Participant Information — “The Fight for Environmental and Climate Justice in Texas and Beyond: A Conversation with Frontline Community Advocates”
Tricia Cortez
Tricia Cortez joined the Rio Grande International Study Center, Laredo, Texas’s only environmental nonprofit organization, in May 2010. She currently serves as executive director. She is responsible for carrying out the Center’s mission to protect and preserve Laredo’s only source of drinking water – the Rio Grande – and local environment. She focuses on water security and river restoration; sustainable development; habitat and greenspace protection; climate justice; grassroots cultural organizing; and improved quality of life for South Texas border residents.
A San Antonio native, Tricia graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor’s degree in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She moved to Laredo in 2001 and worked seven years as a senior reporter at the Laredo Morning Times.
Mary Black
Mary Black: Mary Black | LinkedIn
Mary Black is an afrofuturist, artivist, and the youngest-serving councilmember on Raleigh City Council. She was elected in November 2022 to represent District A. She is a climate justice organizer and is committed to building a just, sustainable, and thriving future for all. Her priorities are bringing an intersectional lens to the council dais as Raleigh works towards building a city that is equitable, affordable, and welcoming. Mary has a BS in Agricultural and Environmental Systems from North Carolina A&T State University.
The heart of Mary’s work is as an environmental liberator, a community advocate, and a climate storyteller. Her work focuses on investing in the communities that suffer the most from the impacts of climate change. She served as the youngest member on Raleigh’s Environmental Advisory Board and works as a local climate organizer and the Digital Media Strategist with People Over Plastic. She was the inaugural Raleigh IGNITE National Fellow and worked with young women to unlock their political ambitions, as well as a 2020 Women’s Earth Alliance Grassroots Accelerator participant for a youth climate advocacy program she created. She is the Founder of Radial Futurist Lab, a dynamic collective of individuals grounded in Afro-Indigenous Futurism, ecowomanism, and climate justice dedicated to reshaping the future by harnessing the power of imagination, art, and cultural innovation.
Alexia Leclercq
Alexia Leclercq: Alexia Leclercq | LinkedIn
Alexia Leclercq (she/they) is an environmental justice organizer based in Austin, Texas and is the policy director at PODER. They graduated summa cum laude from NYU (’20), where they self-designed a major titled “The Politics and Economics of Inequality” and have a master’s degree focused on laboratory pedagogies from Harvard University. They have worked in the climate space for the past 6 years and been with PODER since 2019 where they worked on various issues from preserving the Colorado River, fighting land use policy and zoning that enforces race-based discrimination, conducting ethnographic research on climate health, to organizing mutual aid, youth programming, and shaping national legislation alongside members of the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance.
Alexia is also the co-founder of Start:Empowerment, a BIPOC led social and environmental justice education non-profit working with youth, educators, activists, and community members to implement justice-focused education and programming in schools and community spaces. S:E curriculum and programming has reached over 2,000 students, been recognized by the NYC Department of Education, and taught in universities. In 2021, their work was recognized by the prestigious Brower Youth Award.
Patrice Simms
Patrice L. Simms: Patrice Simms | LinkedIn
Patrice Simms is an environmental attorney and thought leader with twenty-five years in the environmental law arena. Currently, Patrice serves as the Vice President of Litigation for Healthy Communities with Earthjustice. He is also the Co-founder and Strategic Advisor for People over Plastic, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Before joining Earthjustice, he was a member of the faculty at Howard University School of Law and led their environmental law programming.
Patrice served in a political appointment in the Obama Administration as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. Over the course of his career, Patrice has also worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Office of General Counsel and with its Environmental Appeals Board, and as a Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. More about Patrice.