The Environmental Justice Advisory Board consists of diverse individuals who have experience working on environmental justice matters. Through quarterly meetings, Board members will contribute their ideas, experience, and expertise to improve Multistate Trust programs. Find more information about Board members below.
Perry H. Charley
Diné College – Shiprock Campus,
Diné Environmental Institute Research & Outreach
Perry H. Charley, a full-blooded Navajo, is the Executive Director and Senior Scientist at Diné Environmental Institute Research & Outreach at Diné College – Shiprock Campus. He has over 40 years of experience in education, research, environmental/ecological risk assessments, reclamation, and legislative activities regarding impacts from nuclear industries on Navajo lands. As principal investigator of numerous research projects, Mr. Charley applies Traditional Ecological Knowledge to western educational curriculum and research strategies. He has been instrumental in the development of scientific, medical, geological, and genetic terminologies into Diné glossaries. He serves as a Native cultural advisor in numerous environmental and public health studies and has served on several EPA and DOE advisory committees. He also served on a National Academy of Science Committee from 2006 to 2008.
In 2001, Mr. Charley founded the Diné Environmental Institute Research & Outreach at Dine’ College, which focuses on training and mentoring STEM students using case studies from CERCLA, Brownfields and other hazardous waste cleanup strategies on the Navajo Nation. Mr. Charley also has 25 years of experience community organizing within the Navajo Indian Reservation. Since 2008, he has served as a Distinguished Fellow with the Quality Education for Minorities Leadership Development Institute (Tribal Colleges and Universities Program). He currently serves on the Diné Uranium Remediation Advisory Commission and the Navajo Human Genetics Policy Development Council.
Stacey Sublett Halliday
Beveridge & Diamond PC
Stacey Sublett Halliday is a principal at Beveridge & Diamond PC and serves as a leader of the firm’s Environmental Justice practice. She works with clients to develop comprehensive, company-wide environmental justice policies, programs, and implementation frameworks. Ms. Halliday also advises clients in the utilities, energy, and electronics sector on issues including environmental compliance due diligence, environmental enforcement, corporate social responsibility, non-financial reporting, and environmental justice.
Ms. Halliday previously served as Special Counsel to the EPA General Counsel, through which she coordinated EPA’s response to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigation into EPA’s Title VI program, coordinated with the Office of Environmental Justice to effectively utilize EJ 2020 and EJ Legal Tools within the Office of General Counsel, and supported agency efforts to advance international and domestic climate and sustainability initiatives.
Jeremy Orr
Earthjustice
Jeremy Orr is the Director of Litigation and Advocacy Partnerships at Earthjustice, where he helps develop institutional strategies to engage and partner with communities and other stakeholders. Immediately prior to Earthjustice, Mr. Orr served as a Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council where he focused on drinking water quality, access, and affordability —working to ensure that all people have access to safe, sufficient, and affordable drinking water. Before that, Jeremy worked for Peoples Climate Movement as the Director of State Programs, building and mobilizing coalitions across more than 20 states in pursuit of climate justice.
With a background in community organizing and community lawyering, Mr. Orr has also served as the Director of Organizing for Interfaith Worker Justice, an Environmental Justice Attorney for the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic, the Executive Director of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, and a Lead Community Organizer with the Gamaliel Foundation.
Lanessa Owens-Chaplin
New York Civil Liberties Union
Lanessa Owens-Chaplin is an experienced lawyer with a demonstrated history of working in the non-profit sector. As Director of Environmental Justice Projects of The American Civil Liberties Union of New York, she leads the state-wide initiative to restore, uplift, and work alongside marginalized and environmental injustice communities, with a specific focus on addressing environmental racism.
Skilled in civil liberties, civil rights, environmental justice, leadership, litigation, and intergovernmental relations, Ms. Owens-Chaplin began her legal career in 2012 as a law associate at Hiscock Legal Aid. She joined the New York State legislative house as legal counsel and later became Deputy Secretary of Intergovernmental Affairs to the Speaker of the New York State Assembly, working closely with government leaders on proposing, drafting, and negotiating policy reforms. Ms. Owens-Chaplin helped found the Diversity & Inclusion internship program for Central New York law students. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the William Herbert Johnson Bar Association of Central New York, the only Black bar association in the region.
Patricia Timmons-Goodson
Retired Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina
Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson began her career as a legal aid lawyer, trial and intermediate appellate judge. She was appointed to the Supreme Court of North Carolina by Governor Michael Easley, the first African American woman to sit on North Carolina’s highest court. She served twenty-eight years in the judiciary of North Carolina prior to her retirement from the Court in 2012.
In July 2014, President Barack Obama appointed Justice Timmons-Goodson a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and later designated her Vice Chair. Through her work on the Commission, she supported the development of national civil rights policy and enhancement of federal enforcement of national civil rights laws. Justice Timmons-Goodson was nominated to serve as an Article III federal judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina, though she did not receive a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2020 Justice Timmons-Goodson unsuccessfully ran as the democratic nominee for Congress in North Carolina’s Eighth District against a four-term incumbent.
Gerald Torres
Yale Law School
Gerald Torres is a Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment and Professor at the Yale Law School. He is former President of the Association of American Law Schools and has taught at Stanford Law School and at Harvard Law School, where he served as the Oneida Nation Visiting Professor of Law.
Professor Torres served as Counsel to the Attorney General on environmental matters and Indian affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Torres has served on the board of the Environmental Law Institute, the EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, and the National Petroleum Council. He is board chair of EarthDay Network and founding Chairman of the Advancement Project, the leading Civil Rights advocacy organization in the country. He is a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Professor Torres has just been appointed to the Advisory Council of The Connecticut Sea Grant. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations on environmental matters and is a life member of the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Beverly L. Wright
Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
Dr. Wright is an environmental justice scholar and advocate, author, civic leader and professor of Sociology. She is the founder and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, which addresses environmental and health inequities along the Louisiana Mississippi River Chemical Corridor and the Gulf Coast Region. The Center is a community-university partnership organization providing education, health and safety training and job placement for residents in environmental justice and climate-impacted communities.
Dr. Wright has conducted groundbreaking and significant research in the area of environmental justice. She manages worker health and safety training programs that embrace a work-based curriculum and a holistic approach to learning for young men and women living near Superfund and Brownfield sites. She is also the recipient of numerous awards for her environmental justice work, leadership, activism, and scholarship, including from the State University of New York, EPA, and Heinz. She co-authored Race, Place & the Environment After Hurricane Katrina from Westview Press, and The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How The Government Response Endangers African-American Communities from New York University. Currently, Dr. Wright serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the Justice 40 Initiative under the Biden-Harris Administration.