Janis Bookout is an organizer, consultant and disruptive researcher working at the intersection of environmental justice and racial equity. Janis’ primary focus is her work through the organization she co-founded with Rubén Cantú in 2020, Community Resilience Trust (CRT). CRT is a multi-racial collaborative of organizations and individuals committed to identifying and filling gaps in crisis response as an access to supporting the community while disrupting and replacing oppressive systems. Formed with the intention of addressing inequities during the pandemic, the organization has gone on to become a generator of multi-racial and multi-sector collaboratives addressing such topics as maternal health equity, food access, pandemic response, vaccine equity, winter storm response, and unhoused support.
Janis and CRT have produced workshops, trainings, community briefs, reports, and intersectional service projects. Janis advocates for and demonstrates anti-racism, shared leadership, multicultural collaboration, and actionable, inclusive communication. Strengthening the local network of equity-focused leaders and organizations is one of her primary goals.
Janis has advised AISD, multiple city and county departments on Austin’s resilience and crisis response, including serving on the Climate Equity committee, Resilience Hubs advisory committee, Austin cohort for the National League of Cities initiative. In addition to her work with CRT, Janis is also the Director of Earth Day Austin and an educator and facilitator at MEASURE, and serves as Vice Chair on the board of Texas Electric Transportation Resources Alliance. Janis’ professional background also includes and overlapping 5 years as an elementary teacher, 10 in small business development, 20 years of event planning, 20 years of transformational leadership, 10 years of climate leadership, and periodic disaster response leadership. Her motto is, “Life is too beautiful to leave anyone out.”
