Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m originally from Hammond, which is 25 miles southeast of Chicago. Like New Haven, Hammond is a formerly industrialized city and both have similar sized populations. I think that these similarities helped me feel at home in New Haven, when I moved here in 1994.
What in your life lead you to this path, and did you think you would always be interested in Urban Ecology?
As an undergraduate, I majored in Public & Environmental Affairs and then later earned my Masters in Forestry. I decided early on to focus my career on the environment, but initially thought I wanted to work in forestry overseas.
When did you first realize you were interested Urban Ecology?
The concept of urban ecology was not developed when I was a student in the 1980s, so I had not even heard of the notion of cities as ecosystems until I met Dr. William Burch at Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES). Urban ecology is fascinating as it examines the complexity of a biophysical and socioeconomic ecosystem. In 1994 I had moved to New Haven from Kenya, where I worked with women’s groups on agroforestry activities, and Dr. Burch introduced me to the idea that similar work could be done with community groups in cities in the U.S. I immediately was excited about the possibility of making a difference locally, especially at the intersection of social justice issues and the environment.
How did you get involved with the Urban Resources Initiative?
Fortunately, a temporary position opened at F&ES in 1995 to serve as URI’s interim director during a permanent staff persons’ maternity leave. After serving in that role for six months, I was able to continue working part-time at URI leading the Community Greenspace program, which started during my short term tenure. Twenty-five years later, I’m still excited to carry out this work in New Haven.
Can you explain how URI has been involved in New Haven? How has this collaboration has assisted in the Green health of the city?
URI is fortunate to be both a part of the Yale F&ES as well as a separate nonprofit, which uniquely positions our organization to serve as a remarkable bridge. This URI bridge promotes a symbiotic relationship creating essential learning opportunities for Yale students, who gain technical field skills through urban forestry and park-improvement projects that address priorities identified by local volunteers. This link has also fostered other connections enabling City staff, volunteers, Yale faculty, staff and students to work together and contribute in countless ways to improve the physical and social fabric of New Haven.
Over the past 25 years, through the Community Greenspace program, Yale URI student interns have supported thousands of community volunteers to undertake environmental restoration and stewardship activities along city streets and in parks, vacant lots and other open spaces. As this work is carried out on public lands, our partnership also includes city government agencies that have the public mandate to manage these lands; we work closely with the parks department and housing agency (which has the purview over vacant lots). With their permission we can work with neighbors to carry out projects that the community identifies as their priority. These community greening efforts led to the creation of a green jobs program in 2007 at the invitation of the parks department to plant all of the city’s street trees. Dubbed ‘GreenSkills’, our green job program hires and trains local high school students and adults with barriers to employment to plant trees on behalf of New Haven residents, who request and commit to carrying for a street tree. Yale students help train the novice tree planting teams, and can share what they are learning at Yale about the environment as they work alongside the youth and adult crews. Since the program’s inception, we have planted about 6,000 street trees on behalf of thousands of New Haven residents, and have created short term paid training for over 400 high school students and 160 adults. Most recently, we have expanded our ‘GreenSkills’ program by partnering with the City of New Haven’s Engineering Department to construct roadside rain gardens (called bioswales) as a means of managing stormwater runoff to address flooding that is occurring more frequently due to climate change. Identifying ways to simultaneously address unemployment needs and environmental problems is an example of how URI applies concepts of urban ecology in New Haven.