Majora Carter
Majora Carter was born, raised, and continues to live and work in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx. But that doesn’t mean her career has not taken her around the city, the nation, and the world in pursuit of resources and ideas to improve the quality of life in her environmentally challenged community. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 after having worked with other area groups—where she wrote a 1.25 million dollar federal grant to design the South Bronx Greenway with 11 miles of bike and pedestrian paths connecting the rivers and neighborhoods to each other, and to the rest of the city. That project has since secured over 20 million dollars in funding and is set to begin construction in 2007.
While waiting for this project to begin, she has created riverfront parks, put a cool and green roof demonstration project atop her offices, worked to take down the underused Sheridan Expressway in favor of positive economic development, and successfully implemented the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training program—seeding her community with a skilled green-collar workforce that has both a personal and economic stake in their urban environment.
All of these accomplishments grow from her notion that one’s self image is influenced by their surroundings—so you’d better make sure those surroundings are beautiful! Her vision, drive, and tenacity earned her a MacArthur "Genius" Grant in 2005, a place on New York Governor Elliott Spitzer's Energy and Environment Transition Team, a place on the Clinton Global Initiative’s Poverty Alleviation Panel in 2006, and NYU’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Humanitarian Service in 2007. |
|
|
