Author: Vince Robinson

Morgan Johnson is an environmental justice activist and advocate and the Staff Attorney at Waterkeepers Chesapeake. Her love for the Chesapeake and Coastal Bays stem from trips to the Chesapeake and James River, as well as her time spent on the Potomac and Anacostia rivers while she was in D.C., interning for the Obama Administration's White House Community Solutions Team, housed within OMB.

Her family's own experiences with environmental racism brought her to this field, and is the reason she became an attorney. Johnson is a 2020 graduate of the University of New Mexico School of Law, where she earned her Juris Doctor and an Environmental Law Certificate. During law school she served as a clinical law student and clinic fellow working on environmental justice issues, legislative legal analysis, regulatory policymaking and water law matters. The body of Johnson’s professional experiences range from local to federal and non-profit to governmental.

She is passionate about leveraging her public policy skills and legal training to advocate for people, places, and species. Johnson also serves on the board of The Birthing Project USA, a global organization working to improve birth outcomes for Black mothers and babies.

Kahlil Kettering is the Urban Conservation Director for the Maryland/D.C. chapter of The Nature Conservancy. He develops their urban conservation strategy in D.C. and Baltimore, centered on implementing projects that elevate clean urban waterways, quality of life in urban communities, and the benefits nature provides to people in cities.

His work focuses on the ability to achieve environmental conservation outcomes through private equity investments via the new Stormwater Retention Credit market in D.C., strategic tree canopy expansion, the creation of urban green spaces for the benefit of nature and people, and engaging young people as environmental advocates.

Before moving back to his hometown of Washington, D.C., Kettering worked as an environmental analyst in Miami, FL advocating for the protection and restoration of Everglades and Biscayne National Parks. He has a Master’s in Global Environmental Policy from American University and a Master’s in Public Management from the University of Maryland.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Dr. J. Drew Lanham is a native of Edgefield, South Carolina, and the author of ​The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature​, which received the Reed Award from the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Southern Book Prize, and was a finalist for the John Burroughs Medal.

He is a birder, naturalist, and hunter-conservationist who has published essays and poetry in publications including Orion​, ​Audubon​, ​Flycatcher​, and ​Wilderness, ​and in several anthologies, including ​The Colors of Nature​, ​State of the Heart​, ​Bartram’s Living Legacy​, and ​Carolina Writers at Home​.

An Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University, he and his family live in the Upstate of South Carolina, a soaring hawk’s downhill glide from the southern Appalachian escarpment that the Cherokee once called the Blue Wall.

Chanceé Lundy is co-owner and principal of Nspiregreen, a firm that combines engineering and urban planning with community organizing. NspireGreen is dedicated to fulfilling a vision that facilitates the empowerment and transformation of every community through environmental planning. Focusing on community planning, multimodal planning, climate change and resiliency planning, Nspiregreen believes in creating healthy and safe communities for all.

Lundy cofounded Nspiregreen LLC in 2009 and has spearheaded projects providing technical support and/ or public outreach services to environmental clients on projects such as the District’s Comprehensive Energy Plan, Solid Waste Management Study, and Consolidated TMDL Implementation (Stormwater Management) Plan. Lundy received her Master’s in Civil Engineering (Environmental Concentration) from Florida State University and holds a B.S. in Environmental Science from Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University.

She is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Water Environment Federation, Women’s Transportation Seminar, and National Society of Black Engineers and is Mayoral Appointee to the Chesapeake Bay Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Dwight Russell, and their rambunctious little boy, Amari.

Lionel D. Lyles, II is a tenor saxophonist, and band leader for the Lionel Lyles Quintent, living and working in the D.C. metropolitan region. Lyles II majored in music education while at Morgan State University and graduated in 2002. The Lionel Lyles Quintet recorded its first studio project in 2006, The Lionel Lyles Quintet: The September Sessions.

Soon after, Lyles II enrolled at North Carolina Central University to pursue a Masters of Music in Jazz Studies Saxophone Performance, and graduated in 2008. While at NCCU, he had the opportunity to study with great jazz icons such as Branford Marsalis, Joey Calderazzo, Jimmy Heath, Roy Hargrove, Brian Horton, Robert Trowers and Dr. Ira Wiggins. His ensemble has three albums to date: The Lionel Lyles Quintet: The September Sessions(2006), The Lionel Lyles Quintet: At the Precipice (2014), and The Lionel Lyles Quintet: Simplistically Complex (2019). In 2015, Lyles II won a JAZZY for best jazz tenor.

In 2016, he won best New Jazz Tenor player, and Best Performing Artist across all genres in 2016 - all given by the Washington City Paper.

George McDonald is the Chief of the Youth Programs Division and Experienced Services Program for the National Park Service. McDonald holds a B.A. degree with honors in Political Science from Hampton University. He joined the NPS in 2000, and in his capacity as Special Assistant he held leadership roles in advancing the development of the Tuskegee Airmen Historic Site in Alabama and the African Burial Ground National Monument in New York City. He served as the Program Manager for the Presidential Commission for the National Museum for African American History and Culture. In 2008, McDonald also successfully launched the new Youth Partnerships Program Fund Source in 2008. This funding program was designed to enhance and increase the number of underserved minority and disadvantaged population groups that participate in park activities and to provide employment and educational opportunities to minority and disadvantaged youth in our national parks.

Under McDonald’s leadership many innovative youth development programs including the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Intern Program, the Mosaics in Science Intern Program and Latino Heritage Intern Program have been developed to provide education, employment and recreational opportunities to tens of thousands of young people. McDonald was born and raised in Harlem, New York City and resides in the DC metropolitan region.

Jaelon Terrele Moaney is Regional Director for U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen. Moaney is a proud descendant of America’s founding Black families in both Talbot (Copperville and Unionville, MD) and Kent (Georgetown and Worton Point, MD) Counties. As an author, screenwriter, scholar and public servant, he has ensured that the living legacies of the tidewater communities across the Chesapeake—particularly on Maryland’s Eastern Shore—are attributed both the reverence and swotting their soil is due.

Currently, Moaney holds a B.A. with honors in Political Science, Africana Studies, Leadership Studies and Environmental Studies (Williams-Mystic S’18), as well as graduate certificates from Yale Law School and Morgan State University. Throughout his journeys along all three U.S. coasts realizing ‘a more perfect union’ and as a Regional Director in the U.S. Senate alike, he has spared no time rolling up his sleeves to champion a better quality of life for all Marylanders and Maryland’s abundance of natural treasures.

Corina Newsome is the Community Engagement Manager for Georgia Audubon and a biology Master’s student at Georgia Southern University. Newsome, who began in the field of wildlife conservation as a zookeeper, currently conducts research to conserve the MacGillivray's Seaside Sparrow and connects people with birds across the state of Georgia.

Having experienced the hurdles faced by people of color interested in wildlife careers, she has founded several programs to encourage high school students from underrepresented demographics to consider careers in wildlife sciences. Her mission is to center the perspectives and leadership of historically oppressed communities in wildlife conservation, environmental education, and exploration of the natural world. 

Rabiah Nur is an Indigenous healer, activist, storyteller, speaker, ceremonialist and daughter of the Great Mother. Nur’s work in the world is to heal and empower through connection to nature, to spirit, and to their innate wisdom. She works to facilitate a rebirth of a new and healthy society where women are valued, empowered, whole and are held as the sacred beings that they are.

Currently, Nur consults with and teaches at conferences, gatherings, schools, religious organizations, and retreat centers to offer Earth-based spiritual teachings, grounding energetic work, collective healing for teams and work groups, and education about appropriate use of Indigenous practices and traditions. She has co-designed an initiative in partnership with the Patuxent Riverkeeper called Honoring Our Sacred Waters, which exists to increase awareness of the spiritual connection between people and water through honoring, ceremony, and education.

Omowalé-Kétu Oladuwa is a New York native, the son of Carrie and John Taylor, Margaret Fisher and Tyrone Foster, and the cultural student of “Chief” James Hawthorne Béy. He is the author and vocalist of Poetry discovered Oladuwa on death row where he calibrated his Afrikan identity and wrote himself anew.

Married 33 years, the father of five earned a B.S. in professional theatre, an MSJ in journalism,and worked 25 years in those two fields.

He blogs at rootfolks.com. His latest published works include: bone sutures—unwiring the mathematic of blackbody otherness (2017); in the tradition—all/ways moving freedom forward (2018); and nitefall: a c-19 radicalblues (2020). Oladuwa lives and writes from Fort Wayne, IN.