Contact Us

Office Address
4125 Humphrey Street
St. Louis, MO  63116

Call | 314.282.7533
Email | info@earthday-365.org

earthday365 Staff

Jessica Watson

Executive Director
director@earthday-365.org
314.282.7533

Dr. Jess Watson was first involved with the St. Louis Earth Day Festival as a volunteer in 1992. As Executive Director at earthday365, she’s worked to align earthday365 with environmental justice and climate justice movements, and co-founded the coalition CircularSTL to promote zero waste strategies at a regional level.

A longtime environmentalist, she has worked around the world on biodiversity and food justice issues, with farmers in Thailand, researchers in Ghana, and activists in West Oakland, CA. She received her BA in Biology and Environmental Studies from Swarthmore College, and her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from University of California-Santa Cruz. Her research focused on a nonprofit providing fresh food and home gardens in an area experiencing food apartheid in West Oakland.

In her free time, Jess enjoys foraging juneberries, paw paws, persimmons, and teaching her two young boys to hunt for mushrooms. She loves spending time in creeks and canoeing Missouri’s beautiful rivers.

Chey Lovellette

Director of Operations
chey@earthday-365.org
314.282.7533

Chey joined the earthday365 staff in October of 2023 as the Director of Operations. They have a lifelong passion for environmental justice and sustainability that started as a child growing up living on-site in many of Missouri’s State Parks, particularly in the Ozarks region. She values creating greener, more equitable spaces and views mutual aid, community care, queer liberation, and anti-racism as their core methods to achieve those goals.

She has a master’s degree in teaching English as a Second Language and a background encompassing teaching, writing, and 6+ years of nonprofit leadership in the St. Louis region. They have traveled extensively and lived abroad in Shenyang, China for nearly 2 years.

In their free time Chey enjoys reading, being in nature, sewing and mending clothes for herself and friends, playing tabletop role playing games, and growing produce and native plants in her south city home garden. She has three cats named Haggy, Sagwa, and Buddy that keep her on her toes with their antics.

Gillian Garland

Green Dining Alliance
Program Manager
gillian@earthday-365.org
314.282.7533

Gillian joined earthday365 in May 2024 as the Green Dining Alliance Program Manager. She has a life-long love of nature that started with hiking around the St. Louis area with her family or the ecology club at Belleville East High School. This has allowed her to become the go-to for local hiking spots.

After starting her career in healthcare, she went back to school to receive her BS in sustainability from Maryville University. She has worked with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to help protect Missouri’s water resources. The Green Dining Alliance combines her 7 years of experience in the restaurant industry with her mission to help the planet.

In her free time, she enjoys reading, video games, biking, and spending time with her spouse and cat.

Kelly Lu

Marketing Manager
kelly@earthday-365.org
314.282.7533

Elizabeth Sabetta

Outreach Manager
elizabeth@earthday-365.org
314.282.7533

Elizabeth first came to earthday365 as a Recycling Extravaganza volunteer in 2015, then in 2016 joined the Recycling On the Go team. Elizabeth accepted the new position of ROG Assistant Program Manager in 2018.

Elizabeth, originally from Kentucky, has her BA in Environmental Studies, International Studies, and Italian. Prior to working at earthday365, Elizabeth worked for Kelley Green Biofuel as the Business Development Officer. She has long had a passion for sustainability and environmental justice, and firmly believes in the intersection of social justice and the environment. Elizabeth has experience in waste reduction, marketing, volunteer management, and donor and database management.

Elizabeth enjoys traveling, biking, camping, watering her plants, and trying to get the house-cat Nimbus to love her.

Kathy Dolson

Information Systems Support
info@earthday-365.org
314.282.7533

Kathy Dolson first became involved with earthday365 through volunteering at the St. Louis Earth Day Festival in 2010. Staff remember being impressed by Kathy’s energy, dedication to completing tasks quickly and with a high degree of quality, and her fun-loving attitude. It was only natural that when the organization needed support in planning the 2013 Festival that we looked to Kathy.

A life-long environmentalist, Kathy brings her passions for conservation and common sense to the many diverse projects with which she assists in the office, and within her community as a Cub Scout Leader and soccer coach. During the 2014 Lent season, Kathy worked with her church to institute recycling and composting at their weekly fish fry. Although she was met with many challenges along the way, St. Ann’s Catholic Church became, as far as we know, the first to institute a zero waste strategy for fish frys! Over 1,248 lbs of recyclables and 125 lbs of organic waste was kept out of area landfills through intentional sourcing of service ware, volunteer education, and signage.  After 3 years, St. Ann took it one step further and now uses reusable everything and composts all of their waste!

Charlie Hall

Green Dining Alliance
Assistant
charlie@earthday-365.org
314.282.7533

Charlie joined the Green Dining Alliance as an intern in early 2023, primarily working on updating its website resources. He has worked in the St. Louis restaurant and farm community for over a decade. While growing up on a small cattle farm in Eureka, MO, he became interested in ecology, astronomy, and sound. These early interests led to a music degree at Bard College where his sound installation projects featured field recordings of natural and unnatural environments, and the sounds of space recorded with a homemade radio telescope. Studying the civil rights movement and researching the history of school segregation in St. Louis also led to a passion for racial justice and activism.

After moving back home he studied nutrition and sustainability at SLU, then began working full-time in restaurants including Local Harvest Cafe, Claverach Farm, and Olive and Oak. He is hoping to use his knowledge of the food service industry to help GDA reach its goals of increasing the sustainability of the local food system, in restaurants in particular.

Outside of work, he enjoys gardening, photography, practicing mindfulness, reading, video games, and fixing up his old home in the Tower Grove neighborhood.