The Lawrence Hall of Science
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Director of Programs at YES Nature to Neighborhoods
A: My name is Blanca Olivia Hernandez. My pronouns are she/her/ella.
The way I engage with science and learning is through my role as the Director of Programs and Partnerships at YES Nature to Neighborhoods. I have the privilege of designing—alongside my team and the Richmond community—programs and curricula that integrate natural science, community knowledge, leadership development, and advocacy. Our goal is to create accessible and culturally affirming learning experiences for people who have historically been excluded from environmental education and leadership opportunities, and to connect learning to lived experience, identity, and action—especially in these times of accelerating climate change.
Personally, I’ve always been hungry for knowledge. As an immigrant coming from a place where high school or middle school wasn’t even an option for me, education wasn’t something I could access the way I wanted to. My parents really believed in education as a way for our family to break a cycle of poverty we had lived through for generations.
Right now I’m pursuing my master’s in natural sciences and environmental education to deepen my understanding of ecological systems, environmental justice, and culturally sustaining approaches to learning. I believe this journey can help me learn different ways of knowing so I can make our programs even more impactful. I love what I do, I love learning—I’ve been hungry for it all my life. Now that I have access, I’m always consuming: a Bay Nature lunch hour learning about algae, listening to lectures—any minute I can.
A: YES is celebrating about 25 years. It started in the late 1990s as a scholarship organization for summer camp. At the time, there was a lot of community violence, and the founder wanted young people to get into nature so they could just be kids. She volunteered in schools and saw that many kids were spending their summers indoors—that’s really how the organization was born.
When I joined in 2008, I was fresh out of college and wanted to understand the organization’s impact. I’m really data-driven, so I interviewed people and collected information. I was the second person hired—working alongside the executive director (the first hire), Eric. After looking at the data, I told him we should create a youth program, and we built it from there. Over the years, we grew, and every program that has emerged has come from listening sessions, interviews, and really talking to people about what kind of program they’d want to be part of on their time off—because people are working.
YES emphasizes reconnecting people to nature alongside economic self-sufficiency—like, how do I get a job, how do I become a leader in my community? We focus on agency: being a changemaker, having a voice. We have a youth leadership pathway and an adult leadership pathway, and each pathway has cohorts.
Cohorts focus on topics like belonging in the environment, park equity, access to green space, shoreline access, protecting ocean ecosystems, and minimizing plastic consumption. In the adult track, people learn about the systems in the community—why it struggles, why it’s under-resourced—and develop skills to participate in public decision-making, like school district board meetings, to advocate for themselves, their families, and the larger community.
We’re a medium-sized organization—about 20 people—and I love being able to look at the work and the world through a multifaceted lens. That’s what environmental education is.
A: I’ve been partnering with The Lawrence for a number of years, and what inspires me to continue that partnership is our shared commitment to inclusive science learning.
In 2020, I served as the lead author for Building Towards an Inclusive Organizational Culture (co-written with The Lawrence’s Valeria Romero), which was the third brief in a series connected to Working Towards Equitable Organizations. That project involved a lot of reflection and processing around how we build equity within our organization.
In 2022, I partnered with The Lawrence to develop an evaluation framework for our youth programming, which strengthened our ability to assess our impact and youth outcomes.
And in 2024, I participated with the team on the CREO evaluation work funded by the National Science Foundation—Culturally Responsive Environmental Outcomes. I think we also presented in Philadelphia in 2024 (my timeline might be a little off because I got sick last year).
Also, because we work with young people, two of our cohorts visit The Lawrence each year at the beginning of the pathway. We want our young people to be immersed not only in nature, but also in spaces like the Cal Academy and The Lawrence Hall of Science, so they can start to see themselves in these fields early on.
A: My work is possible through strong, equity-centered relationships—partnerships built on trust, reciprocity, and long-term commitment to community, guided by a shared vision for a sustainable world.
At the core are partnerships with the youth and families I work with, who inform every step we take as an organization. The educators we invite and the community leaders who come in bring lived experience, cultural knowledge, and local wisdom that shapes how young people receive learning.
These relationships are nurtured over time—none of this is one-time.
In terms of traditions, I think about intergenerational and cross-cultural learning—holding space with BIPOC community members, having translators involved, sharing stories, and learning from elders who keep our cultures alive. That place-based knowledge and culturally sustaining practices help us remember that environmental education isn’t transactional—it’s relational—and it emphasizes an ethical responsibility to the world.
Collaboration is constant for me because partnerships are literally in my title. I’m always working with schools, community partners, outdoor environmental partners, institutions, and public agencies—ideally in partnerships where power is shared, equity is centered, and systemic injustice is understood. Institutions like the Lawrence and Cal Academy help bridge formal and informal education in a way that makes learning exciting.
In terms of community practices, I’m a “data geek” and really into frameworks—using research-based frameworks like Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and Policy, Systems, and Environmental change (PSE). But the key is activating those frameworks with community voices: the community tells us what they want to learn about and advocate for, and then we build the plan with them.
For example, we have a park equity project where people learn about access to green space, who has access to the coast and who doesn’t, and how to advocate for watersheds. These frameworks also help young people understand power—who the power players are—and build communication and relationships so they don’t feel like, “there’s nothing I can do.” It becomes: there’s power in understanding systems, and we can build community power to be ethically responsible for the natural world.
A: I love engaging the community, because when you take that approach, community voices are in the mix. What they want to learn about is in the mix—and they show up.
My parents taught me that education is a lifelong journey, enriched by storytelling and service to community. My parents and my community showed me that how we introduce ideas really matters. I want people to walk away from a YES activity excited, curious, wanting to know more, wanting to come back.
I don’t view communities as recipients of knowledge, but as essential partners and co-creators.
A: I always ask: Have you ever been curious about how something works? Have you ever tried fixing something? Have you ever wondered about the night sky, the stars, the universe, the ocean? Then you’re already thinking like a scientist.
Sometimes people think a scientist has to be super intelligent, love math, or fit a certain image. But science isn’t about having the answers—it’s about curiosity, courage, and learning as you go.
I also try to flip the script: science needs diversity. Nature is diverse. Your ideas, your perspective—science needs that. Science is multidisciplinary. It’s not just beakers. It’s bringing your whole self into it.
A: Science would need to center care, relationship building, and cultural relevance alongside content knowledge. That requires educators to recognize student strengths, honor multiple ways of knowing, and create environments where curiosity is nurtured—spaces where people feel seen, heard, valued, and included.
And I think that would allow science to better understand what it seeks to understand.
I also think about how easily people can be pushed out. When I was an undergrad, I started as an engineering major. I loved physics and calculus. I had been to an engineering summer camp. But I was an immigrant on scholarship at an expensive university and I had to work. There was a time I couldn’t make it from my job to class on time, and instead of asking what was going on, the professor just came at me—like I didn’t care. That experience derailed me. Now, as an adult, I can’t believe it, but it did.
That’s why welcome matters—because it can determine whether someone stays or leaves.
A: My first science hero has been Richard Feynman, the theoretical physicist. I love the Feynman lectures—his approach, his joy, his curiosity. The way he viewed the world felt playful and non-intimidating, and that’s what I want to give to others.
And Jane Goodall—her care for the more-than-human world, her ethic of conservation and protection. They’re different, but they complement what I want to absorb and also give to others.
A: I love learning from nature’s time-tested strategies to solve complex problems—biomimicry, design, the Fibonacci sequence, noticing the symphony of patterns. It’s mind-blowing.
More broadly, I love science as curiosity—playful, creative, inspiring. I love math and physics, even if I’m not doing that as a profession. I still do it on my own time—listening to Feynman lectures, learning in the background.
And I love that science helps us learn about our interconnectedness with everything—not as separate, but as part of.