The James Irvine Foundation today announced the recipients of its 2025 Leadership Awards, honoring seven inspiring leaders who are transforming California’s future. / The James Irvine Foundation website

Every year The James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards honor nonprofit leaders who are tackling some of the state's most challenging problems. The leaders are often working too close to the ground to be well-known yet they are advancing innovative solutions, informing policymakers and inspiring the next generation of leaders. At an Ethnic Media briefing, recent recipients of the award shared their work and how they create change at the community level.

Nayamin Martinez, Executive Director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network. 

Martinez has lived in Fresno, California for the last 25 years. 

“Since the first time I got to this country, I have made it my mission to help immigrant communities, especially farm workers,” said Martinez. “In the Central Valley farm work is one of the main occupations of people who look like me. They come from Latin America, English is our second or third language and oftentimes they are ignored and discarded like we are not important. So, the work that I do since I came to the USA is for them.”

“Three, four months after I had arrived in Fresno, I was able to get engaged in relocating over 40 Oaxacan families that were living near a toxic waste dump where Chevron had been poisoning the land where their homes were.”

Outside of Fresno in the late '90s, a group of 32 Mixtec families were found living in a trailer park located on an old toxic waste dump that had been declared a Superfund site. After negotiations among CRLA, Chevron Corp., and the Environmental Protection Agenc Chevron paid to relocate the families in new homes in a community called Casa San Miguel, named after their hometown in Oaxaca.

Martinez works to support people disproportionately impacted by air and water pollution, pesticide exposure and extreme heat. Her work has driven significant policy wins, including California's first statewide pesticide notification system and bans on oil drilling near populated areas. 

“CCEJN not only advocates for policy changes. We are also working to provide short-term solutions to these environmental problems. We have been able to provide free filters for communities that have water contamination and air purifiers to those affected by wildfire smoke, meeting their immediate needs while working to achieve long-term solutions.

“My entire family and friends are in Mexico. So, these immigrants that I met 25 years ago became my family,” she said. 

“This is our family. And it's more than a job.”

Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy 

Both Cutcha Risling Baldy, PhD (enrolled Hoopa Valley Tribe, Yurok/Karuk) and Dr. Kaitlin Reed, PhD, (enrolled Yurok Tribe, Hupa/Oneida) received The James Irvine Foundation's 2025 Leadership Award. They were born in Humboldt County and each felt strong connections to their cultures.

Dr. Risling Baldy is Hoopa, York, and Karuk. Those are three of the largest tribes in California and also three of the largest land holders, in terms of tribal lands in California. 

“We are indigenous peoples who came relatively late in contact with the white man. We did not have a massive influx of Westerners or settlers until 1849 with the gold rush. So unlike other parts of the United States or even California, we had a long period of time, up until the mid-1800s, where we were still exercising and working through our cultural ways of living.”

“The other thing about us is many of us are still in our Aboriginal territories. We have never been removed, which means we have unbroken connections to our knowledge and our lands. Our indigenous knowledge is based on thousands of years of scientific experimentation.”

Dr. Risling Baldy’s and Dr. Reed’s work has placed indigenous sciences for the first time as a formal field of study in the academy.
 
At Cal Poly Humboldt campus, they have extended the university’s resources to support the broader Indigenous community. Dr. Baldy, along with Dr. Reed, serve as co-directors of Rou Dalagurr: Food Sovereignty Lab & Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute (Rou Dalagurr). They have created transformative spaces like the Food Sovereignty Lab and Wiyot Plaza and mentored students to lead initiatives that build on and integrate Indigenous knowledge and practices into both academia and the community.

“Humans are often considered outside of nature. Our knowledge says humans are a part of nature. Indigenous peoples lived in that world before colonization, so we can tell you what it looks like when everybody has a house, when everybody has the food, they need to eat, when everybody feels good about the way that they live together. And we know that that comes from how you work with the land in a relationship,” said Baldy.

“This isn't about traditional knowledge. This is about current knowledge, evolving knowledge based on foundations over many, many centuries.”

Helen Iris Torres, CEO of Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE) 

Helen Torres runs a Los Angeles-based organization with statewide impact that supports Latinas statewide to be civic leaders and advocates for policies that champion economic and political parity. The organization has grown into an impressive network of notable alumni leaders. Sixty one percent serve on government boards or commissions and sixteen percent hold or run elected office. 

“I had a very serious heart disease growing up. My mother brought myself and my sister as a single mother from Puerto Rico to Detroit, Michigan. She was a monolingual Spanish speaker.  She had to navigate a public education system that did not provide for my sister and I to have a bilingual education; a healthcare system that was very unfriendly and difficult to navigate; and a society that, quite frankly, discriminated and harassed her for being a single mother. I was a witness to this.”

She witnessed the injustice of the world.

“Either we can keep bearing witness or we can do something about it. And one of the things I decided to do as soon as I found out that there was this great organization called Hope was to join it as a volunteer back in 1997.”

She has spent half of her life on this mission to ensure economic and political parity for Latinas. 

“We can collectively become a society that elevates each of us. ensures we meet our human potential and dream big. That's what motivates me to be leading an organization like Hope: We can solve anything together.”

The James Irvine Foundation is now accepting nominations for the 2026 Leadership Awards

Cindy Downing, the program officer at the James Irvine Foundation made the call for nominations for the 2026 awards program to honor leaders who are confronting California's most critical challenges with innovative solutions that help to build the better future for our state.

“The Leadership Awards recognize individuals advancing breakthrough solutions to critical issues facing California. Each Award recipient’s organization receives $350,000 and help sharing their solutions with policymakers and other leaders in their communities,” she said.

The initial nomination consists now of just three short narrative questions due March.12.

Following this, nominees who accept the nomination will be accepted providing a more detailed submission by Apr.30.

“This we hope will allow them to showcase their work. And their impact in ways that are meaningful to them.”

These awards come with significant financial support. The foundation provides each recipient's organization with a grant of $350,000 help to amplify their approaches, make connections to policymakers, peers, other funders. It also includes an art project to help them communicate narratives about their work in a very crowded and muddled media landscape. 

To learn more, click on: https://irvineawards.org/nominations/