Meet Our Team

At Suelo Sano, each member of our team is driven by the importance of ecological regeneration, sustainable farming practices, and stewardship of land and resources. Our core team includes the following members.

Valentine Espinoza, Director

Valentine Espinoza is a citizen soil scientist and educator who focuses on efforts to engage communities in preventing soil erosion and nutrient loss, along with education and practice that supports water conservation, carbon sequestration, water-holding capacity of local soils, and other factors that will contribute to a more resilient regional food system. She founded Suelo Sano in 2021 with the goal of making safe food cultivation accessible to communities throughout Chicago and supporting relationships of reciprocity with the land.

Valentine enjoys learning about small and large water cycles and aquifer regeneration using rainwater retention and infiltration principles, while seeking to understand the natural and manmade events that affect the soil and geology of an area. She also enjoys traveling to soil symposiums to expand her knowledge and remain current in the field, both in the United States and Mexico. 

An avid photographer, Valentine has contributed to film and multimedia projects centered on ecological practices as well. She studied anthropology at DePaul University and holds a Water Harvest Design Certification from the Water Management Group in Tucson, Arizona. In her educational work, she has developed curriculum and facilitated workshops on topics like farming in an arid climate, cultivating rain-ready ecosystems, and drawing from traditional land-based practices to inform urban agriculture. She has also presented on numerous panels focusing on issues like food equity, developing sustainable urban foodways, and soil science.

Clayton Wassilak, Director 

Clayton Wassilak is passionate about the restoration and diversification of open spaces in both protected preserves and private yards. His work stems from his belief that everyone plays a role in their ecosystem and we get to choose what kind of world we want to live in. In his ecological work, he has held the following roles:

• Ecological restoration technician at Natural Resource Management INC
• Soil food web lab technician at Dr. Elaine’s Soil Food Web School
• Native plant nursery manager at Master Design Landscape
• Board member and head of ecological restoration at Homewood Izaak Walton Preserve

Clayton holds a bachelor of arts in biology and environmental studies from Augustana College.

Ericka Gonzalez Guzman, Director 

Ericka Gonzalez Guzman (she/they) is a catalyst for positive change in the community that surrounds her. As a Latina immigrant, she is dedicated to integrating her Mexican heritage into her work to uplift and advance the representation of other marginalized groups in urban sustainable agriculture. 

Ericka is an active member of impactful organizations such as Advocates for Urban Agriculture, serving as a water policy steward by organizing coalitions to shape the future of equitable urban agriculture policy work. In these efforts, she strives to expand affordable water access and center the needs of urban growers in Chicago. Additionally, Ericka acts as a board and advisory member of Suelo Sano, supporting the organization’s efforts to enhance soil health for vulnerable communities of color. 

Advisory Board

Louise Benally, Consultant on Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Louise Benally is the director of Indigenous Cultural Concepts, an organization focused on traditional foodways, gardening, and outdoor education projects. A 65-year-old mother, grandmother, and clan mother from the Dineh nation, she is an advocate for Indigenous water, land, and human rights.

Louise is the winner of the 1989 Reebok Human Rights award. She is also the Traditional Knowledge Holder for the To’is Ke’ (Water is Relative) and a consultant working in early childhood education with parents and communities throughout the Navajo Nation.

Louise is involved with the Outdoor Education Network as well, where she promotes traditional education in survival skills for the youth of her nation and beyond, using art as a tool to broaden young minds. 

Louise also acts as an advisor for many environmental organizations and local Dineh change-makers.

Amrita Kaur (she/her) is a first-generation Punjabi-Canadian, a practicing Sikh, and a social justice advocate whose work is rooted in the belief that healing and justice are inseparable from the land, the communities, and the relationships we tend.

As Director of Programs and Partnerships at Inspire Action for Social Change, Amrita leads with both heart and rigor in the movement to interrupt domestic violence. She brings a social justice and healing-centered approach to her work, supporting communities in responding to post-separation abuse and building systems that center survivor safety. Amrita understands that the conditions that allow gender violence to persist are the same conditions that allow communities and ecosystems to be exploited. Structural harm does not stop at the front door.

Amrita holds a particular commitment to the ways that women, girls, and gender-expansive people bear a disproportionate burden of environmental degradation alongside gender-based violence. Food insecurity, contaminated land, and climate displacement are not separate from domestic violence; they are part of the same interlocking system of control and harm. Her work to transform relationships with histories of intimate partner violence into ones rooted in love,  compassion, and accountability is, at its core, about restoring conditions in which all people, and all living things, can flourish.

Grounded in the Sikh principle of Sarbat da Bhala, the well-being of all, Amrita approaches her advocacy as a long-haul commitment. She is honored to stand alongside the Suelo Sano Collective in the shared understanding that healthy soil and healthy communities are not separate goals but the same goal, viewed from different angles.

Amrita holds a Public Service-focused Juris Doctorate, a Master of Public Administration with a concentration in international development, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, all from DePaul University. She is invested in making and maintaining meaningful relationships by expanding the love we all hold within.

Suree Towfighnia, Consultant on Education + Media + Community Engagement 

Suree is a documentary filmmaker and educator. With her production company, Prairie Dust Films, she directed and co-produced Crying Earth Rise Up (2015), which explores the impact of uranium mining on the water and people of the Great Plains, as well as Standing Silent Nation (2007), which chronicles a Lakota family’s efforts to gain economic independence by growing industrial hemp on their traditional lands. Suree works with youth, elders, and everyone in between to develop documentation skills and strengthen media strategy in organizations, communities, universities, and schools. Suree is a Persian, Mexican, Polish/German woman from Chicago, and she currently works as an assistant professor in video production at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Colorado. 

Reuben Cruz, Advisor: Cultural Awareness + Land Protection

Reuben is a Piipaash/Quechan/Mexican writer, educator, and poet who was raised along the Gila and Salt Rivers in the Colorado River Basin of central Arizona. Reuben’s poetry, hip-hop music, and writing form strands in water protection, LANDBACK, and cultural revitalization efforts continent-wide. Reuben has directed and scripted documentaries and videos and provided the soundtrack for PBS’s Crying Earth Rise Up. His film Lakota and the Wild West Shows is screening at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History through 2042.  Reuben is published in Truthout, Waging Nonviolence, High Times, and self-published poetry books. 

The Suelo Sano Collective

Meet our other collective members who play a central role in our work.

ViVe Sustainability: Victor and Veronica Medina

Victor and Veronica Medina are amateur mycologists and native plant enthusiasts growing a micro food forest in the inner city of Chicago. They advocate for restoration and biodiversity to increase habitat and food for wildlife. Inspired by a desire to understand our living world and actively take part in the cycles in nature, they are working alongside our plant, fungal, and animal allies in regenerative ecology. Through careful plant selection, composting methods, regenerative practices, and mycoremediation, they aim to help increase biodiversity and restoration of habitat. 

9th Trtl: Jose, Bety, & Family

Jose and Bety Frausto-Sandoval are 9th trtl, an urban homesteading family based in the southwest side of Chicago. With over 15 years of gardening experience and over 7 years of active homesteading, they share a hands-on, evolving approach to growing food and living sustainably in an urban environment. Through 9th trtl, they document the process of cultivating vegetables, fruits, and herbs; raising worms and bees; composting; and creating homemade goods like kombucha — all rooted in a commitment to reducing environmental impact and becoming more self-sufficient. What began as a way to save money, take control of food sources, and reconnect with nature has grown into a meaningful practice of stewardship and community sharing. They use their platform to offer practical tips, DIY projects, and reflections, inviting others to explore urban homesteading as an accessible, rewarding path toward sustainability.