Race, Health, and Air Pollution in Houston: Environmental Justice - University of Houston
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Our Guest Speakers

Bakeyah Nelson, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Air Alliance Houston. She works closely with the Board of Directors and staff to ensure that AAH’s mission is fulfilled through strategic planning, programs, and management.

Previously, she led a consulting firm focused on advancing health equity and worked in Harris County Public Health’s Office of Policy and Planning where she was responsible for leading community health initiatives to reduce environmental inequities.

In 2018, Bakeyah was honored as one of the Texas Organizing Project’s Community Champions.

Patricia Gonzales is founder and chair of Caring for Pasadena Communities (CPC). She has been fighting for the rights to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment in the communities where she has lived – Pasadena, Manchester, and the Houston Ship Channel area – for the past 20 years.

Engaged with Lone Star Legal Aid’s Environmental Justice Team on multiple environmental issues, Caring for Pasadena Communities works to advocate for neighborhoods with exceptionally toxic air quality.

Josiah Rector, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of history at the University of Houston. He is an urban historian specializing in 20th century U.S. urban environmental history, the history of the environmental justice movement, and the history of capitalism.

His current book project, Toxic Debt: Race, Capitalism, and the Struggle for Environmental Justice in Detroit (forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press, series in Justice, Power, and Politics), is a history of environmental inequality and environmental activism in Detroit from the late 19th century to the present.