Board of Directors
SHANNON LARSUEL
Board President
As a third generation Altadena resident, Shannon found herself feeling untethered and motivated to support her community after the Eaton Canyon Fire. In her search to channel her despair into meaningful action, she began organizing locally. In addition to serving as ACLT Board President, she is a neighborhood captain with Altagether, where she helps connect and mobilize her neighbors toward a vision of collective care and recovery in Altadena. Shannon holds a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Yale and an M.P.H. in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Yale School of Public Health.
ALI RACHEL PEARL
Ali Rachel Pearl is an Assistant Professor (Teaching) at the University of Southern California, where she previously earned a PhD from the Department of English. She is a writer, teacher, and community organizer whose work focuses on gentrification and place-making and she currently serves as a neighborhood captain with Altagether. She and her husband lost their home in the Eaton Fire.
DR. KATIE CLARK
Dr. Katie Clark is a 16+ year resident of Altadena, a renter who lost her home in the Eaton Fire, and co-founder of the Altadena Tenants Union. She has served as an elected member on the Altadena Library District Board of Trustees since 2018. Clark holds a PhD from Oxford University in history, where her research focused on how communities used and navigated space in the built environment. Having taught at both Oxford and Caltech, since 2013 she has served as Founder & Principal Consultant at The Applied Humanities, a consulting practice serving nonprofits both regionally and nationwide.
Technical Experts & CLT Advisors
Simon Windell comes to ACLT via our comrades in disaster recovery at the Lahaina Community Land Trust, where he serves as interim Director of Finance. He is a leading expert in the development of community land trusts and has firsthand experience working to ensure that public investment in non-market housing pays community dividends. Simon’s work focuses on building operational processes, financial models, and mechanisms for permanence that inspire confidence in the community return of large capital investments into housing infrastructure. Prior to working in the community land trust space, he spent 14 years in corporate operations at a large consulting firm, solving complex, multi-disciplinary problems and leading large teams across the globe. He has also served as a Winthrop Planning Commissioner and on the board of the Northwest Community Land Trust Coalition.
Julie Brunner is a housing consultant and policy advisor for ACLT. Since 2002, Julie has specialized in Community Land Trusts and serves as the Housing Director for OPAL Community Land Trust on Orcas Island, Washington. Julie has worked with community land trusts, municipalities and nonprofits across the country and has supported them in creating, expanding or improving their CLT efforts. This includes housing needs assessments, financial feasibility, program design, lender relations, project implementation and project work-outs.
Julie also provides technical assistance and training to identify and expand the use of industry standards, software, processes, and best practices through Grounded Solutions Network and NeighborWorks America.