is how you spend your life?” I find this to be a truth that is both liberating and an ache in my side, because it implores me to act.

I truly love my work. It is restorative, it’s hopeful, and it’s work worth doing for a place that I treasure. Over time, I have learned that I cannot do it well if I’m not taking care of myself. I do my best when I am whole—and that takes effort and intentionality.

So, sometimes I work from planes and trains (and automobiles) so that when it’s time to close my laptop, I am looking at a San Diego sunset or the face of a dear friend. I move my schedule around to work early mornings sometimes so that I have enough time to see a show in New York with my sisters or run errands with my mom and dad in San Diego.

The people in my life are tremendously important to me. Very selfishly of them, they all live spread across the country. Amtrak has not gotten back to me about my 90-minute bullet train idea from Seattle to Portland to San Diego to Los Angeles to Denver to Indianapolis to Chicago to Philly to Atlanta, but I will keep you all in the loop! Until then, I plan to keep schedule-sending emails and doing my best to make time for all that is important to me.

As for my next trip, I’m hoping it lands me in Chicago, specifically at Le Sud in Roscoe Village at the table by the staircase.

Thank you, Celeste, for sharing more about yourself with us!