Ravahn is a first generation Oakland-er and recently completed a Master of Public Policy degree from Mills College where he reconnected to CEJA’s work and leadership on the Transformative Climate Communities policy. He comes to CEJA with a decade’s worth of experience running candidate, issue, and union organizing campaigns. They were transformative and fatiguing experiences. He first got stirred up by environmental justice work during the No on Prop 23 campaign in 2010 where he was introduced to coalition work and saw the fomenting community of POC-led organizations flexing their electoral muscles. CEJA’s place-based convening of local member organizations across the state aligns closely with Ravahn’s theory of change.
Faith-based organizing campaigns remain his primary model for organizing as a member of a Quaker community. Their historic commitments to justice and holding community were formative early experiences he grew up around. Oakland is another moniker he holds with pride and is grateful to have been the recipient of education from Black leadership in the public school system.
He enjoys group learning environments and building patience for shared processes. He is interested in creating strong organizations that are conversant in working through conflict and building cultures of learning. Underlying his experience is a recognition that we have one planet and that communities know the answers to their own problems.
Travel has been an important education for him having lived 6 months each in Bolivia, Iran, and Morocco. One of the first intentional choices that he made was to travel to Iran as a high school student to better understand his father’s passion for the culture. It was an important alternative frame of reference to the popular culture of the United States.