Rachel Kippen is a coastal environmental advocate, nonprofit professional, and artist. She has over 15 years’ experience in environmental programming at such organizations as the California Academy of Sciences, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Catalina Island Marine Institute, guiding kayaks and crewing boats in Elkhorn Slough and the Gulf of the Farallons, Save Our Shores, and the City of Watsonville. She is currently the Executive Director of ocean education nonprofit, O’Neill Sea Odyssey. She received her undergraduate degree Environmental Studies from the University of Redlands, holds a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from San Francisco State, a Certificate in Transdisciplinary Environmental Education from Cornell, and completed her graduate research in Environmental Justice Education and Social Ecology at Prescott College. As part of her graduate research, she studied the environmental justice issues associated with agricultural plastics and their many sustainability complexities, and worked closely with the Elkhorn Slough Foundation to retrieve discarded plastics from abused properties within the watershed, where she began her weaving practice.
