La’Meshia Whittington
JUDGE
ENG:
La’Meshia is a disruptor of harmful systemic inequities that burden frontline and marginalized communities of color and low-wealth populations. La’Meshia is a visionary on the underground railroad of eco-liberation and systems change to remove the oppression of legacy pollutions in Black communities, to remove health inequities created in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities targeted for waste, and to champion the autonomy and sovereignty of powerful communities across the US South and the Global US South.
Professor Whittington, alongside Democracy Green, has assisted communities in receiving federal funding for water infrastructure, including a recent $13.2 million award to develop clean water infrastructure for the first time in the history of an unincorporated Black community. She has supported the direct movement of over $75 million to communities across the U.S. South since the global pandemic.
NC Governor Roy Cooper appointed Professor Whittington to serve on the N.C. Water Treatment Certification Board, and she was again appointed to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice & Equity Advisory Board by Secretary Elizabeth Biser. In 2024, the US Environmental Protection Agency appointed Professor Whittington to serve on the Local Government Advisory Committee (LGAC). Professor Whittington created the nation’s first research on racial gerrymandering and pollution hotspots in marginalized communities and then again on the intersection of PFAS and Environmental Justice. Professor Whittington published the impacts of wood pellets and environmental justice communities for state agencies and non-profits. Her work in emerging contaminants led her to successfully file and win a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, alongside her mother and brother, challenging major pollutants in their home state of North Carolina. Professor Whittington’s work was instrumental in designing the US EPA PFAS roadmap. Her research was then included in the nation’s first clinical guidelines to the CDC on PFAS testing.
Professor Whittington is an adjunct professor in the Division of Sociology at Meredith College and a Diversity and Environmental Justice Lecturer in the College of Natural Resources at N.C. State University. La’Meshia was the 2022 ABC11 Climate Change Hero, highlighted as an ABC6 Our America: Green Guardians, and chosen as a Clinton Global Initiative Grist50 Fixer. Professor La’Meshia Whittington is the Eco-Architect.