We are pleased to welcome Peggy Shepard, the founding director of the Harlem-based organization WE ACT for Environmental Justice Peggy Shepard, to the Undesign Symposium as our keynote speaker.
Peggy Shepard has a long history of organizing and engaging Northern Manhattan residents in community-based planning and campaigns to address environmental protection and environmental health policy locally and nationally. She has successfully combined grassroots organizing, environmental advocacy, and environmental health community-based participatory research to become a national leader in advancing environmental policy and the perspective of environmental justice in urban communities — to ensure that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment extends to all. She has been named co-chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, and was the first female chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She also serves on the Executive Committee of the National Black Environmental Justice Network and the Board of Advisors of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. Her work has received broad recognition: the Jane Jacobs Medal from the Rockefeller Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, the 10th Annual Heinz Award For the Environment, the William K. Reilly Award for Environmental Leadership, the Knight of the National Order of Merit from the French Republic, the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and Honorary Doctorates from Smith College and Lawrence University.
This keynote addressed has been sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Special thanks to the Barnard Digital Humanities Center, the Center for Engaged Pedagogy, Barnard Library, and the Barnard-Columbia Urban Studies program, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice.
The program will be livestreamed on the Barnard College Youtube channel.