Emily Terrana, Leadership Development Director and Environmental Justice Organizer

Emily Terrana (she/her) has been a member of Clean Air since 2015, serving in a number of leadership roles throughout the organization, including being a member of the Tonawanda Coke campaign team. Emily is a Buffalo girl through and through, growing up in the working-class neighborhood of Riverside with her extended family and community. Before joining the staff of Clean Air in 2020, Emily worked at local and state-wide organizations working towards housing, climate, racial and reproductive justice. She believes deeply in a rigorous, disciplined and care centered organizing practice that builds our communities’ power to live in a just, dignified and joyful world we all deserve. Emily should have been a teacher and brings her passion and skills of popular and political education to her work at Clean Air. Emily is a lover of good Buffalo pizza and Paula’s Doughnuts and is always happy to be a Buffalo tour guide. She lives on the West Side with her three children, Yael, Oliver and Muna, partner Jason, their three cats, Mortimer, Chunky Boy and Polystyrene and old-man dog, Mangia. Emily holds a degree in Women and Gender Studies from Buffalo State College and has been published in Selves, Symbols, and Sexualities: An Interactionist Anthology.