Speaker: Vernice Miller-Travis

Currently, Vernice Miller-Travis is the principal of an environmental consulting group called Miller-Travis & Associates. She has been a key convener of an effort to bring the voices of the environmental justice constituency into dialogue with the Obama/Biden Transition Team and the new administration. She was invited to the White House to witness President Obama's signing of two Memoranda of Understanding on raising automobile fuel efficiency standards. She is also co-chair of the Working Group on School Air Monitoring to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She also serves as vice-chair of the Maryland State Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities, where she leads an effort to encourage state and local governments to consider the environmental and public health dimensions of local land-use and zoning decisions.

Ms. Miller-Travis was appointed by Maryland Governors Ehrlich and O'Malley as a commissioner to the Maryland State Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities, where she serves as vice-chair. She also serves on the Board of the Healthy Schools Network and on the Advisory Board of the National Vacant Properties Campaign of Smart Growth America. She is the co-founder of We ACT for Environmental Justice (formerly known as West Harlem Environmental Action), a 20-year-old community-based environmental justice organization in New York City.

She is an urban planner and a graduate of Columbia University, and published author of numerous articles and chapters on race and land-use, environmental justice, brownfields redevelopment and hazardous waste policy, sustainable community development, historic preservation and neighborhood revitalization. She is also the recipient of a Charles H. Revson graduate fellowship from Columbia University (1992), and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship (1997).