Majora Carter

Majora Carter was born, raised, and continues to live and work in the South Bronx. But her career takes her around 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 to simultaneously alleviate poverty, enhance the environment, and improve public health. She advocates for environmental justice through economically sustainable projects informed by community needs. A major part of her effort has been green-collar economic development, implemented by the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training program, which seeds her community with skilled green-collar workers who have both a personal and economic stake in their urban environment.

Majora designed Hunts Point Community Composting Project as well as initiating and raising funding for Hunts Point Riverside Park, the first waterfront park in the South Bronx in sixty years, and for the South Bronx Green & Cool Roofs Demonstration Project. Co-founder of the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance, she is also former chair of the Bronx River Alliance.

She served on New York Governor Elliott Spitzer’s Energy and Environmental Transition Team and the Clinton Global Initiative’s Poverty Alleviation Panel.

In 2005 she was awarded a MacArthur “genius grant,” in 2006 won the Coro Lewis Rudin Award for Public Service, and in 2007 received the National Audubon Society’s Rachel Carson Women in Conservation Award and New York University’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Award for Humanitarian Service. Also in 2007 she was named among Newsweek’s “25 to Watch,” The New York Post’s “50 most influential women in NYC,” and Essence Magazine’s “25 most influential African Americans.”

One public contribution