MADISON – Peggy Shepard, a prominent environmental and health advocate for minority groups in New York City, will give a free public lecture Wednesday, October 24, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Her topic will be "Environmental Justice, Health, and Sustainability: An Urban View" at 7:30 p.m. in room 180 Science Hall, 550 N. Park St.
Shepard is executive director and co-founder of West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc. (WE ACT), the first organization created in New York to improve environmental health and quality of life in communities of color.
Established in 1988, WE ACT works for environmental and social justice on issues of land use, waterfront development, brownfields redevelopment, transportation and air pollution, open space, and environmental health. It is active in research, public education, advocacy, organizing, government accountability, litigation, legislative affairs, and sustainable economic development.
WE ACT is nationally recognized in the field of community-based participatory research in partnership with the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
Shepard, a recipient of the prestigious Heinz Award for the Environment, has been influential in the environmental justice movement at all levels, from local to national.
She was the first female chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and she co-chairs the Northeast Environmental Justice Network. She is a former member of the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council of the National Institutes of Health and a member of the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
A former newspaper and magazine journalist, Shepard also has worked in New York city and state government.
Her UW-Madison talk, part of the Gaylord Nelson Lecture Series, honoring the late Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator, is sponsored by the Nelson Institute with support from the Holstrom-Kineke Environmental Studies Fund and additional support from the Ho-Chunk Nation. Environmental justice is the theme of this year's Nelson lecture series.
For more information about the lecture, contact Tom Sinclair, 263-5599, tksincla@wisc.edu.