On Monday, August 22 we will be joined by Danielle Simms, environmental justice coordinator for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to discuss the DEQ’s environmental justice initiatives in the central Virginia region.

Danielle has lived most of her life in North Carolina and Virginia. She graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College with a B.S. in Environmental Science, is a graduate of the Mid-Eastern Alliance for Minority Participation Pathways to Science program and the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, earned a master’s degree in Natural Resources from Virginia Tech, and recently completed a Climate Change and Health graduate program at the Yale School of Public Health.

Her on-the-ground work with environmental organizations has included: lobbying to defend the Clean Air Act from attacks in Congress, organizing to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan, leading a $1.5M political program of targeted mail, digital ads, and radio ads, drafting 32 pieces of legislation predominantly focused on climate, environmental health, toxics, and environmental justice in Virginia, lobbying to pass over 100 conservation bills, and coordinating advocacy for the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum. In addition, she has served as staff on Capitol Hill and in the Virginia General Assembly to advance several pieces of legislation on a broad range of topics such as criminal justice reform, animal welfare, and health care reform.