National Co-Coordinator for the Environmental Justice Health Alliance
For over 25 years, Michele Roberts has provided capacity support, organizing, and technical assistance on the connections between chemicals management, oil and gas extraction, energy systems, and toxics exposure and legacy. All of which now have a monumental legacy impact on the global climate crisis. She supports communities in their efforts to make connections regarding the impacts of toxins on human health and the environment. She also is a spoken word artist, who created Arts Slam @ SsAMS, a community-based arts program created to advance social justice. She proclaims herself a proud graduate of the Historically Black College and University family, with a Master of Arts degree (2000) from the University of Delaware, Urban Affairs and Public Policy Legal Assistant Certificate (1995) from the University of Delaware, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology (1983) from Morgan State University.
Prior to advocacy, Michele was an environmental scientist for state and local governments. She has first hand experience with local responses to chemical hazards and releases, and hails from Wilmington, Delaware where she continues to provide support to local organizing, in addition to being a leader in the local to national environmental and economic justice movement.
Michele resides in Washington, DC where she is the National Co-Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA). EJHA is a national network of grassroots Environmental and Economic Justice organizations and advocates in communities that are disproportionately impacted by toxic chemicals from legacy contamination, ongoing exposure to polluting facilities and health-harming chemicals in household products. EJHA supports a just transition towards safer chemicals and a pollution-free economy that leaves no community or worker behind. The EJHA network model features leadership of, by, and for Environmental Justice groups with support from additional allied groups and individual experts. EJHA is in strategic partnership with Coming Clean. Learn more at EJ4all.org
Michele is co-author of Who’s In Danger: Race, Poverty and Chemical Disasters and Life at the Fenceline: Understanding Cumulative Health Hazards in Environmental Justice Communities, demographic analyses of vulnerability zones surrounding Risk Management Plan (RMP) facilities. She is one of the lead organizers responsible for President Barak Obama’s Executive Order and final rule on Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security, and current federal policy vehicles for environmental justice and climate justice. She is a co-founder of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions (CHS), which has compelled two of the biggest dollar store chains in the country to adopt their first ever safer chemicals policies, and is a co-author of Day Late and a Dollar Short: How Discount Retailers are Falling Behind on Safer Chemicals. Michele continues to co-lead CHS, providing ongoing strategic planning and organizing capacity. Michele currently serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) under the Biden Administration. Michele has co-authored numerous other analyses, reports, commentaries, been published countless times in the press for her work, and is the environmental justice and environmental producer on Washington, DC’s Pacifica radio’s weekly 89.3FM, The On the Ground Show: Voices of Resistance.