Meet the Team | Start Consulting Gro

Our Team.

Elizabeth Chin Start

Founder & Principal Consultant

Elizabeth (she/her) is the founder of Start Consulting Group. Her career has spanned work in reuse, recycling, waste prevention, sustainability, and solid waste for almost 23 years, with a focus on equitable and accessible materials management systems. Engagement with community members, local and state governments, private industry, and community-based nonprofits has been a central part of her work. She has facilitated many one-on-one interviews, listening sessions, and workshops to engage people to build equitable and inclusive systems within the field of materials management and the circular economy. In addition to her consulting work, Elizabeth is a passionate reuse advocate, artist, and community volunteer. She is driven to volunteer in her community and serves of the City of Milwaukie Equity Steering Committee, the Oregon Recycling System Advisory Council, and on the Women’s Foundation of Oregon board. She lives in Milwaukie, Oregon with husband and daughter, as well as their three dogs and cat. She has a reputation for her ability to collect and repurpose discarded objects like a magpie collecting shiny treasures.

Lisa LeDoux

Principal Consultant

Lisa (she/her) is inspired by creative solutions to waste prevention and building authentic relationships through community engagement. She enjoys sharing tools and tactics to help organizations navigate reuse systems, community outreach and grant systems while centering equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Lisa is dedicated to creating more equitable and resilient communities. As the National Education Program Director for SCRAP Creative Reuse, Lisa spent nine years developing, implementing, and managing community outreach and education efforts to inspire sustainable behavior. In 2021, she joined Start Consulting Group working on a variety of projects for government agencies including waste prevention, circular economy, community engagement, grant systems support and EDI.

Laura Tokarski

Senior Consultant

Laura (she/her) is a Portland, OR native with over two decades of sustainability management experience. She holds a BA in Anthropology and Spanish from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a master's degree in public administration with a specialization in Sustainable Community Development from Portland State University. A Peace Corps Alumna, Laura is the founder of the non-profit organization Trash for Peace, and the co-founder of the organization Ground Score Association. Both organizations have won multiple awards and are known as leaders in the creation of equitable recycling and waste prevention policies and programs. Laura was recognized by the Association of Oregon Recyclers with a Recycler of the Year (2019) and Sustainable Oregon Award (2022). Laura also teaches full-time at Mt. Hood Community College as an Adult Basic Skills/GED instructor in both English and Spanish, where she received a Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016. When not working, she loves to spend time with her husband, two boys, rescue dog and chickens, run long distances, read historical fiction novels, and explore the outdoors.

Annie Ly

Co-Design & Systems Consultant

Annie (she/they) is an interdisciplinary designer, facilitator, and strategist focused on enriching the way people connect, learn, and collaborate in physical and digital spaces. She works with communities and teams to co-create solutions rooted in empathy, accessibility, and ease, while centering and advocating for those who are most impacted by the work being done. Inspired by traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), regenerative design, and solidarity economy practices, Annie is a stubborn optimist who believes that we have endless opportunities to reimagine and redefine what it means to take good care of ourselves, each other, our planet, and future generations. With 15+ years in both strategic and operational roles leading experiential learning and capacity-building programs within nonprofit, startup, and corporate environments, Annie now brings her experience in adult learning, instructional design, facilitation, and coaching—as well as her lived experience as a daughter of refugees and first-generation college graduate—into her humanity-centered design practice, focusing on improving products, services, and programs for social impact and the public interest. Annie studied interaction design and social entrepreneurship at the Austin Center for Design, and she holds a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Originally from Olympia, Washington, located on the ancestral and contemporary lands of the Coast Salish peoples, Annie is now based on the traditional homelands of the Lenape peoples, specifically New York City and the Hudson Valley. In her spare time, she enjoys making collages, cooking up new recipes with and for friends, learning how to renovate her 1940s fixer-upper with her partner, and having one-sided conversations with her ex-racing greyhound.