Board Members

Joaquin Murrieta-Saldivar, Ph.D.

Board Member

Joaquin Murrieta-Saldivar, Ph.D. is an experienced leader who understands and can implement strategies to organize, manage and operate initiatives in relation to Nature and community resiliency. He has experience in working in complex environments in relation to conservation and regenerative development, he has experience working with communities locally and internationally. Joaquin has vast organizational experience working with groups and has great skills to develop collaboration for success, he has great facilitation and communication skills and has the capacity to train groups in community stewardship, empowerment, inspiration and conservation issues. Committed to preserving the integrity of both the natural and cultural landscape, Joaquin Murrieta has been a guiding force in shaping several programs and projects in the Sonoran Desert, Gulf of California and the Sky Islands Ecoregions and other regions. Joaquin studied agronomy at the University of Sonora and specialized in small-scale organic farming and agroecology at the University of California in Santa Cruz. He then moved to Tucson, AZ to get his Master of Science in Agricultural Economics and Natural Resources from the University of Arizona. After working on several environmental projects with the state government of Sonora he returned to Arizona for his Doctorate in Natural Resource Studies, also from the University of Arizona, specializing in human perception and relation to the natural world. Joaquin has a unique understanding and I have had a connection to the farm since its inception. My family and I have connected with the medicine of animal husbandry when the farm was in a backyard! Having a college degree is a small part of my identity that came later in life. So much of my learning happened through lived experiences, ceremony and community. My roots are in community organizing. I was an active leader in Tucson's ethnic studies movement and a co-founder of malintzine, a zine and project that sought to give space, healing and flowers to survivors of gender-based violence. I believe in the dreams and the work of those committed to the Flowers and Bullets mission.