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What is the Environmental Justice Oral History Project?

Conceptualized in 2021, formalized in 2023, and incorporated in 2026, the Environmental Justice Oral History Project (EJOHP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit storytelling hub dedicated to documenting and amplifying the lived experiences of communities shaping the environmental justice movement. Through oral history, journalism, archival preservation, and multimedia storytelling, EJOHP centers voices that have too often been overlooked in mainstream environmental and policy conversations.

Grounded in the American South and rooted in place-based storytelling, EJOHP documents both environmental harm and environmental joy, bringing a humanistic lens to environmental issues and advocating for solutions that are just, equitable, and anti-racist.

While environmental justice is often defined as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in environmental decision-making, this EJOHP advances a broader understanding: Environmental justice is not only about pollution exposure or regulatory equity; it encompasses land-based joy, ancestral relationships to place, and the cultural practices that sustain communities. It is both a movement and a living tradition that confronts past wrongs, addresses present inequities, and advances collective well-being.

Despite its deep ties to the Civil Rights Movement, environmental justice remains under-documented and under-recognized. The Environmental Justice Oral History Project works to close that gap by preserving movement history and elevating intergenerational leadership. In partnership with community leaders across generations, EJOHP strengthens narrative power and ensures that the stories shaping environmental justice are told by those who live them.

Current + Former Community Partners

Community partnership and community-ownership represent the core of the EJ Oral History Project ethic. We are extremely grateful for the time and insights our partners have given us as well as the faith they place in us to document, archive, and showcase their stories.

INSTITUTIONAL

PARTNERS

The EJOHP seeks to utilize institutional powers and resources to elevate the voices and narratives of historically disinvested communities. To that end, we appreciate the support of our institutional sponsors: university partners who have lent us their funding, expertise, or long-term archives.

Who We ARE

Our work would not be possible without the effort, patience, flexibility, and care of our partners and volunteer oral historians, journalists, and advocates. We are extremely proud of the epiphanies, laughter, progress, and fellowship we’ve fostered as a part of this process.

To learn more about our amazing student and volunteer team members, check out the individual oral history and collection pages.

CORE project TEAM

Cameron Oglesby

Founder, Executive Director, + Board Chair

Cameron Oglesby is an internationally award-winning environmental justice organizer, strategist, and storyteller who has spent nearly a decade advancing climate education, redistributing resources to frontline communities, reporting on environmental racism and land in the U.S., and advising cross-sector partners from strategy development to impact evaluation. She holds a Master’s in Public Policy and a Bachelor’s in Environmental Science and Policy from Duke University and currently serves as Senior Consultant for Narrative and Influence at Frontline Solutions. Her work has been featured in documentary film and on national stages, where she has spoken alongside originators of the Environmental Justice Movement and presented on community narrative as a climate solution with institutions including the EPA, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, and NATO.
In addition to leading the Environmental Justice Oral History Project, Cameron is Board Chair of The Margin and serves on the boards of the Rural Beacon Initiative and the Warren County Environmental Action Team. She’s a developing author, having contributed to the Liberation Stories anthology and is co-authoring a forthcoming primer on the history of environmental racism in the U.S. A National Geographic Young Explorer, Aspen Institute Future Leader Climate Fellow, Young, Gifted, and Green 40 Under 40 Awardee, and NAAEE 30 Under 30 Leader, her reporting and storytelling have been recognized by the Sierra Club, Southern Environmental Law Center, Covering Climate Now, and the Society of Environmental Journalists. Her work is grounded in her family’s century-old ancestral farmland and a deep commitment to preserving movement history and building narrative power.
Cameron serves as the primary organizer for EJOHP managing everything including strategic development, fundraising, journalistic content creation, program management, outreach, and curation of oral histories and other resources with community and academic partners.

Amanda Ostuni

Transcription Manager (2023-Present)

Amanda Ostuni has a Master of Public Policy from Duke University, and a BA in Journalism from Northeastern University. She spent nearly two years as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Massachusetts, before leaving to serve in an AmeriCorps disaster relief program. Through that service experience, she gained deep insight into myriad of environmental issues and injustices across the South. It bolstered her interest in human rights advocacy, and though after the program she spent a few more years working in various media roles, in 2020, she began transitioning toward a policy career.
Today, she’s leveraging her communications skills and policy/political knowledge to improve social justice by conducting outreach and casework for the unhoused population in NYC, and by providing transcript and journalistic support to the EJ Oral History Project.

Alexis 'Rae' Clifton

Community Engagement + Social Media Manager (2026-Present)

Rae is a creative writer and communications/social media worker with a passion for bridging impactful work and stories to the people who need it. She is a current student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is getting her BAs in English and Creative Writing and Communications in Media Arts. She has worked with the UNC Landback/ Abolition Project in community engagement and oral history archival work, collecting the stories of past and current Native American UNC students and preserving them for future generations. She is also currently at the UNC American Indian Center as an American Indian Cultural Garden Intern, where she uses land stewardship, indigenous landways, and community conversations to take care of their greenspace and cultivate a community-centered garden that represents its people. 
Her passion for environmental justice work comes from both her cultural background and her love of writing. As a Native American woman (Lipan Apache, Choctaw [CAToE], Wixárika) who was born in Texas and raised in rural South Carolina, the work of environmental justice and place-based ways of knowing have always played a role in her life. As an award-winning creative writer, the natural world and the American South is a constant theme of her work, both fiction and poetry. Her land-based writing has awarded her the 2026 James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the Coppice Prize longlist, and more. 
At EJOHP, she focuses on social media planning and content, community engagement work, and anything in between that can help with connecting people to the impact that EJOHP has created and will continue to create. In her free time, she loves to read, learn her people’s language, work in her garden, or take a good nap. 

Board of Directors

EJOHP is guided by a Board of Directors composed of emerging leaders in environmental justice organizing, coalition-building, journalism, and land-based oral history. Drawing on their broad and interdisciplinary expertise, our board members help ensure that our vision, strategy, and growth remain grounded in movement principles and a commitment to the authentic building of narrative power.

Iris Crawford-Maskell

Climate Editor + Environmental Journalist

Iris M. Crawford-Maskell is a strategic communicator, editor, and movement journalist focused on amplifying people-power movements and narratives. She is currently the Strategic Communications Director at Race Forward. Previously, she was a communications advisor at the US EPA, focusing on the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in Region 2. 
Her reporting has appeared in NPQ, The Guardian, Civil Eats, San Francisco Chronicle, and Colorlines, among other publications. She also recently joined the board of WEACT 4 Change, the political arm of WEACT for Environmental Justice. Iris is also the co-chair of The Uproot Project, a support network for environmental and climate journalists of color who remain underrepresented in the media industry. She has a BA from Syracuse University and an MS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Iris currently serves as EJOHP’s Board Secretary.

Ameena Hester

Environmental Policy Researcher

Ameena is an environmental policy and data practitioner with roots in North Carolina. A double Tarheel, she earned her Master’s of Public Policy (MPP) degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ameena previously served as Assistant Project Coordinator for EJOHP, and is passionate about engaging communities in crafting creative environmental justice strategies.
Ameena currently serves as EJOHP’s Board Treasurer.

Ambar Wortham

Land-based Oral Historian

Ambar Wortham is an oral historian, transportation planner, and creative composer who explores what moves us. She’s responsible for stewarding and increasing access to greenways, parks, and open spaces while increasing multimodal transportation options across the U.S. With 10+ years of experience, her projects have won awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects in Boston and New York City.
She is a Forefront Fellow with the Urban Design Forum, a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project, and the Yale School for Climate Change Communications. Ambar holds a B.S. in History, Technology & Society from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.A. in Oral History from Columbia University.
As a grandchild of the Great Migration, Ambar stewards family history and traditional knowledge to the next generation through her practice, Dandelyons Studios. She credits her path to her first teachers: her grandparents and the land.

Abigail Franks

Coalition-builder for Southern Communities

Abigail Franks is a 7th-generation Appalachian and lover of people and planet. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) with a B.A in Political Science and Peace, Justice, and Ecology; she was a 2019 Rhodes Scholarship Finalist for the University of Oxford in the UK. She is currently pursuing her Master’s of Public Administration and teaching Environmental Politics at her alma mater.
She is especially passionate about transforming the South into a sustainable and resilient region through advocating for and crafting climate-adaptive and environmental policies. Her interests include southern U.S. history, environmental policy, environmental justice, community-based leadership, disaster resilience, clean energy, and grassroots climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. She is the Senior Membership and Policy Manager for the Southeast Climate and Energy Network (SCEN) as well as the co-host of SCEN’s Climate Justice Y’all Podcast. 

Jamoni Overby

Environmental + Nature Advocate for DMV Communities

Jamoni Overby is a community advocate, social impact strategist, educator, and connector committed to uplifting Black communities and advancing equity across Washington, DC and beyond. With a background spanning policy, community engagement, environmental justice, and experience curation, she works to ensure historically marginalized voices are centered in decision-making spaces. She currently serves as the DC Conservation Advocate for Nature Forward, where she champions initiatives that connect residents to resources, dismantle systemic barriers, and build community-sustaining programs.
Jamoni has organized large-scale convenings such as the Taking Nature Black Conference and Rooting DC, designed youth-focused climate justice programs, and amplified Black students’ voices in national environmental conversations. Through consulting and independent projects, she supports grassroots organizations in strengthening program design and strategy. Her recent project, Mother Nature is a Black Woman, supported by the American Bird Conservancy’s Afro Futurism Collective, explores the parallels between nature and the lived experience of Black women. A fifth-generation Washingtonian by way of Prince George’s County, Jamoni grounds her work in the intersections of housing, health, environment, and culture, and remains committed to protecting community, tradition, and collective power.

Project Mentors

EJOHP is committed to cultivating relationships that ensure our projects and processes lean on best storytelling and community-engagement practices as well as principles of environmental justice. Our “mentors”, who have served as sounding boards, advisors, and supports at varying stages in project development, help us in maintaining our commitment to intentional, community-owned storytelling. 

Wesley hogan

Social Justice + Human Rights Oral Historian

Wesley Hogan is a Research Professor at the Franklin Humanities Institute and History. Between 2003-2013, she taught at Virginia State University, where she worked with the Algebra Project and the Young People’s Project. Between 2013-2021, she served as Director of the Center for Documentary Studies. She writes and teaches the history of youth social movements, human rights, documentary, and oral history. Her most recent book, On the Freedom Side, draws a portrait of young people organizing in the spirit of Ella Baker since 1960. In July 2021, a book she and Paul Ortiz co-edited was released, People Power: History, Organizing, and Larry Goodwyn’s Democratic Vision in the Twenty-First Century.  She co-facilitates a partnership between the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke, The SNCC Digital Gateway, whose purpose is to bring the grassroots stories of the civil rights movement to a much wider public through a web portal, K12 initiative, and set of critical oral histories. With Drs. Beverly Gray and Jonas Swartz, she leads a Reproductive Care Post-Roe Bass Connections team that produces the Abortion Care Today audio archive.

Maggie Lemere

Environmental Documentarian + Oral Historian

Maggie Lemere is a filmmaker, oral historian, and National Geographic Explorer who examines humanity’s relationship with the environment. She’s been a conflict researcher, educator, and filmmaker on projects globally.
She’s currently directing a National Geographic Society-supported feature film about Palestinians’ relationship with ancient olive trees. She’s also co-directing Vs Goliath, a docuseries following frontline environmental leaders around the U.S., supported by Patagonia. She’s produced documentaries following water protectors in Myanmar (Above & Below the Ground) and American youth climate activists (Generation on Fire). Maggie is the co-founder of Rhiza Collective and the author of Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime (McSweeney’s & Voice of Witness). 
Maggie is trained as a Master Naturalist and serves as Oral Historian for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. She’s also the lead oral historian for a NOAA-funded project with the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative / The University of Washington, Stories as Science. 

Anjali Boyd

Conservationist + Marine Scientist

Anjali D. Boyd is a marine scientist, technologist, and storyteller who works across sectors to develop innovative solutions for ocean sustainability. Her career spans academia, government, non-profit, & private sectors, where she consistently bridges the gap between cutting-edge research, policy, and technological innovation to drive meaningful change in the Ocean Economy.

As a Ph.D. Candidate and Dean’s Graduate Fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, Anjali‘s research focuses on developing scalable solutions for marine ecosystem conservation. She is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Ford Fellow & National Geographic Explorer, whose work has earned recognition from the Smithsonian, NOAA, National Academy of Sciences, & Aspen Institute.

Throughout her career, Anjali has been a transformative leader in advancing equity within marine sciences. As a founding board member of Black Women in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Science (BWEEMS), she helped grow the organization into a global community of 500+ members across 22 countries. Her leadership in professional societies, including the Ecological Society of America, Coastal & Estuarine Research Federation, and Society of Wetland Scientists, has resulted in concrete institutional changes—from diversifying editorial boards to establishing dedicated funding for underrepresented scientists. As an Early Career Liaison to the US National Committee for UN Decade of Ocean Science, she served on the National Academies’ Committee on Cross-Cutting Themes, helping shape the 2022 strategic framework that defined U.S. priorities and innovative ‘Ocean-Shots’ for the Decade. At the local government level, she served as an elected Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor in Durham, NC (2020-24), where she implemented science-based strategies and expanded equitable resource access for minority farmers & business owners.

Today, at Fleet Robotics, she serves as Product Manager for Efficiency and Environmental Impact, developing autonomous solutions that reduce vessels’ greenhouse gas emissions and combat aquatic invasive species. She leads Fleet’s policy engagement across local, federal, & international levels—including contributing to biofouling guidelines at the International Maritime Organization as an NGO representative. She also spearheads Fleet’s government & non-dilutive funding strategy through partnerships with government & non-profit organizations. In this role, she continues to bridge the gap between innovative technology, policy, and sustainable ocean solutions.

William barber iii

Environmental Lawyer + Southern Land Steward

William J. Barber III is a renewable energy leader with over a decade of experience in environmental justice. As a bridge-builder between grassroots leaders and corporations, he crafts equitable climate solutions for BIPOC communities.
In 2019, he founded The Rural Beacon Initiative to operationalize equity in sustainable supply chains and green finance. Recognized by Governor Cooper as a STEM leader, William’s impact is featured in NextGen’s 30 under 30. Currently, he serves as Senior Director of Investments and Impact at the Coalition for Green Capital, accelerating clean energy investment to combat the climate crisis through strategic, inclusive financial frameworks.

Current + Former Sponsors

Our funding partners make this work possible, and we are deeply grateful for their commitment to resourcing the preservation, amplification, and advancement of environmental justice narratives.

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