Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Outreach Specialist
Shay joins Clean Water Action as the SouthCoast Energy Efficiency Outreach Specialist. As a Fall River Massachusetts native, she is excited to help expand access to energy efficiency in a place she will always call home as well as in Taunton, Westport, New Bedford, and Attleboro.
Shay comes to Clean Water with a strong Environmental Justice lens that she developed through her work as a Marion Institute/FoodCorps Service Member in New Bedford, where she worked to address local food insecurity as a classroom gardener and teacher. Her main projects focused on incorporating culturally relevant school lessons and meals. In 2022, she organized a Black History Month Celebration with New Bedford Food Service and put her family soul food recipe permanently on the lunch menu. She also created a lesson plan on Black history and farming for students and staff which was taught in classrooms across New Bedford.
Shay's passion for Environmental Justice is personal. While earning her Associates in Liberal Arts: Behavioral & Social Science, she took a sustainability class that lifted the veil on the environmental injustices she had been experiencing in her own backyard, and she felt a call to action to expand the environmental community to include communities of all backgrounds. Shay focuses on who is at the table and whose voices are uplifted, and she wants to work to create a world where resources are equally accessible across all communities. She looks forward to taking her passion and putting it towards creating a just climate future, where all communities can reap the financial and environmental benefits of energy efficiency and clean energy technology.
"Stewarding our own land, growing our own food, educating our own youth, participating in our own healthcare and justice systems. This is the source of real power and dignity". - Leah Penniman
"I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change… I'm changing the things I cannot accept". - Angela Davis
