Author: Vince Robinson

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin is an environmental advocate focused on people and planet. Her niche in environmental work is developing capacity building programs and creating multimedia campaigns to dismantle privilege and increase opportunities for vulnerable populations to access healthy air, clean energy, and a toxic free economy at the local, regional and national level.

Toles O’Laughlin is a co-chair of the Green Leadership Trust, which builds a more powerful environmental movement by expanding the impact and leadership of people of color and indigenous people serving on US environmental non-profit boards. She is the chair and state representative on the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, Air and Climate Public Advisory Committee.

Most recently, Toles O’Laughlin was the former North American Director at 350.org, where she drove regional strategy in the United States and Canada.

David Greaves is a Wildlife Photographer, Biologist and Remedial Project Manager for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3, and the Founder of Nature Under Your Nose. He has a B.S. in Biology from Lincoln University.

Greaves was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in the cities of Forestville and Clinton, Maryland where his love for the environment and wildlife was fostered.  While growing up in Maryland, he enjoyed exploring the parks and woods near his home and searching for all types of insects, plants, and animals.

David’s photography is inspired by the television shows he grew up watching such as PBS nature documentaries, Wild America, NOVA, and reading animal encyclopedias at an early age.  His work encourages the viewer to look around and explore the diversity of nature that can be found in their backyards or while on traveling abroad. 

Greaves currently resides in Newark, DE. To learn more about his work follow him on Instagram @natureunderyournose or at https://dgreaves.picfair.com

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

A. Donald McEachin represents Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. A longtime state legislator and former chair of the Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus, he was first elected to his current office in 2016. He sits on the House Committees on Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources, the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and serves as Vice-Chair of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition. During his first term in Congress, Rep. McEachin co-founded the United for Climate and Environmental Justice Congressional Task Force and continues to lead the task force as a co-chair.

People, cities, and states across the country, including Virginia, have committed to a clean economy, and Rep. McEachin is leading the fight in Congress to ensure the federal government does the same. To put the U.S. on the path to a 100 percent clean energy economy, last Congress, Rep. McEachin introduced his 100% Clean Economy Act of 2019, which sets a nationwide goal of achieving a 100 percent clean economy by 2050. Supported by over 160 of his colleagues last Congress, the Congressman’s 100% Clean Economy Act of 2019 would protect public health and our environment; create high-quality clean jobs and strengthen our economy; mitigate the worst impacts of climate change for all communities and all generations; and restore the U.S. as a global climate leader.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. McEachin has also led the fight to protect all people’s fundamental right to clean air, pure water and an environment free of dangerous levels of toxic pollution. Recognizing that the people most affected by environmental injustice have not had a meaningful voice in the decision-making processes impacting their well-being, McEachin began a multi-year collaborative effort with hundreds of impacted communities to draft his landmark Environmental Justice for All Act, legislation which comprehensively addresses the long-standing environmental inequities that harm low-income communities, communities of color, and Tribal and indigenous communities across the country.

Rep. McEachin looks forward to carrying forward his work towards a sustainable future for all and the ongoing fight for bold, inclusive environmental justice solutions in the 117th Congress.

Rep. McEachin graduated from American University with a degree in Political Science and from the University of Virginia School of Law. In May of 2008, he received his Master of Divinity from The Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University. Rep. McEachin and his lovely wife Colette, the Richmond City Commonwealth’s Attorney, are the parents of three adult children.

Jan-Michael Archer is a third-year doctoral student at the University of Maryland's School of Public Health and a UMD Global STEWARD Fellow. As a doctoral student in the Community Engagement, Environmental Justice, and Health (CEEJH) Laboratory, Archer employs community-engaged and citizen-science practices to develop relationships and capacities within communities. His primary focuses are on reducing the air pollution that’s overburdening in Black communities and increasing green space equity. But in 2016, he felt he needed a break from academia, so he dove into the world of outdoor education -- working with conservation organizations throughout the Chesapeake Bay region (including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Aquarium, Living Classrooms Foundation, and others).

Reflecting on the lack of opportunities for Black youth, Archer was compelled to investigate barriers to equity in the environmental field. Five years later, this still drives his research.

Dr. Mchezaji “Che” Axum  is the Director of the Center for Urban Agriculture and Gardening Education in the College of Agriculture Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences (CAUSES) at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). Axum leads a team of researchers at the Muirkirk Research Farm in Beltsville, MD and oversees UDC’s Master Gardening, Specialty and Ethnic Crops and Urban Forestry programs.

He is a graduate of the College of Agronomy, now the College of Natural Resource Management at the University of Maryland and a Certified State of Maryland Nutrient Management Consultant.  Axum serves on the board of the Harry Hughes Center for Agroecology and is a member of the American Agronomy Society/ ASA, the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA).

Donald Belle is an 18-year-veteran educator in the Prince George’s County Public School (PGCPS) system.

Currently, Belle is an Environmental Outreach Educator with the William Schmidt Outdoor and Environmental Education Center. He has worked in the past as the science teacher coordinator and academy of environmental studies coordinator at Gwynn Park High School. In 2012, Belle was awarded Outstanding Educator by Prince George’s County Public Schools. Belle has recently worked on several environmental literacy initiatives including: Mussel Power Citizen Science Program, the Prince George’s County Envirothon, and Climate Action Initiatives.

For the past four years he has organized and grown the Student Environmental Alliance Summit (SEAS). SEAS supports high school students that have expressed an interest in working or learning about careers in environmental science, natural resource management, or agriculture. In 2020, Mr. Belle was appointed to serve on the Prince George’s County Climate Action Commission.

Lois Yena Chang is an environmental geographer educated and trained in remote sensing science research. Upon graduating from Emory University with a BS MPH, Chang began her professional journey as an ORISE Fellow at EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice. It was there that she documented success stories of EJSCREEN – EPA’s mapping interface that allows communities to generate data-driven visuals and reports on toxic waste facilities and pollutants in their neighborhoods.

Chang also supported a non-profit organization based in DC where she successfully obtained comprehensive air emissions inventories not yet available to the public for seven states in the U.S. Chang currently works as an epidemiologist in Atlanta, GA responding to COVID-19 needs.

Beth Collier is the founder and director of Wild in the City, an organization supporting the well-being of people of color through connection with nature, offering experiences in woodland living skills, natural history, hiking and ecotherapy.

Collier also is a Nature Allied Psychotherapist and ethnographer, teaching woodland living skills and natural history. As a therapist, she works exclusively in natural settings and has developed Nature Allied Psychotherapy as a modality for ongoing client work in allegiance with nature. As well as exploring your human social relationships, Nature Allied Psychotherapy creates the opportunity to explore your relationship with the natural world.

Collier specializes in working with relational trauma in our connections with people and with nature. As a naturalist, her work aims to reignite the oral tradition for learning about nature within families and challenges racism within the environmental sector.

Dr. Candice Duncan is a lecturer in the Environmental Science and Technology Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She earned her PhD from the University of Arizona’s Soil, Water and Environmental Science program (now known as the Department of Environmental Science). She earned an MS in Earth Science from North Carolina Central University, where she studied in the Department of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences.

She is an environmental scientist through knowledge and experience gained as an analytical chemist, soil scientist and hydrologist. Her work focuses on the transport and characterization of organic contaminants in the vadose zone (the Earth's terrestrial subsurface that extends from the surface to the regional groundwater table). Dr. Duncan dabbles in archeology through the New York African Burial Ground project with Howard University, studying trace metals in grave soils using non-invasive analytical technology combining soil science and chemistry.  This work postulates the diet of interred free and enslaved Africans of the New Amsterdam Colony located in what is now Lower Manhattan.

She has advised undergraduate students majoring in environmental science and technology. She has mentored undergraduate and graduate students in research related from legacy phosphorus in Chesapeake Bay soils to contaminant leachate from recycled asphalt pavement in highway construction. She is a community engagement promoter, science advocate, citizen scientist, STEM educator, and mentor. 

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Dr. Thomas R. Easley is the Assistant Dean of Community and Inclusion at the Yale School of the Environment. He has spent most of his career as a diversity professional and a forester. As a diversity professional, he has focused on the recruitment, retention and diverse talent in natural resource disciplines.

As a forester, he has worked with landowners and citizens on land management and stewardship. Dr. Easley earned his undergraduate degree in Forest Science from Alabama A&M University, his master’s degree in Forest Genetics from Iowa State University, and his doctorate in Adult Education from NC State University. Dr. Easley served as the Diversity Director of the College of Natural Resources at NC State University where he taught courses, advised students, and supported faculty and staff on programming ensuring they are inclusive to all populations.

Dr. Easley combines his professions along with his passions of art and ministry or music to lead the diversity efforts in the school.