Yassi Eskandari

Director

Biography

Yassi Eskandari is the inaugural Director of the UCSB Center for Equitable Environmental Sciences (CEES). She is also a licensed attorney and a Legal Fellow at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, and comes to UCSB with an accomplished career of practicing law and advancing state and local policy for more sustainable economies.

Since her recruitment to the Director role in 2024, she has grown CEES from a concept developed by CEES’s powerhouse PI team to a vibrant center delivering major contributions to UCSB and beyond. She also teaches the UCSB course Personal & Community Resilience in the Changing Climate, and is a member of the UC-wide faculty collaborative delivering critical content about how to effectively grapple with climate change and ecological destruction through environmental justice, social change, mindfulness practice, community-building, and action.

Yassi holds a B.S. in Conservation & Resource Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and is among a small yet mighty group of lawyers in the state of California to pass the bar without going to law school.