Leilani Clark

Leilani (she/ella) joined LandPaths in August 2018 after learning about the organization through Bayer Farm. She began as the organization’s first Communications Lead before being promoted to Communications Manager. Leilani writes newsletters, impact reports, outreach materials, and press releases, facilitates the Right Relations committee, manages the website and social media, and guides overall communications strategy and vision for the organization. 

The daughter of a grocery store worker and a house painter, Leilani was the first in her family to graduate from college. Leilani has an M.F.A in Writing and Consciousness from California Institute of Integral Studies and a B.A. in Literature from University of California San Diego.

Leilani grew up in Hawaii and Los Angeles. She lived in San Diego and then New Mexico before moving north. She began her career, after years of playing guitar in bands and working in cafes, as a public high school teacher, teaching in the Navajo Nation, San Diego, and East Oakland. 

After that, she became a staff writer at the North Bay Bohemian, and then the editor of Made Local Magazine. She was a California Endowment Health Reporting Fellow at USC Annenberg School for Journalism. Leilani’s journalism and essays have appeared at The Guardian,The Press Democrat, Mother Jones, Civil Eats, and other publications. Leilani received a 2019 Discovered Award for Emerging Literary artists from Creative Sonoma. 

Leilani lives in downtown Santa Rosa and enjoys bicycling, lazy gardening, reading, karaoke, listening to music, eating good food, and being in nature, especially near the ocean, with family and friends. She is a proud mom of a sixth grader who plays flute in the advanced band at Cesar Chavez Language Academy, a dual Spanish/English immersion school in Roseland.