GREEN RESOURCE AND INFORMATION PORTAL (GRIP)
These pages are dedicated to Russell Sakaguchi, a long-term board member of the Community Development Technologies Center (CDTech).
Russell dedicated over 30 years of his life to community and sustainable development, and social justice causes. His life embodied a commitment to changing the quality of life of the most vulnerable Los Angeles populations and communities. He was the first Los Angeles director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and supported grassroots efforts to build affordable housing opportunities to low income families.
This was followed by a 20 year commitment to community development and environmental stewardship as the executive director of the ARCO/BP Foundation. In this capacity, Russell provided CDTech with its first grant and remained an active contributor — financially, intellectually and personally – to CDTech’s mission of building livable and economically viable communities for over 15 years.
Russell was born in a Japanese Internment Camp to a large family of farmers where he was the fifth of eight children. Relocated from their family farm in Lancaster, California, for three years, during WWII, they returned to Lancaster after the war. Russell was married to Grace Sakaguchi for 31 years and they have one son, Matthew, who works at a Community Career Development Agency, following the path of his father’s footsteps. Russell enjoyed playing tennis and traveling the world.
The Russell G. Sakaguchi Memorial GRIP is a small token of our appreciation for all that Russell believed and worked towards… and a small way to keep his dream alive for making our communities better places to live.