Making Change: Women Designing an Environmentally Just Future

Libby Washburn, Special Assistant to the President for Native Affairs at the White House, will be the keynote speaker at the conference, Women Designing an Environmentally Just Future, to be held on the NJIT campus and virtually on March 25. The conference will focus on the communities hit first and hardest by climate change and environmental degradation, while highlighting the work of local leaders to reverse the damage.

A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, Washburn previously worked at the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Obama Administration, and has practiced Native American law for the federal government and in private practice. She will speak in part about Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) and the Biden administration’s commitment to elevating it in federal scientific and policy processes.

The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy and Council on Environmental Quality describes ITEK as “a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, practices, and beliefs that promotes environmental sustainability and the responsible stewardship of natural resources through relationships between humans and environmental systems.”

The conference, which is free to attend, is part of the Women Designing the Future series put on annually by NJIT’s Murray Center for Women in Technology.

Lucia Rodriguez-Freire, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at NJIT, will speak about her work on remediating lead-based drinking pipes in New Jersey towns and cities, including Newark. She also studies the effect of contaminants on natural biogeochemical cycles in order to develop sustainable methods to remediate polluted areas, such as abandoned mines on Native American lands.

Other speakers include:

Ana Baptista, an assistant professor of professional practice in environmental policy and sustainability management at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment at The New School; Co-Director of the Tishman Environment & Design Center at The New School; and member of the Board of Trustees of the Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark.

Erin Foody, an NJIT Albert Dorman Honors College senior majoring in Civil and Environmental Engineering and president of the NJIT Green Student Club.

Kim Gaddy, the national environmental justice director for Clean Water Action; vice-chair of the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council; and the New Jersey president of the International Black Women's Congress.

Christian Rodriguez, a community organizer with the Ironbound Community Corporation and the urban agriculture manager of Down Bottom Farms in Newark.

Julie Winokur, the executive director of Talking Eyes Media and an Emmy-nominated director and cinematographer, whose 2020 documentary film, The Sacrifice Zone, shines a spotlight on the impact of  polluting facilities in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood.

There will be a free screening of the film at 11.

“We’ve been fortunate this year to be able to bring together a group of extraordinary women environmental leaders who, working at both the national level, starting at the White House, and at the local level right here in Newark, -have been able to make a real change in environmental laws and policies,” said Nancy Steffen-Fleur, director of the Murray Center.

She added, “We encourage everybody who cares about the environment to attend the conference, online or in person, to learn from the people who have done it on how to make alliances and take effective action to challenge the forces that are threatening the quality of all our lives.”

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION SITE: https://wdf22.eventbrite.com