Team Bio

Our team is quite interdisciplinary and comprised of two EJCAN leaders (who are also residents of Sampson County) with professional and academic experience in law and sociology. Our university partners and 4 faculty and 3 graduate students at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (with background in environmental health and toxicology), and Appalachian State University (with background in chemistry, anthropology and environmental toxicology.

Sherri White Williamson

Fri, Dec 10 at 9:54 PM

Sherri White-Williamson is Board Chair and co-founder of the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN), and organization that works to address community environmental justice concerns. EJCAN is working with community members to identify and resolve the issues that they have raised. EJCAN’s office in Sampson County supports many communities that are overburdened by major sources of pollution such as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), a regional landfill and wood pellet facility that have diminished the health and quality of life of many residents of the county.

Ms. White Williamson also serves as the Environmental Justice Policy Director at the North Carolina Conservation Network (NCCN) where she focuses on incorporating consideration of environmental justice in NCCN’s policy and outreach efforts. Ms. White-Williamson retired from the U. S. EPA, Office of Environmental Justice, where she served in many roles including Manager of the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice established under Executive Order 12898 and Designated Federal Officer to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Ms. White-Williamson is a 2018 graduate of Vermont Law School (VLS), South Royalton, VT, where she earned dual degrees, her Juris Doctor and a Masters in Energy Regulation and Law. While at VLS she co-chaired its first Environmental Justice solutions conference and co-founded the Environmental Justice Law Society. She was awarded the Marc Mihaly Environmental Leadership Award in recognition of her commitment to the environment and environmental justice.

She currently resides in Sampson County, North Carolina and co-founded a community organization, the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN), to address community environmental justice concerns. EJCAN is working with community members to identify and resolve the issues that they have raised.

Rebecca Witter

Rebecca Witter is an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University. Trained as environmental anthropologist and political ecologist, she positions her scholarship at the intersections between culture, power, environment, and development. Before joining the faculty at Appalachian, Witter held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Resources Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia and received her PhD in Environmental Anthropology at the University of Georgia. Witter’s long-term research examines how people experience and respond to conservation-related dispossession in southern Africa. This work focuses on the history of conservation implementation, changing relations to land and labor, and the politics and meanings of illegal wildlife hunting in the cross-border region comprised by the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique and the Kruger National Park in South Africa. She has also critically assessed the politics of global environmental decision-making, in particular the integration of Indigenous Rights in protected area policy and practice. More recent research, undertaken with the Eastern NC Environmental Justice Collaborative (EJ Co-Lab) and supported by a Chancellor’s Innovation Scholars Grant and an RIEEE Concert Award, assesses water, social resilience, and environmental care in the context of bioenergy development, specifically biomass and biogas.

courtney woods

Courtney Woods is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill. As an environmental health scientist, she employs a range of methods to determine exposure risk and understand risk perception among residents in largely rural communities of color across NC. She has recently established the Environmental Justice Action Research Clinic (EJ Clinic) to provide technical support to residents and community organizations facing current and imminent environmental hazards. Courtney also leads the Environmental Health Solutions MPH concentration at Gillings and serves as one of four co-leads for the Health Equity, Social Justice and Human Rights MPH concentration.