Biographic Sketches of Environmental Justice
Speakers
Jesse E. Buggs, Jr. is a graduate of the Howard University School of
Engineering who has served as a consultant and advisor to public and
private sector clients whose domestic and international interests cover a
wide range of economic activity. Mr. Buggs advises his clients on issues
such as utility pricing and planning practices; strategic planning and
organizational development issues; solid waste management; economic
development and community revitalization strategies. He has done extensive
work in the Middle East and Africa; served as a Systems Engineer with IBM;
designed tariffs and conducted load research for the Potomac Electric
Power Company in Washington, D.C.; and acted as special consultant to the
Office of Public Advocate, Rate Counsel Division, State of New Jersey on
matters concerning needs assessments, financing, and operations of
waste-to-energy plants throughout the state.
Mr. Buggs is the Chairman and Founder of THINK! Inc. which is an
organization that works with state and local governments, engineering ,
architectural, and urban planners , as well as local community-based
organizations, in the pursuit of enhanced design, construction,
environmental, and economic development standards for better health,
transportation, and the delivery of quality services to all residents.
Dollie Burwell works for Congresswoman Eva Clayton (D. NC). She led the
fight against Toxic Waste sites in Warrenton, NC., and is now a
Caseworker/Field Representative in the congresswoman's North Carolina
offices. Burwell is :
* Communication link between area constituents and the Member
* Representative for the Member at various events within the
District
* Caseworker - Halifax, Northampton, Person
* Field Representative - Rocky Mount (Edgecombe), Granville,
Halifax, Person, Vance
She's profiled in Dr. Temma Kaplan's book CRAZY FOR DEMOCRACY. Burwell
and
Kaplan will do a book signing at 4 pm.
Ruth Browne is Executive Director at the Arthur Ashe Institute for
Urban
Health in Brooklyn, New York. She is a renowned expert on asthma in
African American communities and has done pioneering work regarding the
relationship of rising instances of asthma amongst blacks to environmental
racism.
James S. Hoyte is currently Assistant to the President and Associate
Vice
President for Affirmative Action and Lecturer on Environmental Science and
Public Policy at Harvard University. An attorney and specialist in public
policy, he received his AB from Harvard College and JD from Harvard Law
School. From 1983 to 1988, Hoyte served as Massachusetts Secretary of
Environmental Affairs with responsibility for the planning and management
of all environmental and natural resource conservation policies and
programs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is founder of the
Boston coalition Environmental Diversity Forum and Co-Creator and
Instructor, with Dr. Nicky Sheats, of Harvard University's first course
on environmental racism " Environmental Justice as a Policy Issue."
He has
published articles in the fields of environmental policy and management
and serves on the Boards of Directors of numerous environmental and civic
organizations. "
Dr. Temma Kaplan, Professor of Women's Studies and History, at the
State
University of New York at Stony Brook is the Director of the Women's
Studies Program. Author of three books, Anarchists of Andalusia,
1868-1903; Red City, Blue Period: Social Movements in Picasso's
Barcelona; and Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots Movements; she
teaches courses on women, gender, and sexuality in Latin America, Europe,
and South Africa, and offers classes on feminist cultural and social
theory.
Dr. Claire Alicia Nelson has been actively engaged in the business of
development assistance for twenty years, working in the area of project
development
and management at the Inter-American Development Bank. She is also
Founder and President of the Institute of Caribbean Studies, a
Washington-based non-profit 'community think-tank' dedicated to the
promotion of the Caribbean-American agenda. Her work spans the
breadth
of the development assistance experience, from private sector development
to women-in-development to public sector management. However, more
specifically, Dr. Nelson has been a frontrunner in the challenge of
placing the topic of social exclusion on the agenda of the multilateral
development assistance institutions. As a result of her pioneering work,
she was invited to be a Salzburg Fellow in 1997 and 1999 at their Seminars
on Race and Ethnicity, and was also invited by the Salzburg Seminar in 2000 to
participate in their Advisory Group on Leadership From Within. Dr.
Nelson
was a participant in the Bellagio Consultation on the UN World Conference
on Racism organized by the International Human Rights Law Group, and is an
alternate member of the Americas Regional NGO Coordinating Committee for
the UN World Conference Against Racism. A member of the IDB
Speakers
Bureau, she is also Founder of the IDB Diversity Group, and architect of
the recently established Martin Luther King Awards for Promotion of Inclusion
in International Development.
An award-winning writer and performance artiste, Dr. Nelson's Op-Ed pieces
have appeared in publications such as the CARIBBEAN CONNECTION, CARIBBEAN
SUN and the JAMAICA WEEKLY GLEANER, the JAMAICA HERALD, the JAMAICA
OBSERVER and CARIBBEAN WEEK. Her plays have been performed in Jamaica,
Barbados, Washington DC and featured on public television in Maryland and
Washington D.C. She has performed at locales such as the Smithsonian
Institute, the World Bank, the Baltimore Museum of Art, University of
Pennsylvania, and the Kennedy Center.
Dr. Nelson holds Industrial Engineering Degrees from State University of
New York at Buffalo and Purdue University, and a Doctorate in Engineering
Management from the George Washington University. She has served on
numerous Boards and Committees including: US Department of Commerce
US/Caribbean Business Development Council; Advisory Board; DC Caribbean
Carnival Association; International Think Tank, Commission on
Pan-African
Affairs,Office of the Prime Minister of Barbados; and the Caribbean
Heritage Group.
Dr. David Padgett is Keynote speaker for the morning plenary.
David A. Padgett is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Tennessee State
University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is currently in the process of
building a Geography/GIS-based Environmental Justice curriculum at
Tennessee State University. During the 1999 Spring Semester he
taught an
environmental justice course at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Padget is also CEO of GEO-MENTAL, a company that has been involved in
environmental justice research continuously since 1992. Their projects
have ranged in variety from community-level lead (Pb)-soil sampling to
Community Reinvestment Act data investigations. They have also served as
consultants on environmental justice and brownfields issues to the
National Conference of Black Mayors. Most recently, GEO-MENTAL has
focused upon "sustainable" environmental justice that includes
addressing
community concerns (i.e. jobs, education, health, etc) beyond
environmental degradation. They define their approach as holistic in
that
they strive for total community recovery in addition to the mitigation of
locally undesirable land uses. Some of GEO-MENTAL's most recent reports
are available on-line.
Padgett's websites are:
Dr. Kim Pearson has taught journalism, professional writing and
humanities
courses at The College of New Jersey since 1990. She is also a magazine
publisher, journalist, public relations consultant and poet.
In 2000, Pearson was named the New Jersey Professor of the Year by the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for
the Advancement and Support of Education. At TCNJ, Pearson advises the
school newspaper, coordinates the professional writing minor and creates
both real and virtual media enterprises with her students. This has
included two magazines. College Money, a personal finance magazine for
college students was in print from 1992 to 1995. In 1996, Pearson and
her
online newsmagazines. That project has evolved into the unbound
Institute, a new initiative dedicated to strengthening and diversifying
the ranks of future media professionals.
Pearson has 23 years' writing and editing experience for both consumer and
controlled-circulation magazines, newsletters and other print and on-line
publications. Her work has appeared in magazines ranging from Emerge to
the Royal Canadian Journal of Radioastronomy. She is a former contributing
editor for The Quarterly Black Review of Books, and a former Trustee of
Princeton Alumni Publications, publisher of The Princeton Alumni Weekly.
She is also a performance poet.
As a public relations writer and consultant Pearson has written
award-winning articles for AT&T and the Fox Chase Cancer Center of
Philadelphia. Her consulting clients include Bloomberg L.P. and the
Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
Pearson holds an AB in Politics from Princeton University, and an MA in
journalism from New York University, where she earned the Hillier
Krieghbaum Science Writing Award. She is a member of the AAHE Teaching
and Learning with Technology Roundtable, the Committee of Concerned
Journalists, and The National Association of Black Journalists.
Olga Pomar, Esq., Camden Regional Legal Services
In 1998, New Jersey was one of five states awarded a grant from the EPA to
start a pilot program on environmental racism. The federal agency defines
environmental racism as "any policy, practice or regulation that is an
intentional or unintentional disproportionate imposition of environmental
hazards on minority communities. To date, the largest suit filed in New
Jersey has been in Camden. Ms. Pomar is lead attorney for Camden Citizens
in Action v. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. She
works
at the Camden Regional Office of NJ Legal Services.
Professor David Rose has been active in the environmental sciences
since 1969,
the year before the first earth day and the founding of the Environmental
Protection Agency, generally accepted as the beginning of the
environmental movement. During his graduate work at Rutgers Univ. Dept. of
Environmental Sciences he concentrated in water pollution and
solid waste management. He has taught environmental courses at TCNJ or
Rutgers continuously since 1970. Prof. Rose has coauthored over 30
environmental biologic inventories under the auspicies of local, state,
and federal agencies. He served for a decade as a member and chair of the
Ewing Township Environmental Commission, is currently a 25-year member and
former chair of the Ewing Township Planning Board, and is a founding
member of the Ewing Township Redevelopment Agency. Prof. Rose is a NJ
certified Redevelopment Commissioner. He has participated as a principle
in the writing of the Ewing Township Master Plan and the Ewing Township
Redevelopment Plan. He additionally serves as a member of the steering
committee of the NJ Higher Ed. Partnership for Sustainability.
Dr. Nicky Sheats, Esq., is Spring, 2002 TCNJ Visiting Scholar in the
School of Science and the Department of African American Studies. He and
Jamie Hoyt served as co-creators and co-instructors for Harvard
University's first Environmental Justice course entitled " Environmental
Justice as a Policy Issue." Sheats has most recently worked as an
attorney for Environmental Justice, the NYC Not-for-Profit advocacy group
and as an oceanographic researcher. He has been an organizer and
consultant for this symposium.