Meet the Coalition

Growing up in a small desert mining town in Arizona, Jeanette experienced the importance of community life that has never left her. She also experienced the environmental and health impacts growing up near an open pit mining operation, which helped lead to her passion of building a healthier and more sustainable planet.

Her second vocation as a pastor has empowered her call to work through the theological lens that all life is sacred. She believes that as people of faith, we are to work on behalf of creation and in solidarity with people most affected by the ecological and economic devastation posed by climate change.

Rev. Jeanette Bragunier is a United Methodist Pastor currently serving Mission Hills UMC in San Diego.  She serves in the area of family and children’s ministry.

Jeanette has been involved in the climate movement through developing a children’s group of Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots, adult Earth Care groups and volunteering with sandiego350.org, which she helped to co-found. She currently is the coordinator for ICEJ and was recently trained and commissioned as an EarthKeeper in the United Methodist Church.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from Northern Arizona University. After working in Public Relations and then managing teams in the wireless industry, Jeanette felt called to full time ministry in 2004 and enrolled in Fuller Theological Seminary where she earned a Master’s Degree in Christian Leadership and was ordained in 2019.

Married to Charlie, Jeanette has two young adult children, Bella, Austin and their dog, Cielo.

Ioana Tcholakova is originally from Sofia, Bulgaria, but she grew up in Indiana before moving to Southern California for college. She has recently completed her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of San Diego. There, she did independent research on the factors influencing the distribution of fecal indicator bacteria in stormwater in the City of San Diego, looking both at the physical and socioeconomic relationships with bacteria. Ioana also works as a Management Intern at the Storm Water Division in the City of San Diego to work towards initiatives to improve water quality in the watersheds throughout San Diego. Ioana also works at I Love a Clean San Diego as an Outreach Assistant, where she promotes community outreach and participation in community park and beach cleanups around the region.

Through both her education and professional experiences, Ioana has developed a passion for sustainable and equitable urban development, water and air quality improvement, and waste management. Ioana’s passion for combating environmental injustice is channeled into her role at ICEJ. As being an individual who depends on public transportation, she is inspired by ICEJ’s transportation initiative and works to increase outreach on this topic around San Diego.

Father Emmet has been ordained for over 50 years for a diocese in Iowa. He served 16 years as a missionary in Peru. Upon returning, He served mostly Hispanic communities in Houston, Texas, Maryknoll, New York, Chicago, Illinois, and for the past 20 years in the Diocese of San Diego in 3 bilingual parishes.

Fr. Emmet has always had a strong interest in Social Justice and serving the poor. In his writings Pope Francis emphasizes the poor and global inequality, perhaps even more than global warming in his encyclical “Laudato Si”. He sees both issues as interconnected, at crisis level and eminently moral and spiritual issues.

So, when the USCCB and the Catholic Climate Covenant sent a team to San Diego to train them on how to establish Creation Care Teams in parishes, Fr. Emmet picked up that challenge. He has developed a library of materials had have undertaken the task of giving free workshops in English and Spanish in all of our parishes.