From climate organizing, protecting watersheds and planting trees, these women have an impressive track record for local sustainability efforts.

PennFuture hosted their annual Celebrating Women in Conservation Awards on Tuesday at the Fitler Club in Philadelphia. Eleven women were honored for their work in conservation, climate, watershed, and more.

Read on about these women and their incredible work!

• Young Woman of Conservation Leadership: Sabirah Mahmud, Philadelphia County –  Sabirah is a 19-year-old Sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying International Relations. Currently, she is working as a part-time Strategy Organizer at Philly Thrive and has been organizing in climate work since 2019 when she founded the Philadelphia Youth Climate Movement at the age of 16.

• Woman of the Watershed: Julie Slavet, Philadelphia County –  Julie has 40 years of experience in building organizations and serving communities. She came to Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership in 2011, after serving as the senior district staff member for Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz.

• Woman of the Watershed: Karen Young, Philadelphia County – For over 30 years, Karen has devoted a career to environmental education, including the last fifteen years as executive director of the Fairmount Water Works. Karen’s achievements include overseeing the development of the ResourceWater.org urban watershed curriculum guide and its introduction into classrooms across the region, and is a founding member of the Alliance for Watershed Education.

• Woman of Environmental Justice: Carolyn Moseley, Philadelphia County –  Executive Director of the Eastwick United Community Development Association, Carolyn has fought for decades to ensure that Eastwick is provided with the resources necessary to combat the escalating impact of climate change and to help her community prosper.

• Woman of Climate and Renewable Energy: Mayor Barbarann Keffer, Delaware County – In the past two years, during her new role as the Mayor of Upper Darby, the Township has planted many more trees than it had in decades and advanced a riparian buffer project along the Darby Creek at Gillespie Park (ripping out an unused baseball field and fence along the creek to restore it to its natural conditions) consisting of over 300 native trees and shrubs that were planted in the fall of 2021.

• Woman of Environmental Arts: Meg Lemieur, Philadelphia County – Meg is an illustrator focusing on natural and urban environments and subjects while lending her skills to numerous environmental and racial justice issues. With artist Bri Barton, Meg created The Waterways (thewaterways.org), an enormous illustration that uses animals and a playful style to explain the many steps of fracking in Pennsylvania and the characters and communities that interact with this infrastructure.

• Woman of Environmental Education: Jeanne Barrett Ortiz, Philadelphia County – Jeanne is the Senior Program, Manager Landscape Conservation, for Audubon Mid-Atlantic. She is a key environmental policy and planning member of the William Penn Foundation’s Delaware River Watershed Initiative (DRWI), providing education and technical assistance to municipal officials with policies and programs designed to protect and restore the watershed.

• Woman of Environmental Media, Marketing, and Communications: Jaimie Field, Philadelphia County – Jaimie has served as Audacy’s Founding Sustainability Director for more than 13 years, institutionalizing Audacy’s commitment to the environment in every aspect of how the company operates: including using 10M fewer sheets of paper over the past 10 years and using 99% eco-friendly paper products in their offices to save 15k+ trees and 7.4m gallons of water, and reducing 1.3M+ lbs of greenhouse gas emissions.

• Woman of Lifetime Achievement in Conservation: Carol Collier – Philadelphia County – Carol served for more than 15 years as executive director of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) before joining the Academy. Prior to that she was executive director of Pennsylvania’s 21st Century Environment Commission and regional director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) Southeast Region.

• Woman of Lifetime Achievement in Conservation: Debra Wolf Goldstein, Philadelphia County – Debra has devoted her almost 30-year career to protecting nature, conserving land, and raising environmental awareness in southeastern Pennsylvania. She served as a regional advisor to the PA DCNR’s Bureau of Recreation & Conservation, where she drafted the state’s first Land Trust grant program guidelines and awarded hundreds of grants to municipalities and counties to create new parks and trails.

• Woman of Lifetime Achievement in Conservation: Jeanne Bonnie Van Alen, Chester County –  Bonnie recently stepped down from the position of Executive Director and President of Willistown Conservation Trust (WCT), a nonprofit land trust and conservation organization she founded over twenty-five years ago in Chester County. Her land conservation legacy began over 40 years ago when she raised concerns over development threatening the rural Willistown countryside

Cover photo: Sabirah Mahmud receiving her award.

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Julie Hancher is Editor-in-Chief of Green Philly, sharing her expertise of all things sustainable in the city of brotherly love. She enjoys long walks in the park with local beer and greening her travels, cooking & cat, Sir Floofus Drake. View all posts by Julie Hancher