Kyle is a community-based natural resource management professional, with experience working for international and grassroots NGOs across the Himalayas, Southeast Asia and California. Working with forest communities around the world, he has witnessed the power of tree planting to build ecological resilience while preserving culture. Before receiving the Fellowship, Kyle served as Community Project Manager with Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF), where he organized and implemented 30 neighborhood-level greening campaigns and the planting of over 2000 trees across the streets of San Francisco. When he is not planting trees, Kyle serves as founder and co-director of the Thrive East Bay Choir, where he is writing and performing original gospel-for-social-change music in a growing, purpose-driven community based in Oakland. He is a former resident of Green Gulch Farm, and continues to draw inspiration and energy from his practice in the Soto Zen tradition.