Get to know me!
I am a storyteller, author and a cultural geographer who is deeply interested in issues related to identity, difference, creativity, and resilience. When folks ask me what my work is about, I usually say “the aim of my work is to develop greater cultural competency within environmental organizations and institutions, challenge media outlets on their representation of difference, and increase awareness of how privilege shapes who gets to speak to environmental issues and determine policy and action”. What I really mean to say is that I’m passionate about interrogating our past and dreaming a future that is just, liberatory and green. I am grounded in both artistic and intellectual ways of knowing - I pursed an acting career for eleven years, but five years of backpacking trips through Africa and Asia, and living in Nepal changed the course of my life. Motivated by these experiences, I returned to school after a 15-year absence to complete a B.A., M.A. (both of these degrees focused on gender and environmental issues in Kenya and Nepal, respectively) and Ph.D. (which focused on African Americans and environmental issues in the U.S.) I am both privileged and grateful to have been a Fulbright Scholar, a Canon National Parks Science Scholar and receive a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Studies.
I have worked with the media in various capacities including the Tavis Smiley Show, MSNBC, & Vice News Tonight; wrote Op-Eds for The New York Times, The Guardian, Outside Magazine & Newsweek; was a guest editor & contributor for a special section on Race & the National Parks in Orion Magazine; was a columnist for The Earth Island Journal (three years); participated in a roundtable conversation with REI and The Atlantic; interviewed with various media outlets including NPR, Sierra Club, Boston Globe & National Geographic; appeared on numerous podcasts, the most recent being the Kindred Podcast and Fierce Compassion Podcast; and even filmed a commercial for Toyota that highlighted the importance of African Americans getting out into Nature. Along with public speaking, writing, consulting and teaching (I have held positions at Wellesley College, the University of California, Berkeley & the University of Kentucky), I served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board for eight years under the Obama Administration which assists the National Park Service in engaging in relations of reciprocity with diverse communities. My first book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors was released in 2014 (UNC Press).
Recent publications include “Radical Presence-The Shadows Take Shape: African Americans (Re)making a Green World” in Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice and Environmental History (edited by Mary Mendoza & Traci Brynne Voyles, Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2025); “Memory Divine” in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (edited by Erin Sharkey, Milkweed Press, Feb. 2023); “Joy is a Revelation” in Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors (edited by Rue Mapp, Chronicle Books, Oct. 2022); Self-Evident: Reflections on the Invisibility of Black Bodies in Environmental Histories (BESIDE Magazine; Montreal Spring 2020);”The Perils of Being Black in Public: We are all Christian Cooper and George Floyd (The Guardian, June 3rd 2020) and “Who Gets Left Out of the Great Outdoors Story?” (The NY Times November 4 2021). I am currently working on my new book (creative non-fiction) that takes a more personal journey into the very complicated relationship between race, land & belonging in the United States, and a performance piece entitled The N Word: Nature Revisited as part of an Andrew W. Mellon residency at the New York Botanical Gardens Humanities Institute. I was awarded the Alexander and Ilse Melamid Medal from the American Geographical Society and I am involved with a number of documentary film projects; a piece of my family’s story appears in the HBO documentary, Trees and Other Entanglements (Vermilion Films). While I am involved with a number of different projects at the moment (ask me about Big Medicine: The Story of York and Audacious Creativity for Climate Justice: Seeds of Solidarity), I am also part of an incredible group of creatives from across the African diaspora who meet at Jnane Tamsna in Marrakech in February to take part in the Diaspora Salon, the brainchild of the hotelier & author Meryanne Loum Martin. And I’m so grateful to be working with the Global Diversity Foundation, a group of Environmental Fellows from around the world who are reimagining the future of conservation. While my creative roots spread far and wide, I continue to be grounded as a scholar/artist-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College.
