Our Story
Erekani grew from a shared belief that connected communities and healthy ecosystems are interconnected. With a background in land conservation, community engagement, and systems-change facilitation, we create opportunities for conviviality in our communities and natural spaces. We created Erekani to gather across generations, spend meaningful time outdoors, connect and learn from one another, and to steward the landscapes that sustain us.
Our name carries part of that story. Erekani means “to exist” in Purépecha, an Indigenous language of Michoacán, Mexico, where Maritza was born and where her family has lived for generations. We chose the name as a respectful homage to a place that has deeply shaped her story of identity, migration, and belonging, while acknowledging that its lands, language, and histories hold relationships much older than our own.
As a family shaped by different places and experiences, we are interested in what it means to put down roots while remaining connected to where we come from. Like the monarch butterfly, fragile yet remarkably resilient, rooted in particular landscapes yet moving across borders, we believe movement and belonging can coexist.
Erekani is our way of exploring a question we continue to carry together: What does it mean to exist well—in relationship with ourselves, one another, and the places that sustain us?
We don’t pretend to have one answer. Instead, we create opportunities to explore it together through connection, care, and contribution.
Meet the Team
Maritza is an equity strategist, facilitator, and conservation leader working at the intersection of environmental justice, community resilience, and people-centered conservation. A first-generation Mexican immigrant raised in rural Colorado, she draws from her cultural roots and lived experiences of place, migration, and belonging to shape how she approaches her work. She brings more than a decade of experience across nonprofit and public service, including work with The Nature Conservancy, the City of Fort Collins, and Western Resource Advocates. Maritza holds an MPhil in Conservation Leadership from the University of Cambridge, where her research with Fauna & Flora and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative explored how belonging, connection to place, and decolonial practice can contribute to more inclusive approaches to global conservation practices.
