Clean Water Fund Board of Directors, Treasurer
Berkeley, CA
Ayako “Aya” Nagano is Managing Attorney at Midori Law Group in Berkeley, California. She serves on the Boards of Clean Water Fund, the PLACE, Healing Tide, and Nippon Kobo. As an advocate, her interests lie at the intersection of water, food justice, permaculture, environmental justice and school garden education. In 2019, she was appointed to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), a federal advisory council which advised the Office of Environmental Justice in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Office was disbanded in March 2025. During her tenure at the NEJAC, Aya co-authored several white papers regarding subject matters that included: “Water Infrastructure & Workforce Development,” “NEPA Trainings,” “Cumulative Impacts” and “Title VI Civil Rights.”
Aya is a founding conceptual member of the Frontline Resource Institute, administered by the Environmental Defense Fund. Previously, Aya organized the local Plastic Reduction Working Group in the Berkeley / Albany area. Aya also sat on the steering committee of the Green Leadership Trust, a coalition of board members of color promoting equity within the Green movement, and was co-chair of the International Transformational Resilience Coalition in California, which works to build widespread levels of psycho-social-spiritual resilience in the age of climate change. Aya is also an ordained Buddhist Monk.
