Tatianna Peck, Board President

Originally from beautiful South Lake Tahoe, Tatianna relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue a B.A. from UC Berkeley.  Upon graduating she found her professional home in the non-profit sector, and is currently the Outreach and Membership Services Manager at Earthjustice.  In this role, Tatianna provides strategic direction for activities designed to build and maintain strong relationships with current and prospective donors, convey the impact of their generosity, and inspire their long-term support.

Before joining Earthjustice, Tatianna served as Donor Engagement & Stewardship manager for CARE’s Western Region Office, where she partnered with Major Gifts Officers to facilitate strategic cultivation and stewardship of CARE’s most deeply invested allies.  Previous to her tenure at CARE, Tatianna served as Database & Donor Relations Manager at Girls Inc. of Alameda County. As part of a deeply collaborative team, Tatianna helped plan and execute major events, oversaw all aspects of the CRM system, managed the production and dissemination of outreach materials, and engaged in campaign analysis and strategy.

Tatianna is a lifelong fan of arachnids, and was raised alongside her family’s own animal ambassador, a California king snake (creatively dubbed “Snakey”) who made regular appearances at show-and-tell.  These days, Tatianna has a number of reptilian roommates, but has a particularly soft spot for Nutmeg, the Argentine red tegu.

Marisol Cantu, Board Secretary

Marisol, a Xicana teacher activist, was born and raised in Richmond, CA. After obtaining her Master's in Linguistics with a concentration in multicultural education, she returned to teach ESL at her alma mater, Contra Costa College.

Esther Tang, Board Treasurer

Esther is a bilingual educator designing and delivering multilingual experiences for onsite and virtual platforms in an informal science education setting at the California Academy of Sciences. With an emphasis in providing tools and resources to other departments to expand multilingual and culturally relevant programs, she plays an active role in regular programmatic evaluation, facilitating outreach efforts within the community, coaching museum educators in training and people with disabilities while providing an inclusive work experience internship.

She holds a PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from the University of California, San Francisco.

Patty Donald, Board Member

Patty was born and raised in Berkeley, graduated with a degree in Parks Interpretation and recently retired from the City of Berkeley where for 38 years she created and ran recreational and environmental educational programs, shoreline cleanups, Berkeley Bay Festival, Kite Festival and managed the unique Adventure Playground. 120,000 people a year go through these facilities.

Patty developed Bay Interpretive Training program for Docents which she taught to over 1400 docents. Patty and her staff raised  money to build the Shorebird Park Nature center’s two new buildings, a Straw bale interpretive Visitors Center.

Patty worked with the California Coastal Commission's coastal cleanup program for 32 years and was President of the board of The Aquatic Outreach institute- (now the Watershed project) for 7 years, on the board of the Save San Francisco Bay Association for 5 years, the board of the Citizen for the East Shore parks board for 6 years. Patty is currently helping reestablish the Rotary Nature Center on Lake Merritt. For the past 38 years, Patty has been on the board of the Victorian Preservation Center of Oakland ‘s historic Cohen Bray house where her grandfather was born. Here Patty is currently developing a new docent training program as well as doing house maintenance, tours and outreach to the neighborhood and region.

Jennifer Ellis, Board Member

Jenn has served as a volunteer with Things That Creep since 2019. She has spent her life as a passionate advocate for conservation and nature education. Professionally, she has spent the last 10 years working as a nonprofit lawyer and education policy director. She is a graduate of Indiana University - Bloomington law school and Washington State University.