GWE Leadership

Beverly Williams – Acting Board Director

Beverly Williams has a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering from MIT (1984).  After working in the acoustics and vibrations industry for five years, she became a homeschool teacher of her own four children and those of others. She taught lab sciences to all ages and developed a math games curriculum for K-12.  She was drawn to the Global Warming Express because of the teaching synergy of its founder, Genie Stevens, and her desire to unleash the energy of children to combat the current climate crisis.  Other than helping design science experiments for the GWE curriculum and mentoring GWE students, she continues to teach lab sciences, math games, and tutor students.  She is also a Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) and guides the GWE students in public speaking with this knowledge.

Magnificent Farrell – Board Member

Magnificent is an 18-year-old college student at UNM. He’s been active with the Global Warming Express/Emergency since he was 9 years old, and has been involved in representing the group by giving speeches and accepting awards, recording audio for climate change reading material, and writing an article for the Santa Fe Reporter about one of the group’s very own youth activists. Magnificent graduated high school early in his junior year, obtaining his GED from the Santa Fe Community College. Outside of the world of Climate Activism, Magnificent teaches grades 1 – 8 at a non-profit school located in Santa Fe, NM. He also teaches circus skills at Wise Fool NM and partakes in performances, gigs, events, etc. Magnificent plans to attend the Climate Sciences Program provided by his school in his second year

Ed Ashmead – Board Member

Ed Ashmead, a former case manager and teacher, joined the GWE board in August 2025. In 2006 he was awarded as Alaska’s Outstanding Direct Service Professional in the field of Developmental Disabilities. He’s an avid nature lover currently penning a book that incorporates some of his myriad wildlife encounters from decades of living in and exploring Alaska’s wilderness. He moved to Santa Fe in 2013, where he taught adult basic education at Santa Fe Community College. He is also a long-term Sierra Club member.

Genie Stevens – Executive Director

Genie Stevens has worked in education and theatre direction In Britain, Europe, Germany and the U.S. She founded the Shakespeare Lab at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM and was the Director of the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts, also in Santa Fe. It has been her joy and honor to steward The Global Warming Express for the past decade. Her mission is to help her daughter, Marina Weber-Stevens, and the GWE/Global W.E. kids achieve their goal – to end the climate crisis and to build a world that supports the entire web of life.

Esha Chiocchio – GWE Resident Photographer

Esha Chiocchio (she/her) is a photographer and filmmaker based in Santa Fe, New Mexico who uses her combined knowledge of visual storytelling and sustainable communities to sow the seeds of social change. Since 2020, she has been creating multi-media videos documenting regenerative agriculture and land restoration efforts throughout New Mexico for which she won the 2022 CENTER Environmental Award and is a 2023 National Geographic Explorer grantee. Through this work, she strives to increase awareness of the unique strategies being employed to restore balance to terrestrial and atmospheric cycles on overused land.

Esha co-founded Renewable Energy Day (now called Environment Day) at the NM State Capitol which has hosted hundreds of GWE students to empower them to use their voices for social change. She served as a mentor for GWE afterschool programs at Wood Gormley Elementary School and Santa Fe School for the Arts and Sciences and has photographed most of the GWE events since its inception.

She has BAs in Anthropology and French from the University of Colorado, an MA in Sustainable Communities from Goddard College, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa.

Bobbe Besold – GWE Resident Artist

Bobbe Besold www.bobbebesold.com is a working artist and activist who has exhibited, performed and worked with communities throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Her work includes public art, community engagement, set, costume and prop design, theater direction, performance, illustration, painting, photography, event design, installation, curatorial and writing. She is one of the founders of the community engagement project Rivers Run Through Us www.riversrunthroughus.org (from 2011 to the present), artist in residence with Global Warming Express (Global WE) and a core member of the Santa Fe River Traditional Community Collaborative. Most recently she created FLOW, a street art Water Awareness procession in Santa Fe with Jo Christian.