First of all, WE are a combination of every single volunteer who has ever donated their time to From The Heart Tribe. We would love to have you come out to a FTHT event, so here’s a little bit about the founders.

Sparrow Heatley
co-founder

Sparrow has been organizing events and bringing people together to help the environment in Los Angeles since 2008.

In 2009, she helped organize, along with Sean Jennings and Tim Morris, one of the greatest community events in West Los Angeles—“100 Gardens for Gratitude” where over 800 volunteers installed 100 edible gardens in one weekend across Los Angeles at homeless shelters and boys & girls clubs.  This team-building event transformed lawns into drought-tolerant native species or edible landscapes that improved both the environment and water supply.

In 2010, Sparrow helped Topanga Canyon Earth Day Festival creator Stephanie Lallouz organize an annual weekend event featuring live music and vegan food, and highlighted environmental conservation, community, and healing for over 10 thousand attendees. Sparrow continued to help organize this festival until its finale year in 2013. 

Beach cleanups started in 2011 when Sparrow lived in The Bahamas. She soon realized that Paradise Island wasn’t a paradise after all; its beaches around the tourist centers were covered in plastic trash.  To save life in the ocean and restore beauty to its beaches, Sparrow organized her first “Pick Up for Paradise” beach cleanup ridding the pink sands of Nassau from plastic straws and cigarette butts. After leaving the Bahamas for Los Angeles, she continued the effort and carried on the “paradise” name in hopes that people would consider their world a paradise even if it wasn’t an island.  

As an ocean advocate, Sparrow organizes scientific data collection through her beach cleanups in order to advance environmental legislation in California, which contributed to the banning of plastic bags and plastic straws.  As a public speaker, she raises awareness about current environmental issues affecting Los Angeles as she did for Proposition 67 in 2016 and the “Clean Water Act” Measure W in 2018.

Sparrow’s passion and strength is helping people understand that some lifestyle choices are destroying the oceans. She strives to create solutions for our planet through her environmental events. To that extent, she goes beyond the ocean and teams up with organizations like TreePeople (a California 501c3 for mountain and park restoration) encouraging volunteers to take action.

Outside her environmental work, Sparrow is a massage therapist and yoga instructor who works with top athletes and people fighting cancer.  She holds degrees in business and management, and studied permaculture design.  Sparrow is continuing her education for green initiatives and renewable energy. During her spare time she enjoys hiking, paddle boarding, snowboarding, and pottery.

Therese JASSO
SECRETARY

Therese is an LA native who spent many years traveling the globe and living internationally before becoming a proud mother of a three-year-old daughter.  

She is passionate about helping others and has been a sponsor and volunteer with several non-profits focused on children, animals, and the environment for 15 years.  

She invests her energy in a more sustainable future for her daughter and is currently continuing her education by studying sustainability at UCLA.  

Through her line of work, she is able to help others re-think food, educate them on where their food comes from, and help them have access to fresh, clean, unprocessed food.  This idea of the future of food not only benefits our homes but also our global environment.  It is sustainable food for life. 

You can usually find Therese and her daughter at the beach, getting lost in nature, or having a fun adventure somewhere!

James F Conway
Treasurer

James is a Senior Sustainability Analyst with the City of Santa Monica's Office of Sustainability and the Environment where he leads a team in the Sustainable City Planning and Community Engagement Section dedicated to advancing aggressive yet achievable ecologically mindful, socially conscious, and financially viable goals and objectives aimed at preserving the wellbeing of the planet and its inhabitants. He has dedicated his career to developing programs, policies, and outreach efforts that encourage communities, its residents, and businesses to become stewards of their local environments by enacting mutually beneficial practices in both their personal and professional lives.

Recent accomplishments and contributions have included the management of a toxics use reduction program, oversight of soil, groundwater, and landfill remediation projects, adoption of and implementation of a zero waste strategic plan, development and reporting of performance based indicators for the sustainable city plan, ongoing targeted multi-media community based social marketing campaigns, and managing a green business and green office certification program. In his role he has overseen the adoption and implementation of various policies including the integrated pest management program, a polinator policy, a disposable food service ware ordinance, a sustainable fleet and transportation policy, sustainable procurement, sustainable bill of rights, and environmental assessment and due diligence policy for city development projects.

Growing up his parents lived a nomadic lifestyle that took him through-out the world where he picked learned French, Spanish, Italian, and Indonesian. From an early age his parents instilled a love and respect for the diversity that nature, people, and their cultures have to offer. As a proud father and steward of the environment he strives to instill these same values in those around him.

He currently serves on the board of From the Heart Tribe which shares in his mission to respect and protect nature and its animals not only for their intrinsic value but also for the countless benefits they provide to the survival and prosperity of humanity.

MARTIN WAWRUSCH
PRESIDENT

Martin, Supreme Leader of FTHT, also lovingly called El Jefe. 

Growing up in Europe Martin was accustomed to pristine nature, respect and appreciation for the environment since his early childhood.

After moving to Los Angeles in the mid 2000s he made friends with like-minded people and got involved in various non-profits to finally help build From The Heart Tribe.

His interests lie in the preservation and active improvement of our natural resources by focusing on education, technology advancements and community building. This ties in with his work where he focuses on democratizing access to finance as he believes that everybody deserves to have access to the same opportunities.

Maria Bertrand
FORMER CO-FOUNDER

Maria’s volunteering started when she was fifteen years old when she started helping out at an animal sanctuary in Montreal Canada. She moved to Los Angeles in 2002 to pursue her career as a producer, writer and actor and she has worked with powerhouses such as Gerard Butler, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Sam Rockwell, Brad Pitt and many more. 

Speaking out for our furry - and not so furry- friends is a big passion for Maria. She has been published in magazines and online platforms such a Thrive Global where she uses her voice to raise awareness and compassion for the environment and animals.

She is a certified Pilates instructor, certified personal trainer, a biology major and has a degree in health science. Her education comes in handy when speaking at schools about health, wellness and how everything, including our environment and what we eat play a major role in our survival and happiness.

Maria’s events focus on animals, their welfare, their rights and finding connection in order to create understanding, empathy and compassion.  By creating events with amazing sanctuaries like The Gentle Barn, Farm Sanctuary, and Wolf Connection (all California 501c3’s for the betterment of animals well being), she has provided the opportunity for our volunteers to connect with animals.  During the events, there is education about the food industry on animal cruelty so people can make more compassionate decisions in their daily lives.

Maria is currently working with Lost Lane Entertainment where she helps develop and produce, movies, TV shows and documentaries.  She is an executive producer on documentary alongside environmentalists such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Adrian Grenier, called Finding 52: The search for the loneliest whale, set to be released this year.