2025 Joey Pope Award for Parks Leadership and PGE Parks Champion nominees at PPF’s 2025 Friends & Allies Spring Summit.
The Portland Parks Foundation (PPF) is excited to announce two honorees for the 2025 Joey Pope Award for Parks Leadership!
This annual award is named after Josephine “Joey” Pope, PPF’s founding Chair and a devoted activist, philanthropist, and leader in making Portland’s parks system more accessible to all. The award celebrates emerging leaders, organizations and initiatives advancing accessibility and innovation in Portland’s parks system.
We celebrate and acknowledge the impressive work of all of our nominees:
Bill Truncali & Pedro Gomez, Pearl District Neighborhood Association
Charlie Roscoe, GreenME project at OHSU-PSU School of Public Health
Jody O'Brien, Green Lents
Mayuko Sasanuma, Portland Japanese Garden
Peter Condra, Green Lents
Portland Placemaking Coalition
Ryan Al-Schamma, Stay ON the Grass (SOTG)
Sylvie Isaac, Sellwood Community House
Syren Nagakyrie, Disabled Hikers
Read more about the nominees
and their work here:
And now to our 2025 honorees…
the Portland Placemaking Coalition and
Syren Nagakyrie, of Disabled Hikers!
From left to right: Kyle Leslie-Chirsty and Glyness Dean of Portland Placemaking Coalition; Will Cortez, receiving on behalf of honoree Syren Nagakyrie (Disabled Hikers); and Maria Pope, Joey Pope’s daughter.
Portland Placemaking Coalition
The Portland Placemaking Coalition (PPC) is a collective of local nonprofit organizations, small business owners, and educators dedicated to building community through re-greening of public spaces and urban agricultural practices. They recognize that engaging with communities and repurposing unused land into vibrant spaces for neighborhoods builds strong inter-generational connections and increases safety and food security in the neighborhoods we support. PPC is focused on solving complex problems that require a systems-level approach. Their work lies at the intersection of food security, regenerative urban agriculture, ecological justice, youth and community engagement and education, violence reduction, and livability.
PPC is engaging a wide coalition of actors across issue areas to address greenspace and food inequities. They are supporting 3 projects in East Portland: repurposing underutilized space to support food access in the Southeast, supporting community garden design and development at Alliance High School in the Buckman neighborhood, and supporting BIPOC-led projects at the Learning Gardens Laboratory site in the Brentwood neighborhood. Additionally, they have brought together dozens of land-tending nonprofits in the area through an event called Activate Portland, that is held multiple times per year.
Syren Nagakyrie, Disabled Hikers
Syren Nagakyrie is the founder and executive director of Disabled Hikers, a disabled-led organization founded in 2018. Disabled Hikers is dedicated to building community and justice for disabled individuals in the outdoors, with the vision of transforming outdoor culture through representation, access, and justice for disabled and other marginalized people. They achieve this through a variety of initiatives, with key focuses including: creating accessible trail guides, storytelling and visualizing the disabled outdoor experience, group hikes, advocacy and consulting, and leadership development.
In 2024, Disabled Hikers partnered with PP&R and California State Parks Foundation to improve accessibility within public parks and recreation programs, working to ensure that disability justice is embedded in policy and programming. Through Syren’s advocacy, the organization conducted over 15 trainings and presentations in 2024 with parks, organizations, and tourism agencies to increase awareness and create more opportunities for people with disabilities. These trainings, along with the guides that Syren has developed, have led to new opportunities that benefit not only disabled people but everyone who enjoys outdoor spaces.
Accessible Nature, Nurtured Futures…
PPF is excited to celebrate these two honorees, who are setting the bar high for inclusive and community-directed programming in parks and recreation spaces. It is particularly exciting to celebrate two organizations who have a strong commitment to justice-oriented community-building, creating a unique place to belong, and legacy of accessible spaces and resources for the next generation.
Learn more about the Joey Pope Award for Parks Leadership and past nominees and awardees here.