After graduating from college, Bonta worked as a paralegal for a law firm, where he gained experience working in environmental law. His employer represented large corporations, and Bonta says that the lawyers at the firm spent most of their time finding loopholes that would allow their clients to continue polluting. Bonta stayed at the firm for about six months, deciding to leave shortly after discovering how irresponsible their practices were. “The work that the firm was doing was not in line with my values, and I didn’t feel good working for someone that was engaged in things I wanted to spend my life fighting against,” he recalls(Taylor, 2006).  

During graduate school, Bonta worked part-time for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, where he monitored and protected endangered and threatened birds along the coastline. He collaborated with private property owners to protect nesting sites, developed more significant policy issues, and investigated the role of the Endangered Species Act and recovery plan goals in protection efforts. Bonta says the position was a valuable experience because it allowed him to make the connection between science and policy, which was exactly what he hoped to do in his future career. Specifically, it allowed him to work on the ground, collect scientific data, and translate that data into policies protecting birds and other wildlife.

Today, Bonta is an independent consultant, working with environmental organizations and institutions on diversity issues and conservation policy. He has devoted a large portion of his career to working on diversity issues, helping establish connections to communities of color, providing support networks for young professionals of color, and trying to convince environmental organizations that working on diversity issues is crucial to their survival and the success of the environmental movement. He continues to push for biodiversity protection on a broader scale as well. Bonta says his decision to focus on diversity issues was partly due to his experience as a person of color in a large environmental organization was not entirely positive.  

Shortly after graduate school, Bonta settled into what he thought at the time was his dream job of working at a national environmental organization. In terms of biodiversity conservation and policy issues, working at the organization was what he had always wanted; however, he quickly found that the organization’s culture was behind the times regarding multicultural issues. Bonta found himself feeling more isolated than he had ever felt before. He rarely had the opportunity to work with other people of color, and he began noticing how few were working on conservation issues, especially when he attended conferences and workshops. Bonta’s perceived “dream job” turned out to be the lowest point of his career. “Working on issues is not the only thing that is important when you are out in the real world,” he explains. “The people you work with, and the culture of the organization, are extremely important—maybe more so than the issues you are working on” (Taylor, 2006).   

            Bonta says the organization’s lack of diversity and cultural insensitivity continued to be a problem to the extent that it distracted him from his work. He says that the work environment at that organization was particularly uncomfortable. He began to research diversity issues and says the source of the problems he was experiencing at work became more apparent. “It was then that I realized that if I’m having this experience, there must be many other people of color that are having it too. That’s not right,” Bonta recalls. “This is an institutional problem. It must be a priority—especially for mainstream organizations to be successful— to begin shifting toward a more inclusive culture. Organizations need to reach out to nontraditional constituencies, like communities of color, include them on their staff and boards at all levels, become more culturally competent, and create diverse partnerships and projects” (Taylor, 2006).  

One of the highlights of Bonta’s career thus far was being named a Senior Fellow at the Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) in 2003. “I graduated from the two-year fellowship program with ELP,” Bonta says, “and the highlights of my experience were the relationships that I built along the way, the knowledge I gained on diversity issues, and the worldly view on environmental and social issues that I developed. Each year, the organization emphasizes creating a diverse cadre of fellows early in their careers. My class was almost 50 % people of color. The fellowship provides hope for the future of the environmental movement” (Taylor, 2006).  

Bonta believes that, with the appropriate training and experiences, students of color can better understand what is going on culturally in the field, and interested young people of color can find their place. “If students keep their internal passion alive and push forward, there is no end to the support that they can obtain from people of color in the field and how far they can go,” he says. To that end, Bonta is involved in several programs to achieve diversity goals. Through the Environmental Leadership Program, he organized an anti-racism training workshop for people of color and white allies early in their environmental professional careers.   

Bonta worked as an Outreach Advisor for Verde from 2010 to 2013 and was a Healthy Environment Program Momentum Fellow with the Meyer Memorial Trust from 2015 to 2017. He was Prinicpal for the Raben Group from 2017 to 2018. Bonta was also a Commissioner for the City of Portland Multnomah County Sustainable Development Commission from 2008 to 2010 and an Editorial Board member for Saving Land Magazine from 2010 to 2012. He has been an Advisory Council Member for the Columbia Land Trust since 2009. In 2005, Bonta founded Environmental Professionals of Color and the Center for Diversity & the Environment.

He worked with Charles Jordan and other colleagues in the Portland area conducting outreach to environmental organizations and communities of color to draw broad participation in local environmental struggles and diversity issues. He also developed a website called the Center for Diversity and the Environment (www.environmentaldiversity.org), dedicated to providing and highlighting efforts, strategies, and information that are helping diversify the environmental movement. Additionally, Bonta has planned, conducted, and participated in numerous workshops and conferences focused on building diverse partnerships and alliances, sharing culturally competent approaches to working with communities of color, and developing strategies to diversify the environmental movement.

An innate passion for protecting wildlife drives Bonta to remain in the environmental field, despite the field’s shortcomings and the challenges he has faced. “If not for my passion, I would be doing something else,” Bonta admits. “The way I have seen people of color treated… it’s not something to be excited about. I also feel that for the field to be successful, it needs to have voices other than what has been dominant in the past. I feel the need to stay and bring out those other voices, to bring diversity issues forward…to let those other voices be heard” (Taylor, 2006).