Team
Diana Almendariz
Diana Almendariz, one of the co-founders of YoloSol, is a culture-bearer, storyteller, and visual artist who has been working on the cultural and ecological revival and restoration of her Wintun homeland for over three decades. Her practice in serving Native communities includes storytelling, land-based pedagogy, and traditional arts such as basket-weaving, boatmaking, and more. Diana received her cultural and ecological knowledge from her well-known Grandmother Bertha Nye Norton, Maidu Traditionalist Frank La Pena, and renowned Wintun Basket Weaver Bertha Mitchell. She has been passing on this knowledge to her daughters and grandchildren, who are accomplished cultural workers.
Juliette Beck
Juliette Beck, co-founder of YoloSol, is a lifelong community organizer, climate justice advocate and mother of two daughters born in Davis on Wintun homeland. She combines art and activism to bring awareness to the complex social, economic, and environmental issues of our time. She is a member of the Sierra Club Yolano Group and has been working to ensure that frontline community members and their concerns are centered in Yolo County’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.
Anuj Vaidya
Anuj Vaidya is one of the co-founders of YoloSol, and also currently Communications Director for Imagining America. He brings over two decades of experience in media and community-engaged art practice, arts education, and public scholarship. Currently a board member for 3rd i Films, the oldest South Asian media arts outfit in the US, Vaidya was co-director of the organization from 2006-2018, leading programming, exhibition, and outreach. His own eco-media practice pays due attention to the material, social, and intellectual impacts of our storytelling and media technologies, reminding us that we must be attentive to both the footprint and the brain-print of the stories we tell. He is currently one of the content producers for Apex-Express, which airs on Berkeley’s KPFA 94.1 community radio station. Through this platform, he has been able to amplify stories of indigenous forest communities in Bombay (India) who are facing the threat of displacement and erasure from the onslaught of development.
azade Minasian
azade Minasian is an urban Native a graduate in Native American Studies from UC Davis. Through these studies, azade has been participating in prescribed burns since 2022 and has engaged in significant research about the Indigenous history of the Yolo bioregion. azade uses various modes of creative design as well as digital outreach to engage Yolo County communities in advocacy and storytelling for the creeks. A self-taught artist, azade has used screen-printing, zines, acrylic painting, stamps, and buttons to create art about Yolo creeks.
Christina Almendariz
Christina Almendariz is a Native Californian cultural practitioner of Maidu/Wintun/Hupa and Yurok heritage. A Montessori teacher and mother of six, she is passionate about nurturing the next generation of environmental stewards. She’s been leading cultural and outdoor learning programs for the last two decades, and is our lead coordinator for the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) program.
Ooti Maxine
Ooti Maxine is a cultural practitioner and a visual artist, who has grown up in her Maidu homeland in Sacramento. As a young urban Indigenous woman, her work speaks of the many influences that shape contemporary life for Native Californians. She has been working with tule since her childhood, and has been assisting her mother Diana with workshops for over a decade.
Dr. Geoffrey Attardo
Dr. Geoffrey Attardo is a Professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at UC Davis. Dr. Attardo’s lab group research focuses on how human changes to the environment affect mosquitoes, their habitats, and their disease transmission. Prior to joining the UC Davis faculty in 2017, Dr. Attardo worked for 13 years in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health as a Research Scientist. In addition to his science work, Prof. Attardo also enjoys photography, illustration and 3D modeling.
Bear Tate
Bear Tate Bear is of Maidu/Wintun/Hupa/Yurok and Blackfoot heritage. He is currently attending high school and plans to attend community college next fall. Bear spent his childhood learning alongside his mother Christina and his grandmother Diana, and he’s taken a strong interest in his culture, as well as wetland stewardship. As he’s become part of the YoloSol team, he’s continued his passionate connection and practice in working with tule and acorn, doing cultural fire, and gathering. Bear is helping to preserve our Indigenous knowledge for his family and future generations.
