Texas Interfaith Center and Friends at COP24
Bee Moorhead
Bee Moorhead is the executive director of Texas Impact, a position she has held since has been 2000. She is also the executive director of the Texas Interfaith Center for Public Policy, Texas Impact’s sister organization that she helped the Texas Impact board of directors to establish to improve and expand interfaith public policy education and dialogue.
Under Bee’s leadership, Texas Impact and the Interfaith Center have earned state and national recognition for work on interfaith education and community leadership development. Texas Impact has received two “Best in Class” awards of merit from the Religion Communicators Council of North America.
Bee holds a Masters degree in Public Affairs from the University of Texas LBJ School. She also holds an undergraduate degree in theatrical costume design from UT Austin, and she has studied theology and New Testament at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Bee serves as an adjunct faculty member at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary where she lectures on faith and public policy. An ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Bee has been a member of University Presbyterian Church in Austin since 1983. This is her fourth trip to the COP.
Anna Floyd
Born and raised in Austin, Anna graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with dual degrees in Plan II Honors and European Studies with a history minor. Her passions and scholastic work have always gravitated toward the outdoors and natural world, and her undergraduate honors thesis was an ethnographic exploration of contemporary American relationships with national parks and wilderness.
Anna takes particular interest in the tension between the simultaneous desire to use land, both out of necessity and for recreation, and to preserve its integrity for future generations. Three summers spent working in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park, as well as a season of backcountry trail work with the US Forest Service, have given her both a deep connection to American wilderness and an utter fascination with human behavior when confronted with the complexity, strength, and unknown of the untamed natural world.
Anna will move to Bozeman, Montana in January to pursue an internship with Gallatin Valley Land Trust, an environmental non-profit focusing on conservation easements and watershed preservation in southern Montana.
Noah Westfall
Noah Westfall is currently serving as a Young Adult Volunteer through the Presbyterian Church (USA). He is serving with Texas Impact. Noah was born and raised in Denver, Colorado and recently graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in philosophy before moving to Austin. He hopes that his year of service will help him discern how he can use his love of asking questions and thinking deeply to help make the world a more just place.
Noah is passionate about public health and is interested in working to build healthier communities. Throughout college he spent several summers working with the University of Colorado, Denver School of Medicine on a variety of projects. His most recent project assisted the team on a project related to medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder in rural Colorado. He also worked with the Farley Health Policy Center at the University of Colorado, working to integrate mental and behavioral health with primary care. He is excited about attending the COP24 and learning more about the intersections between climate change and public health.
Erica Nelson
Erica Nelson is a 2018 graduate from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and is a candidate for ministry within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Before going to seminary, she was a social worker who specialized in working with teenagers in the foster care system. She has served the local church through hospitality and administrative responsibilities and has served the national church as a delegate to the United Nations Status on the Commission of Women and Ecumenical Advocacy Days. She currently serves as a member of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, a committee that provides advice on social witness and policy to the General Assembly, the national body of the PCUSA. She has been working for Texas Impact since June of 2018 and has focused on two primary projects; a project assessing the impact of natural disaster and the faith based community’s response to it, and the Courts and Ports program, leading people of faith to the Rio Grande Valley to provide faithful witness to those struggling with the immigration and asylum processes.
Ilka Vega
Ilka Vega was born in El Paso, Texas but raised in Cd. Juarez, Mexico. She was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. She holds a B.A. in Business and a B.A. in Sustainability, Culture, and Social Justice. In 2016, Ilka conducted a research with the grassroots network of Texas Impact to better learn about water issues affecting the Texas-Mexico border and the activism around it. She is very passionate about social and environmental justice and completed an internship in the Texas 16th Congressional District office where she specialized in immigration related congressional inquiries to the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security. As part of her studies in Switzerland, Ilka focused on human rights and attended the United Nations’ COP22 in Morocco. She currently serves as one of the South-central jurisdiction representatives for the Racial Justice Charter Support Team for the United Methodist Women and as a staff member for Hope Border Institute.
Avery Davis Lamb
As Director of Faithful Advocacy at IPL-DMV, Avery connects religious communities in the region with environmental campaigns to expand clean energy, providing a distinctly moral response to the climate crisis. He also serves at the Federal Policy Associate for National Interfaith Power & Light, advocating for Creation and climate on Capitol Hill on behalf of the 40 state affiliates and over 20,000 congregations in the IPL network.
Avery grew up in Topeka, Kansas and is an alumni of Pepperdine University, where he studied Biology and Ecology, with a minor in Sustainability. Previously, Avery worked for USGS, doing stream ecology research in the Santa Monica Mountains, and Sojourners, a Christian non-profit committed to social justice, where he focused on interfaith environmental organizing and advocacy. He is a member of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C., where he co-leads the God and the Great Outdoors Group.
Avery is a board member of the Center for Spirituality in Nature and a Re:Generate Fellow through the Food, Health, and Ecological Well-Being program at Wake Forest Divinity School.
Avery loves gardening, Wendell Berry, and all things food. He is committed to watershed discipleship and creation care, linking his love for beauty with his conviction that we are called to l’ovdah (to serve) and l’shomrah (to keep) Creation, both human and non-human.