LEADERSHIP TEAM
The MWEJN is led by and accountable to environmental justice organizations and frontline communities
MWEJN LEADERSHIP TEAM
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Roxxanne O’Brien is o-Founder & Executive Director of Community Members for Environmental Justice. Roxxanne is a mother of three children and has been fighting for environmental justice in her neighborhood for over a decade. She has worked tirelessly to bring issues of industrial pollution on the northside of Minneapolis to the forefront, before many established organizations were engaged.
She was a key organizer around the elevation of Northern Metals facility for the past 7 years and for the purpose of pushing the city and state to face environmental injustice and racism in her community, she was on the Minneapolis Environmental Advisory Commission for four years. She also served on the city’s first official Green Zones Working Group and currently sits on the Northside Green Zone committee. Roxxanne OBrien co-founded Community Members for Environmental Justice in 2018.
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Debra Taylor is a co-founder of We the People of Detroit (WPD) and serves as its Director of Finance and Development. She has previously held positions as Legal Legislative Analyst for the City of Detroit & held various senior staff positions in government, the non profit sector and the world of philanthropy. She is a nationally recognized advocate, most notably for her work during the recent Flint Water Crisis and Detroit Water Shutoffs. Her work on social and political advocacy of marginalized populations garnered her the Spirit of Detroit Award for the second time in 2012, for her work with We the People of Detroit.
Debra was named the 2015 National Lawyer’s Guild Unsung Hero for her service to the community and the work she has done managing relations between the nonprofit's, public officials and community leaders. She is a fellow in the Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL), operated through the Damon Keith Center for Civil Rights. She joined the MWEJN Leadership Team in the fall of 2019. Her motto in life is to treat others as you wish to be treated!
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Brenda Coley is the Co-Executive Director of Milwaukee Water Commons. Over the years she has served in various positions in the non-profit and academic sectors and brings a long-standing commitment to social justice and community organizing. She has been a non-profit director, research coordinator and project manager with expertise in leadership development and organizational capacity building.
Before joining Milwaukee Water Commons, Coley was sole proprietor of Brenda Coley & Associates, helping local and national organizations build the cultural competence to approach marginalized populations around health, leadership development and social justice issues. In addition, she has served on many community engagement boards and public health initiatives, specifically focused on equality and health disparities within the LGBTQ and other minority communities in Milwaukee.
Coley is committed to exploring the influences of one’s own culture and understanding ways in which groups of people are treated in society, using that knowledge to develop strategies to effectively engage diverse groups of people in important community issues.
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Kim is the Executive Director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), where she has worked since 1998. Kim joined LVEJO as an organizer and helped to organize community leaders to successfully build a new playground, community gardens, remodel of a local school park and force a local polluter to upgrade their facilities to meet current laws. As ED of LVEJO, she has worked with organizers to reinstate a job access bus line, build on the recent victory of a new 23 acre park to be built in Little Village, and continue the 10 plus year campaign that won the closure of the two local coal power plants to fight for remediation and redevelopment of the sites. Kim is Chair of the Illinois Commission on Environmental Justice.
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Eartha Borer-Bell has worked, for over a decade, in arts and environmental organizations in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, and across the Midwest, to create a more just and equitable community. Eartha is currently the Director of the Midwest Environmental Justice Network, a grassroots, women-of-color-led organization that convenes and strengthens EJ groups across twelve midwestern states. Eartha is also the Founding Director of Frogtown Farm, a 5.5-acre regenerative urban farm, where she led a community process to design, build, and program a thriving space for community healing and connectedness. She has also built a strategy consultancy for non-profits, foundations, and social enterprises focused on the intersection of social justice, food, agriculture, health, and environment. Eartha graduated with a B.A. in Art History & Environmental Studies from Macalester College and an M.B.A. from the University of Minnesota.
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Shalini Gupta is a writer, researcher and environmental justice activist. Shalini has been involved with energy, climate and environmental policy - with a focus on building frontline community capacity - for the past 20 years. Her work is centered on solutions to our ecological crises that are grounded in people and place; and our economic and social histories. Through her consultancy work, Shalini works with a range of philanthropic, governmental, and community-based organizations across the country.
Shalini has been a leader in the 2023 push for zoning reform at the City of Minneapolis around heavy industrial facilities and cumulative impacts; and as the co-facilitator of the City of Minneapolis Environmental Justice Working Group, her work helped develop the city's groundbreaking 2013 Climate Action Plan (establishing Minneapolis' first environmental justice focused Green Zones Initiative) and the 2019 Southside Green Zones Work Plan. Prior to starting her consulting work, Shalini was the co-founder and executive director of the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy, an environmental justice research and policy organization. Shalini’s past work experience includes research and policy positions at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany, and the Izaak Walton League of America’s Energy Program. A former governor appointee to the Minnesota Next Generation Energy Board, Shalini has served as co-Chair of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice Board of Directors, on the board of Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota, and was on the founding leadership team of the Midwest Environmental Justice Network.
She holds a BA in the Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago and a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale University. An immigrant as a child from Mumbai, India, since 1984 Shalini has called Minneapolis home, the un-ceded land of the Dakota peoples. She is blessed to live here with her husband, two sons, mother, and a community of friends and extended family.
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Jumana assists nonprofits and foundations in EJ strategies and outreach, program planning and evaluation, research and survey analysis, water policy and advocacy, and implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.
Jumana’s long-term projects include managing the Small Grants program for the Midwest EJ Network, providing water policy support to We the People of Detroit, and supporting the National Audubon’s Society’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging efforts. Previously, Jumana managed the $5 million Great Lakes grantmaking portfolio at the C.S. Mott Foundation. She also led resource development efforts at two neighborhood-based organizations in Chicago.
Jumana has supported participatory grantmaking through her work with the Midwest EJ Network, and on the Steering Committee for the Fund to Build Grassroots Power (a national participatory grantmaking fund), and with the Franciscan Sisters of Mary as they transitioned their funding to a community-led process. Jumana currently is Chair of River Network’s Board of Directors, is a member-at-large of the National Center for Healthy Housing’s Board of Directors.
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Phoebe Young (she/her/hers) is a Saginaw Chippewa descendant born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has worked for Midwest EJ Network partner, Dream of Wild Health, for the past 5 years as a community and youth organizer in Minnesota.
Phoebe is also a PhD candidate in the American Studies program at the University of Minnesota, where she is part of the Critical Indigenous Studies cohort. She has been involved in research, coordination, and community organizing efforts in nonprofit work across the country, and is dedicated to Indigenous sovereignty, Native youth development, and social justice work.
In her spare time, she loves to cook and bake, and she is usually running behind on a beading project that she started for one of her family members sometime during the pandemic.