By Simren Kaur Corral, Development Manager
Biography
Simren is a sustainability and development leader who is passionate about supporting grassroots organizations to make deep impacts in their communities. With deep roots in Sacramento, CA, she has witnessed for herself how climate change has impacted her home. She has a background in nonprofit development and has a Master of Science in Engineering, Sustainability, and Health. At SanDiego350, Simren seeks to build stronger relationships with donors and stakeholders while also spearheading fundraising campaigns to help strengthen the financial future of the organization. Simren is an avid reader and gardener who has both an ever-growing reading list and an expanding garden plan.
I’m beyond excited to be joining the SanDiego350 team as the incoming Development Manager. I’m really looking forward to getting to know the wonderful network that supports everything SD350 because it’s clear that this work couldn’t happen without each of you. I love meeting new people and learning about their passions and interests, so please stop me to chat if you see me at any upcoming events!
While I’ve been living in San Diego since 2015, I grew up in Sacramento, California, and spent much of my life there. I witnessed firsthand how each summer seemed hotter, each wildfire season worse, and each subsequent drought more severe than the last. Feeling a deep sense of climate anxiety and grief motivated me to take action with the Sunrise Movement and join the San Diego hub in 2022 while working full-time for a small nonprofit. During this time, I got involved in local youth-led climate justice efforts and learned what exactly it meant to be a community organizer. Soon after that, I was able to use my nonprofit experience to pivot into more community-based work at an urban farming nonprofit called Three Sisters Gardens. I worked remotely as the Program Development Coordinator there and developed a love for grassroots organizations because of the direct impact we made on community members. While we were able to provide direct assistance to folks experiencing food insecurity, our work struggled to address the systemic factors that create the conditions for inequitable food access. I delved deeper into these issues during graduate school at the University of San Diego, where I received an M.S. in Engineering, Sustainability, and Health.
Many of the challenges to food security – like most inequities – are due to entrenched, racist policy decisions that keep people stratified in their respective socioeconomic classes. Policy decisions that were made decades ago by people in power dictate what we have (oil monopolies, pollution, food access disparities) and what we don’t have (robust public transit, widespread renewable energy, a just and sustainable future). These decisions have top-down impacts that require top-down changes for us to see meaningful impacts for our futures – but that takes time. More time than we have, frankly. That’s why bottom-up organizing to demand change is imperative, and bottom-up solutions to provide support – like food assistance – are a safety net we can’t afford to lose. The solutions are as complex as the problems themselves, but it just takes pulling at one thread to unravel the whole cloth.
I’m excited to join the SD350 team because they’re aiming to do exactly that – bridging the gap between mobilization and advocacy to create a movement that exerts pressure on those in charge to use their power to lay the foundation for a better future. This is exactly the type of disruption I’m trying to be a part of, because at the core of it, I seek to leave this place (earth) better than I found it, and something tells me that you do, too.