School of CED Speaker Series
New Venue! The final two speakers in the 09/10 SCED Speaker’s Series takes will be in SNHU’s new Dining Center Banquet Room from noon to 1:45 p.m. These events are free and open to the public. Lunch is provided for those in attendance prior to the speaker's presentation. Each session is streamed live at 12:30 p.m. Please RSVP to Sanjeev Sharma.
March 12, 2010
Deeohn Ferris, President and Founder
Sustainable Community Development Group, Inc.
Deeohn Ferris is President and Founder of the Sustainable Community Development Group, Inc. a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing metropolitan sustainability, environmental health, equitable development and global smart growth. She is also President of Global Environmental Resources Inc., a woman and minority owned consulting firm celebrating ten years of delivering professional services.
Ms. Ferris is a lawyer whose interdisciplinary career spans government, industry and public interest. She directed nationally significant compliance and enforcement cases at U.S. EPA; served as environmental counsel to the American Insurance Association; and was the first African American senior environmental policy director at the National Wildlife Federation. Her work spans critical public policy issues that range from managing the Exxon Valdez natural resources litigation, publishing a national biotechnology newsletter, The Gene Exchange, and training judges from nations in Southeast Asia to advising NGOs at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa; the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil; and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.
At the nexus of race, health and environment, Ms. Ferris launched two groundbreaking public policy initiatives; the Environmental Justice Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the first pioneered by a major civil rights group; and the Washington office on Environmental Justice, an international multicultural grassroots coalition.
Ms. Ferris led the national campaign that resulted in the 1994 Presidential Executive Order on Environmental Justice, the U.S. EPA National Environmental Justice (EJ) Advisory Council and the federal Inter-Agency EJ Workgroup. Executive Order 12898, a landmark in fields of civil rights, environment and health, remains the principal federal governance on achieving environmental justice. Her public service includes appointments to the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences Advisory Committee; the U.S. Department of Energy Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund Advisory Committee; the federal U.S. EPA Advisory Committee that drafted the new national environmental due diligence regulation; and she was on the select review team of panelists for U.S. EPA’s 2007 National Smart Growth Awards and is on the 2008 review team.
Ms. Ferris has lectured in China, Turkey, South Africa, Nepal, India, Bolivia, Mexico and throughout North America. Her work with communities extends from these places to Fiji, Indonesia, Brazil and the U.K. She is on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.