Connie Stewart is a former Mayor and City Councilwoman of Arcata, California. She recently worked as the Senior Field Representative for California Assemblywoman Patty Berg. As Berg’s representative, Stewart took an active role in addressing major public policy issues—including health care, economic development, infrastructure and the environment. She earned her bachelor’s degree in speech communication at Humboldt State University in 1988.
Stewart has dedicated her entire career to civic service and leadership with a broad array of organizations: Redwood Coast Rural Action, Community Health Alliance, Humboldt Energy Task Force (co-founder), Redwood Coast Energy Authority (former chair and co-founder), the Northcoast Environmental Center (employee), Arcata Community Recycling Center (former board member), North Coast Big Brothers/Big Sisters (former board member) and the KHSU-FM community advisory panel (former chair). She is a former President of the Local Government Commission--an organization that focuses on educating elected officials on “Smart Growth” principals.
Jessica was born and raised in rural northern California. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley and her Medical Degree from the University of California, San Francisco. She completed a residency in Family Medicine and Preventive Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University and concurrently completed a Masters in Public Health at Portland State University. Her training focused on health administration and policy, population based medicine and epidemiology. Her research interests include health disparities, access to healthcare in rural communities, preventive medicine and environmental and global health.
Sheila is a Professor of Sociology at Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. She completed her bachelor's at the University of California, Santa Barbara; her master's at the University of California, Berkeley; and her doctorate at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include sociospatial research, rural poverty, rural health, applied sociology, community development, and environmental sociology. She has conducted field research in Nepal, Guatemala, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and northern California. The theme throughout this research has been the examination of people and their relationship to space and place. Recently, she has co-authored a book entitled, GIS For the Social Sciences: Investigating Space and Place, Sage Publications (2006). Her current research examines how to integrate GIS into rural health research. In 2000, she joined Humboldt State University, where she now teaches courses on human interactions with the physical environment at the local, national, and global levels.
Terry joined the CCRP in September 2006, moving from Colorado where she was evaluator for a prevention research center focused on health behavior interventions in rural communities. She completed her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Kansas; her graduate work was in educational psychology and research. Her research interests include community-based participatory research methods in health, rural health care, and chronic disease prevention. Other interests are in graphic facilitation used for community assessment and planning, and equity issues in education and health care.
Kristina came to CCRP in the fall of 2007 after working for seven years at Six Rivers Planned Parenthood in Eureka, California. She received her bachelor's in English from Denison University in Granville, Ohio and her master's in English from the University of California, Irvine. She is an active volunteer in the Humboldt County community.
