About the Founder

Ratha Lai is the Founder and current Executive Director of Critical Impact Consulting. Ratha has worked for several organizations, campaigns and initiatives. He transferred to UC Berkeley and become the Organizing and Community Development Director for the bridges Multi-Cultural Resource Center and was active in representing students of color in several spaces on campus. Some really memorable moments have been fighting against the consolidation of the ethnic studies department where he participated in a hunger strike for 5 days. Ratha also helped to establish the Transfer Student Director position and has a Bachelor in Arts from the Interdisciplinary Studies Field Department and wrote his thesis on the Symbolic Violence of Education.

After Graduating he found himself working as the Field Manager at first the sister organization of the Greenlining Institute, Greenlining Action and later found himself at The Greenlining Institute where he helped analyzed equity in the Governor’s Budget Proposal. The team he worked on uncovered inequities in the public schools system’s local control funding formula and helped redesign the state voter guide and was apart of the 20th Economic Summit.

Ratha later began working with the Sierra Club Bay Chapter this time alongside Team Richmond’s Eduardo Martinez and the Richmond Progressive Alliance in the 2014 election where they defeated all of the Chevron candidates and an unprecedented spending of over 4 million dollars on a local election.

Once the election was over Ratha worked on multiple campaigns and programs and expanded to collaborate with Sierra Club National and brought national attention to the Refinery Caps Campaign. This Campaign is still in the center of controversy with the passing of Cap and Trade that has been proven not to work for our communities and climate.

In 2016, Ratha became a father and experienced firsthand with his partner becoming new parents with the compounding complexities of living in a frontline community. Ratha also transferred to the Asian Pacific Environmental Network working on multiple campaigns and projects. One of those projects was the Richmond Our Power Coalition where Ratha exclusively became the coordinator of in 2017. He helped established the coalition’s infrastructure and helped the coalition recruit new key partners merging the environmental justice movement with the movement for mass liberation, anti-displacement and was a key local host organizer in the Solidarity to Solutions Week of Action in 2018.

Beginning in late 2019 Ratha started founded Critical Impact Consulting and is really excited to be able to advise and work with more leaders around the world