Justin J. Pearson is a leader of Memphis Community Against Pollution and co-founder of Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) which is a Black-led environmental justice organization that successfully defeated a multi-billion dollar company's crude oil pipeline project. He is focused on social, racial, and economic justice as Special Assistant to the CEO of Year Up - a national program helping 18 - 24-year-olds gain training and entry-level jobs. Justin J. Pearson has an unwavering commitment to justice and dedicates his life to this endless pursuit.

Irene E. Leech, Ph.D. teaches in Virginia Tech’s Consumer Studies Major and is an active consumer advocate, especially on energy issues.  Her family’s 100+ year old Angus seedstock farm, Mt. Rush in Buckingham, VA, has an easement granted by eminent domain to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline through the center of the working business. Every building is in the incineration zone, just 4 miles after the compressor station.  Her home in Montgomery County, Virginia is in the evacuation zone of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and about 4 miles before the anticipated compressor station.  Irene is involved in landowner advocacy, research, and education.

IJill Averitt was notified that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was proposed to go through their family homestead and a piece of commercial property they were actively developing in 2015. Soon thereafter she joined the Friends of Nelson as their Volunteer Coordinator. She immersed herself in the fight organizing events and meetings. After the ACP was canceled she wanted to share what she and others learned from their struggles and dedicated herself to the creation of the Landowners Rapid Response Guide which eventually became the backbone of the newly designed PRPC website. With the help of videographer Sarah Hazelgrove, she produced four short videos to accompany the guide. Jill is deeply committed to her family and community and continues to work on a local level for change.

Dom Leon-Davis is the Executive Director of the Digital Climate Coalition. He is an organizer whose work focuses on mobilizing and empowering those closest to the center of our most pressing issues, especially black, brown, and immigrant communities. Prior to joining the coalition, he served as senior staff for several national, state, and local campaigns, including Cory Booker’s presidential campaign, Reverend Warnock’s Senate race, and Stacey Abrams gubernatorial. He has also worked at several advocacy organizations including MoveOn where he ran a national voter mobilization campaign for the 2020 general election and Working Families Party where he ran communications for New York and served as part of the New York Renews coalition

Jorde has won and settled multi-million dollar cases and has won law changing appeals relating to constitutional and other legal challenges for clients. Practicing in state and federal courts across the country Brian feels most at home in the courtroom.Often in the news and on television for protecting his clients rights and never afraid to take on the toughest cases. Work for the last many years has included representing landowners opposed to eminent domain for private gain and protecting their family interests related to the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline.

Larry joined RFF in 2000. Prior to RFF, he directed the New York Public Interest Research Group’s (NYPIRG) environmental programs from 1988 through 1999. Among his successes in that capacity were campaigns to prevent construction of the Brooklyn Navy Yard incinerator; force the shut-down of Fresh Kills, the largest landfill in the world; and urge New York Governor George Pataki to order promulgation of what at the time were the toughest power plant emission standards in the country. Larry co-founded the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and serves as president of the board of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Chris advocates for people and causes he believes in. He represents individuals and businesses as they confront powerful interests on the other side: property owners in disputes with the government, landowners in eminent-domain cases, and others with an important cause in a civil trial or appeal.Chris has won cases for clients in courts across the country—from state and federal trial and appellate courts to the U.S. Supreme Court. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches an upper-level course on property rights and eminent domain.

General Russel Honoré is a decorated 37-year army veteran and a global authority on leadership, disaster management, and climate preparedness. At the request of the Speaker of the House, the General led Task Force 1-6 Capitol Security Review to improve Capitol security following the attacks on January 6, 2021. As the commander of Joint Task Force Katrina, he became known as the “Category 5 General” for his leadership in coordinating military relief efforts in post-hurricane New Orleans.General Honoré knows that the future of our national security depends on protecting our environment, and he’s fighting for a brighter future for us all. A Louisiana native, he founded the Green ARMY, a coalition of environmental experts and advocates, to protect against pollution while fighting climate change and the natural disasters it causes.

Lavigne, who is from St. James Parish, Louisiana which is at the center of the alley, has testified before Congress, and runs a faith-based organization, RISE St. James, focused on preventing expansion and worsening petrochemical plant pollution in the area.Lavigne is also a collaborator on the Coalition Against Death Alley, a regional environmental justice group. She is also a plaintiff in White Hat v. Landry, an environmental justice case, focused on changes in Louisiana Oil and Gas law. Lavigne is focused in part on defending the cultural heritage of the African American community. In 2019, she organized the community against a new Formosa Plastics Corp factory that would have disrupted a slave grave in the community.

Crystal Cavalier-Keck is the co-founder of Seven Directions of Service with her husband. She is a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in Burlington, NC. She is the Chair of the Environmental Justice Committee for the NAACP, a board member of the Haw River Assembly and the a member of the 2020 Fall Cohort of the Sierra Club's Gender Equity and Environment Program and Women's Earth Alliance (WEA) Accelerator for Grassroots Women Environmental Leaders.

Ms. Beasley is an environmental industry leader with over 13 years of environmental project management experience in both the private and public sectors. She has served in leadership roles from multimedia project management to developing engineering solutions with experience establishing environmental compliance by developing plans, procedures, and policies under the Clean Water Act (CWA), Clean Air Act (CAA), Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA), Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), and OSHA to supplement training for operational personnel.

Bill has served as the Pipeline Safety Trust's Executive Director since 2020 and serves with a passion for fierce independence, public safety advocacy, and environmental protections.Bill previously served the Deschutes River Conservancy in Bend, Oregon – a collaborative, multi-stakeholder non-profit organization founded by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, and local irrigation districts to restore streamflow and improve water quality in the Deschutes River Basin.

Lavigne, who is from St. James Parish, Louisiana which is at the center of the alley, has testified before Congress, and runs a faith-based organization, RISE St. James, focused on preventing expansion and worsening petrochemical plant pollution in the area.Lavigne is also a collaborator on the Coalition Against Death Alley, a regional environmental justice group. She is also a plaintiff in White Hat v. Landry, an environmental justice case, focused on changes in Louisiana Oil and Gas law. Lavigne is focused in part on defending the cultural heritage of the African American community. In 2019, she organized the community against a new Formosa Plastics Corp factory that would have disrupted a slave grave in the community.

Abbe Ramanan is a Project Director at Clean Energy Group and Clean Energy States Alliance. At CEG, Abbe leads the Hydrogen Information and Public Education project, which aims to equip advocates, regulators, and policymakers with non-biased facts to counter irresponsible hydrogen proposals. Abbe also supports the development of equitable solar and battery storage projects in underserved communities through the Resilient Power Project, which strives to provide resilient power technologies to the communities that need it most. In her role at CESA, Abbe specializes in equitable low-income solar policy.

Jade Woods (she/her) is the Louisiana Anti-CCS Campaigner, based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She serves as a point person for CIEL’s goal to prevent carbon capture and storage (CCS) buildout in the Gulf South region. Her work includes coordinating regional and national strategies to resist CCS development, supplying frontline partners with the resources and support required to further their work, and supporting the creation of safe and just clean energy alternatives. She is thrilled to return to her home state of Louisiana to work on such pressing climate justice issues.

Dante Swinton (he/they) is a Senior Campaigner in CIEL’s Climate and Energy team, based out of the DC office. Their work focuses primarily on researching developments around the proposed CCS and hydrogen buildout, engaging state and regional organizations to gather an understanding of what’s happening on the ground, and working with these organizations on ways to push back against climate scams.

Bakeyah S. Nelson, Ph.D. is Global Initiative Director of Climate Imperative. Dr. Nelson has a diverse background in public health and public policy and has worked to reduce health inequities in Houston communities for 15 years. She previously served as the Executive Director of Air Alliance Houston, a research-based nonprofit organization working to reduce the public health impacts of air pollution and advance environmental justice in the Houston Region. Dr. Nelson is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, and was named the 2020 Texas Energy Summit’s Clean Air Champion of the Year in 2020.

I’m a climate activist, strategist, and communicator.I’m the director of Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit communications lab that supports the movement to end fossil fuels. We provide direct communications support to grassroots organizations, produce videos & other multimedia, run digital campaigns, fund investigative journalism, and lead our own, hard-hitting campaigns, like Clean Creatives, an effort to get PR and Advertising agencies to stop working with the fossil fuel industry.

Tom Owens is the executive director of the newly created Center for Oil and Gas Organizing. He has worked on environmental issues for the past 15 years spanning philanthropy, policy advocacy, strategic communications and community organizing. Mr. Owens joins COGO from the High Tide Foundation, based in Greenbrae, CA, where he led programmatic work focused on oil and gas emissions.

Yolonda Spinks is an author and digital strategist that specializes in social media strategy and implementation. With a charming smile and deep-rooted Southern drawl to match, she pairs her customer service, public relations, and marketing experience with her keen eye for detail and consumer trends to create successful social strategies that yield results for her clients.

Shannon Bell, Ph.D. is a Professor of Sociology at Virginia Tech. Her research is broadly focused on environmental and climate justice, with a particular interest in rural communities. She is author of two award-winning books: Fighting King Coal: The Challenges to Micromobilization in Central Appalachia (MIT Press), and Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice (University of Illinois Press).

Tom PlaHovinsak, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Longwood University. His areas of specialization include urban economics, housing policy, inequality in policy design, labor economics, and econometrics. His research has been published in a variety of academic journals, including Journal of Real Estate Research, Housing Policy Debate, and Journal of Real Estate Literature.

Ever since the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project was announced in 2014, Joyce Burton has contributed her energy to various local and regional anti-pipeline groups including serving on the Board of Friends of Nelson and working as its official Landowner Liaison.  In 2018 she retired from her job as a home health PT in order to devote more time to local advocacy and landowner support.  Since the ACP’s cancellation in 2020, her efforts have been focused primarily on getting ACP landowners released from their easements.

Kari Fulton is an award-winning Environmental and Climate Justice advocate, educator, and policy analyst. She has organized with various domestic and global coalitions to develop initiatives that empower and amplify the voices of communities on the frontlines of climate and environmental injustice. Fulton's work has been featured in various media including Black Entertainment Television (BET), Democracy Now, The Washington Post, and Chinese Global Television Network (CGTN).  She serves as the Organizing Director for the Center for Oil and Gas Organizing and is an adjunct lecturer in Howard University’s Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies program.