Marissa Christan Leonard is an AI policy advisor and operations generalist with a background in advocacy for small communities, ecosystems, and public land in the American West — sometimes serving organizations, sometimes creating them, and sometimes going it alone in moments when no one else was backing up the work.

At the beginning of her career, Marissa worked for watershed restoration organizations such as the Mono Lake Committee and Restore Hetch Hetchy in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain region. She co-founded and served as Policy Director for a startup that aimed to build enforcement infrastructure for legislation promoting carbon reduction in rural municipalities. Much of her life has also been spent building community through non-conventional service jobs in places like Yosemite National Park, experience that affords her a deep understanding of what happens when systems crumble while they continue to run.