UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Majora Carter, urban revitalization strategist, green jobs pioneer and Macarthur “Genius” Award winner, will speak at 5:30 p.m. Monday, April 22, in Room 100 of the Thomas Building. Her talk, titled "Home (town) Security," will be held as part of Penn State's ninth annual Colloquium on the Environment speaker series. The event is free and open to the public.
Carter, a south Bronx native, sees the connection between our growing urban populations and how they experience our environment — built and natural — starting in the same types of low-income urban neighborhoods where she was raised and continues to live and work. As opposed to "Homeland Security," which focuses attention on statistically insignificant threats from abroad, Carter's theory of Home(town) Security starts by looking inward at how we strengthen the fabric of all our communities and where we can grow from there.She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 — when very few people were even talking about "sustainability" and even fewer in places like the South Bronx. By 2003, she coined the term "Green the Ghetto" as she pioneered one of the nation's first urban green-collar job training and placement systems. Her organization spearheaded new policies and legislation that fueled demand for those jobs, improved the lives of New Yorkers and served as a model for the nation.Since 2008, her consulting company, the Majora Carter Group, has been exporting climate adaptation, urban micro-agribusiness, and leadership development strategies for businesses, state and local governments, federal agencies, foundations, universities and economically underperforming communities.Her long list of awards and honorary degrees include accolades from groups as diverse as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, Goldman Sachs, as well as a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Her 2006 TED talk was one of the first six videos to launch their groundbreaking website.