Meet the Board of Environmental Safety Appointees

Alexis Strauss Hacker has felt a connection to the environment since her childhood in South Africa, living in proximity to beautiful mountains and two oceans. Today, enjoying the Bay Area outdoors reinforces her motivation to continue the work that has both defined her life and equipped her to serve as vice chair of California’s inaugural Board of Environmental Safety.

After moving to Southern California as a pre-teen, Alexis studied geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and visited every National Park in the state as an intern with the National Park Service. That experience, combined with another early job as a file clerk at the Veteran’s Administration, prepared Alexis for her public-service career. Disheartened at the challenges veterans faced trying to obtain their records, she has been committed to making government responsive to the public.

Upon earning her master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA, Alexis accepted a presidential internship appointment to US EPA Region 9 in San Francisco, where she served for 40 years, eventually as acting regional administrator. She worked to improve drinking water, fund critical water infrastructure, and work with Tribes and Pacific Island territories. As a senior manager of multiple programs, including the water and site clean-up programs, Alexis maintained a firm focus on strengthening EPA’s workforce by hiring and retaining people committed to making a difference every day.

Her post-EPA career has not slowed Alexis’ commitment to protecting people and the planet. She serves as a governor-appointed member and vice chair of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Governor Newsom appointed Alexis to the Board of Environmental Safety in 2022, a role she sees as a continuation of her life’s work. “It’s about being responsive to the public in advancing DTSC reforms with transparency and integrity.”

Sushma D. Bhatia’s passion for inclusion, access, and solving difficult problems was shaped by her early experiences growing up in multiple countries – experiencing war, living as a refugee, and attending girls-only schools in the Middle East. Sushma’s role on California’s inaugural Board of Environmental Safety draws on her life experience and her vast and varied personal and professional accomplishments.

After completing high school in Dubai, Sushma returned to her native India to earn a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from IIT Mumbai – one of 20 women studying alongside 400 men. It was here that she became aware of the importance of gender equity. She went on to earn her master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Southern California.

“I think of myself as a global citizen,” Sushma says. “Growing up in multiple countries was early training in cultural competency. Through the significant changes I experienced, I learned a resilience that I bring to my environmental work. I learned to focus on the ‘progress principle,’ finding small wins as a path to solve tough problems.”

Sushma’s first professional experience – air quality modeling of polluting sites – opened her eyes to the impact of chemicals on people’s health and lives. This was the motivation to leave the private sector and pursue public service. She spent the following 11 years with the city of San Francisco developing science-based policies and programs to reduce the impact of toxic chemicals on public health. Her curiosity and desire to learn systems-level thinking led Sushma to earn an MBA from U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where she launched a company that encouraged environmental stewardship through the reuse of children’s products.

Sushma is now Head of Strategy and Operations, Payments Partnerships at Google, where she contributes to driving greater access to financial systems and opportunities for people around the world. She also serves as a mentor with the non-profit Fishbowl Challenge, bringing students together globally to solve global challenges.

Governor Newsom appointed Sushma to the Board of Environmental Safety in 2022. She brings her search for innovation, ability to drive science-based decision making and operational transformation as a way to solve complex legacy issues. She sees her role on the Board as an opportunity to harness the passion and wisdom gained from all her experiences in science, in government, and in the corporate world. She has found her time on the Board rewarding, fulfilling, and challenging.

“There are intense moments during our public hearings where we get to hear deeply personal stories from impacted communities. I carry the weight of people who feel the state of California isn’t solving their problems. I feel and understand their frustrations and channel all of it to figure out how we move forward in a way that is helpful. I strive to balance both the corporate impulse to go as fast as we can and the need within government to slow down intentionally because it’s so important that we get it right.”

Ingrid Brostrom is an environmental justice attorney, educator, and advocate with decades of legal and policy experience. She is currently the Climate, Sustainability and Jobs Program Director at the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. Ingrid previously served as Assistant Director of the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, where she led the organization’s Toxic-Free Communities campaign. As part of that campaign, Ingrid coordinated the People’s Senate, a coalition of residents and advocates from communities impacted by toxic waste working to drive reform in California. She also taught environmental justice at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

Before graduating from UC College of Law, San Francisco, Ingrid interned with the Jane Goodall Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Sierra Club. It was another internship, with the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment during her final summer in law school, that prompted Ingrid to shift her focus toward environmental justice. She has since advocated on behalf of vulnerable communities impacted by hazardous waste facilities and cleanup projects around the state.

Ingrid is no stranger to DTSC, having served on numerous advisory bodies, including the Department’s Community Protection and Hazardous Waste Reduction Advisory Committee and more recently its Equitable Community Revitalization Grant Treatment Technology Council.

Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas appointed Ingrid to the Board of Environmental Safety in February 2024 for a term that expires in July 2027.

Georgette Gómez knows environmental injustice firsthand and brings years of advocacy and policy expertise to California’s inaugural Board of Environmental Safety. The former president of the San Diego City Council, she has experience collaborating with diverse constituencies to meet challenges.

Growing up in the environmentally burdened Barrio Logan area of San Diego, Georgette was shaped by the stark contrasts she witnessed daily being bused to school in a more affluent community – clean parks, clean air, and supermarkets instead of liquor stores. Driven by questions of why her community had been built differently and was treated differently, she became an environmental justice activist in high school and went on to major in environmental and natural resource geography at San Diego State.

Georgette’s study of science and policy and her commitment to building healthier communities led to a career with the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC). She successfully fought the re-permitting of a power plant in a vulnerable community, partnered with other non-profits in the statewide California Environmental Justice Alliance, and eventually became EHC’s associate director.

Today, Georgette is community development and strategy officer for Casa Familiar, a non-profit community development agency, where she oversees the development of low-income housing near the Mexican border, with an aim to improve air and water quality, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas emissions.

The California State Senate appointed Georgette to the Board of Environmental Safety in 2021. In her role on the Board, she embraces her activist roots, speaking up for communities that have not been engaged historically, but she also recognizes the importance of industry and the need for practical, realistic regulation and oversight to meet decades-long challenges.

“It’s my responsibility and my great honor to be part of the solution. But it’s not going to happen without pushing, asking tough questions, and holding people accountable. Because they won’t change unless we make it happen.”

Prior to joining DTSC in May 2022, Swati was the research and policy director at the California Health Nail Salon Collaborative. There, she crafted legislation focused on worker health protection and developed training tools for more than 3,000 nail technicians. Previously, as manager of San Francisco’s Commercial Toxics Reduction and Green Business Program, she helped businesses choose safer products and was instrumental in implementing pollution prevention policies. Swati created and implemented the Green Cleaning Custodial Program, adopted by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, and was the lead author for San Francisco’s ban on flame retardant chemicals in furniture and juvenile products, where she collaborated closely with manufactures and retailers to meet furniture specifications.

Swati earned a Master of Science in Global Environmental Health from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics from the University of California, Los Angeles.