Blue Sky is proud to co-sponsor this webinar, hosted by the Health and Environmental Funders Network (HEFN). Join us June 15, 9-10 am PT / 12-1 pm ET to dig deeper into the current organizing landscape at the historically overlooked and underfunded intersection of kids’ health and corporate and civic accountability. We hope to see you there!

About This Conversation:

Parents, grandparents, and caregivers across the country are deeply concerned about their children’s health. At school board meetings, state capitols, and town halls, they are showing themselves to be an effective political force for action on plastics, toxic chemicals, use of tech, climate, and more. They’re organized, values-driven, and moving policy, but they’re often going toe to toe against powerful special interests who are dedicated to maintaining the status quo — even if it means compromising the health of our kids.

Despite making headway on issues that have broad bipartisan support, these constituencies continue to be one of the most under-acknowledged and underfunded forces in American politics.

Join us for an exploration of the current organizing landscape at the intersection of kids’ health and corporate and civic accountability. We’ll hear directly from advocates working at the state and local level, dig into what’s gaining traction, and discuss what infrastructure is needed to bring it to the next level.

This is a conversation for folks working in philanthropy, and is co-sponsored by Blue Sky Funders Forum, the Health and Environmental Funders Network, The Funders Network, and Women’s Funding Network.  Please reach out to Ninya Loeppky at HEFN with any questions, at nloeppky@hefn.org.

Speakers:

Lisa Patel, Our Children’s Trust (Moderator)
Dr. Lisa Patel is Executive Director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, a coalition spanning 58 medical societies and 30 state climate and health affiliates dedicated to mobilizing the medical community on climate as the defining health crisis of our time. A pediatric hospitalist and Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford, Lisa has spent her career at the intersection of children’s health, environmental policy, and clinical medicine — from her time as a Presidential Management Fellow at the Environmental Protection Agency to her current service on the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change. She holds degrees from Stanford, the Yale School of Environment, and Johns Hopkins, and completed her pediatric training at UCSF.

Jenny Zimmer, Mothers Out Front
Jenny Zimmer is an organizer, mom of two young kids, and Co-Executive Director of Mothers Out Front and Mothers Out Front Action. She cut her teeth as a community organizer working to move communities off of coal power in Texas and North Carolina, and has spent her career organizing with students, people of faith, and community leaders concerned about climate change, democracy, and environmental health. She helped lead the student Fossil Fuel Divestment movement, co-founded Choose Democracy, and has spent the last 3 years obsessed with the power of parents and caregivers to create change from the local level on up.

Judith Enck, Beyond Plastics
Judith Enck is the founder and President of Beyond Plastics.  She served as EPA Region 2 Regional Administrator during the Obama Administrator and before that was Deputy Secretary for the Environment in the NY Governor’s  Office and Policy Advisor in the NY Attorney General’s Office. She is a past Executive Director of Environmental Advocates of NY and spent ten years as a community organizer with the NY Public Interest Research Group. She is a professor at Bennington College and co-author of the new book “The Problem with Plastics,” published by the New Press. She lives with her family in upstate New York and has no hobbies except watching Law and Order on tv and  wants to be just like Olivia Benson when she grows up.

Nse Witherspoon, Children’s Environmental Health Network
Nse serves at the Executive Director for the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN), where her responsibilities include successfully organizing, leading, and managing policy, education/training, and science-related programs. For the past 14 years, she has served as a key spokesperson for children’s vulnerabilities and the need for their protection, conducting presentations and lectures across the country. She serves as a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Environmental Health Sciences Roundtable, and Co-Chair of the Leadership Council for the National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures. Ms. Witherspoon has a B.S. in Biology and an M.P.H. in Maternal and Child Health. A mother of three children, Ms. Witherspoon is a passionate advocate for all children today and tomorrow.