Equity, Community, Sustainability 

Deeohn is an environmental lawyer, systems change practitioner, and proud equity and environmental justice pioneer. Her mission is to build a more sustainable, just, and equitable world by amplifying the power of diverse communities, mission-driven organizations, institutions, governments, and corporations to scale transformative economic, social, cultural, and ecological changes. 

Like the barriers confronting people worldwide who are marginalized across race, gender, culture, and economic strata, Deeohn’s expertise is interdisciplinary and cross-sector. Alongside creating public-private partnerships and sustainability cohorts with cities, governments, and international corporate brands, she has extraordinary experience in twenty countries on five continents collaborating with tribal, indigenous, and faith-based organizations, communities, and local leaders. 

Environmental Justice Pioneering

As the international movement emerged, Deeohn pioneered the nation’s first legal project dedicated to equitable pollution remedies and social disparities at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.  Representing communities of color and low-income communities domestically and internationally, she worked with Congress to convene the original hearings and was one of the planners of the federal government’s first NIEHS-interagency environmental justice and health conference. 

President Clinton’s 1994 Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898 is a cornerstone of the movement’s earliest policy work. Deeohn facilitated the national campaign that resulted in the earliest federal directive validating the intersection of disparate pollution, civil rights, race, and income. It’s the forerunner of the commendable current actions to advance racial equity and justice by the Biden-Harris Administration. 

The campaign evolved into Deeohn establishing the grassroots Washington Office on Environmental Justice, the first national coalition in the nation’s capital. Later, doubling down on bottom-up power-building,  she founded a new kind of business in those times, a social venture consultancy integrating equity, environmental justice, sustainable economic development, and climate.

Knowledge Networks & Partnerships

Prioritizing people globally whose livelihoods and places are the hardest hit by adverse economic and social systems, environmental degradation, climate disruption, and migration is a substantial investment in broader societal well-being.  This sampling of projects illustrates Deeohn’s mission of embedding this blueprint. 

Equitable Development

• Equitable Economic Development and Environmental Justice brownfields technical assistance cohorts of +1,500 local officials 500 mayors, 10 Tribes.

• Economically Disadvantaged Communities Network regional training cohorts for the consortium of +250 mayors, agencies, developers, and businesses.

• Partnership for Sustainable Communities technical assistance and training for CDCs, developers, lenders, community and local leaders, real estate agents.

• Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s statewide Community Involvement Advisory Committee strategic plan.

International Development

• Forum for Justice on the South Asian Judicial Interaction on Environmental Justice and Equity, Kathmandu, Nepal convenings and training for judges.

• Accelerating Clean, Equitable (ACE) Manufacturing Project reducing India GHGs, pollution emissions, clean tech, green skilling +3000 women workers.

• Mekong Sustainable Manufacturing Alliance of global corporate brands and local factories, ESG, gender, energy efficiency, reducing regional GHGs.

• China Deep Decarbonization and Equitable Long-term Strategies Alliance technical urban development tools for local governments and leaders.

Global Movement-Building Strategies

Deeohn is the immediate past president of the Institute for Sustainable Communities, the first African American woman to helm a US-based international climate change organization. There, she centered equity in technical assistance, developing low-carbon economic solutions, and public-private partnerships. Technical assistance programs from the ground up engaged civil society, governments, cities, universities, and major brands in the United States, China, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Before the Institute, Deeohn joined the National Audubon Society as equity, diversity, and inclusion vice president where she tackled culture, systems change management, and the environmental and conservation sector’s renowned diversity challenges. While there, she partnered with African American tech entrepreneur Robert Smith’s Fund II Foundation to create and launch a green apprenticeship career program for young professionals of color.

Equity Building Blocks

Deeohn’s earlier career arc incorporates tenure as special litigation enforcement director at US EPA, counsel for the American Insurance Association at the height of the pollution policy coverage wars, and before equity was a thing, she was the first African American policy director the National Wildlife Federation, reportedly, the biggest nonprofit green group at that time. 

She is also skilled in the ins and outs of entrepreneurship.  She founded the woman-of-color-led not-for-profit government contractor Sustainable Community Development Group, to better tackle the scale of environmental and climate change equity challenges, and place-based and public policy community economic development demands.   

Centering People Hardest Hit

Collaboration across communities and sectors is integral to shaping and driving strategic equitable and inclusive sustainability agendas. The core is solutions and investments from the ground up that center people in the US and worldwide grappling with climate change and pollution exacerbated by legacy economic and social inequities across race, gender, and culture.

Deeohn is a justice and equity practitioner, systems change strategist, and climate change and sustainability champion. She is a frequent keynote speaker and author in publications, advancing the field.

Read more below about Deeohn’s mission-driven pathways to scaling solutions that build a more sustainable, just, and equitable world.