Community Science, Climate Justice, and Mentorship with Dr. Na'taki Osborne Jelks

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Dr. Na'Taki Osborne Jelks, assistant professor of environmental and health sciences at Spelman College and Co-Founder of the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance about Community Science, Climate Justice, and Mentorship. Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
1:36 - The Positives about Fall
7:59 - Interview with Dr. Jelks starts
17:40 - West Atlanta Watershed Alliance 
29:56 - Challenges of Funding
39:35 - Field Notes with Dr. Jelks!

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Dr. Na'Taki Osborne Jelks https://www.linkedin.com/in/na-taki-osborne-jelks-ph-d-mph-571225/

Guest Bio: 
Dr. Na’Taki Osborne Jelks is an assistant professor of environmental and health sciences at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA and Co-Founder of the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, a community-based, environmental justice organization. Jelks investigates urban environmental health disparities; the impact of climate change on marginalized communities; the role that place, race, and social factors play in influencing health; and urban greening and resilience practices and their impact on health. She also develops, implements, and evaluates community-based initiatives that set conditions to enable low-income and communities of color to empower themselves to reduce exposure to environmental health hazards. Jelks’ scholarship centers participatory approaches that engage environmentally overburdened communities in monitoring local environmental conditions, generating actionable data for community change, and developing effective community-based interventions that revitalize toxic, degraded spaces into healthy places. She is currently leading UrbanHeatATL, a research initiative in which local students and community members are mapping urban heat islands in Atlanta with community science. Her research has been supported by public and private entities such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Rockefeller, Robert Wood Johnson, JPB, and National Science Foundations.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiasts Nic and Laura. 

On today's episode, I talk about what fall means to me. We interviewed Doctor Na’taki Osborne Jenks about community science, climate justice, and mentorship. And finally, in light of seeing them in the field this week, here are some fun facts about quail.

A group of quail are called cubbies. They can fly up to 40 miles an hour, and sometimes female California quail will lay eggs in another female's nest in a process known as egg dumping. That's particularly wild because they generally lay between 12 and 16 eggs. So sometimes you'll see a female quail with 24 babies. That's crazy, how about that? 

Hit that music. 

NAEP just completed another round of essential and advanced NEPA workshops. The next workshops are scheduled for November 13th and 14th in Denver, Colorado. These training workshops are designed for emerging and experienced environmental professionals engaged in the preparation of environmental assessments and environmental impact statements to fulfill federal lead agency responsibilities pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act. This course is designed to help you understand the requirements and how to fulfill the spirit and legislative intent of NEPA. That's absolutely essential as agency policies are updating rapidly. Please check out the webinar at www.naep.org. 

Let's get to our segment. 

Hey everybody, I wanna give you a quick shout out this week, quick segment on fall, and I think it's a hard thing to talk about. I know there's a lot going on in the government, the DC area in particular is dealing with a pretty big shutdown at the moment, and I know that hopefully by the time this comes out, it'll be over, and people will go about things a different way, but I did want to spend some time. Just sharing a few positive things as well as I can and I hope that people enjoy the message. But for me, fall has always been a period of transition, right? It's the, the break in in heat is always such a pleasure, such a relief. And it's also a time where it's like, oh, I can be back outside again. I can, yeah, the sun goes down sooner, but you know, you get to have a fire and there aren't as many bugs and all these fun things. The trees go to sleep, and, uh, that's always been kind of a joyful thing for me. And I think in times where we are dealing with challenges in our work environments, regardless of what they are, it doesn't have to be with the federal government in any work environment. It's always nice to remember some positive things and it's always nice to take inventory of what those are. And, you know, thinking even for us at EPR it's been a wonderful year, you know, we've had a lot of great guests. We have another great interview today and The joy that we get out of that, the surprises that come from it, uh, the fun that we've had, and I think, I hope you, you see that come through when we talk to each other, but it is such a, a pleasure to be a part of the show and to enjoy putting this all together. And we have a great, wonderful team that helps us do that. And I don't know, like fall has always been a time when I look back and I say, you know, how did I do, right? Because by the time the holidays get here, it's always a whirlwind, right? You're going to visit family and friends, and you're trying to make sure everything's lined up, and do I have the right flights and this that and the other, and you can get completely absorbed in that, and you should really, you know, so that's what that's for. 

And so I try to take time between the start of fall and Thanksgiving to really look back at the year, what did I do? Where are my successes, what can I do better? How do I challenge myself to do more, right? For me, it's really more about how do I challenge myself to do something interesting, to do something worthwhile. And sometimes it's easy to answer, sometimes it's not. But it's always a fun exercise for me. I remember when I first started looking for jobs, it was the recession, and the great recession, came out of grad school and there were no jobs. And I was, you know, panicking in a way because when I went in, they were like, Oh, there's going to be so many environmental jobs. There's gonna be environmental jobs everywhere. This is a great market, a great industry to be in. And that's not why I did it, right? I did that. I worked there because I loved it. I went to grad school because I loved it. But I was thankful when I went into grad school that I had a good background. Oh, this is going to be an area where everyone's going to be interested and engaged, and that was 2007. 

And then I got my master's in 2009, and six months later, I still didn't have a job, and about halfway through that process. I was really stressing, and a really great friend of mine, the person who actually ended up getting me my first job, one of my first mentors, said to me, Nic, When you get your job, You're gonna do it for 30 years. Enjoy the time that you have. That was a relief in some ways, you know, I mean, did that mean I still had, you know, I, I still was nervous about how I pay bills? Yes, of course. I was still worried about that. I was still scared about what could happen. But it was a nice reminder that singular focus isn't going to solve my problem, and sometimes it's OK to breathe and take stock of something good in a difficult, challenging situation. And I think for me that has stuck with me for years. I mean decades at this point, I'm afraid to admit, but I think about that all the time. When I'm having a tough week, you have them, you have them all the time, everybody has them, and, you know, I try to remind myself of that. When I have a slow week, or a boring week, or an emotional week, I try to remind myself, hey, you know. There's still some good, there's still some positive. And sometimes that's easier than others. It's not always, even for me, someone I, I could say I'm an eternal optimist. I wake up every single day thinking it's going to be a good one. And that's a great trait to have. I'm really thankful for it. I don't end the day that way. And sometimes most days don't end that way. And that's really hard, and it can be really challenging. But finding that space to reflect on the good things has helped me. And it's even just telling myself, say one good thing that happened today, you know, just one good thing. And there's always something. Every day, even your worst day had one good thing. And I try to remember that when times are hard. And, you know, like I say, environmental work in and of itself sometimes is fleeting, you know, we have work that's only seasonal sometimes, and we have jobs that are seasonal, and that can also be pretty harrowing for folks. And so try to remember that sometimes things are gonna go your way, sometimes they won't, but there's always some good somewhere around the corner. 

So, I know it's a little bit overly positive, sometimes I can't help it, and Laura's not here to tell me not to, and I'm teasing because she's not here. But, um, no, I, I just wanted to send that message to folks, you know, don't forget, take time, take inventory of your successes for the year. Don't forget to focus on the positive, learn from the negative, but learn from the positive too. You know, we do a lot of looking back at all of our mistakes. Look back at your successes. Be proud of what you did. Be honest. Say, hey, I did a great job on this project. I did a great job bringing this client to us. Whatever it is, don't be afraid to do that. Otherwise, just have a good, you know, make some marshmallows, get a good fire going, have a block party, do get a stew going. Whatever it is that makes you happy, don't forget to indulge in that joy. So, that's my note. I hope everyone has a great week, and we'll talk to you again next time. 

Let's get to our interview. 

Welcome back to EPR. Today we have Doctor Na’taki Osborne Jelks with us. Doctor Na’taki is an environmental justice scholar at Spelman College and co-founder of the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance. Welcome, Na’taki. Thank you so much for having me. Well, we are super excited to have you here today and you have so much cool work that you do, and I'm excited to dive into it. So you've taught environmental and health sciences at Spelman for about 7 years. What first drew you to that intersection of public health and the environment? Thanks so much for that question. Really, my connection to the environment and health is very personal. I am a daughter of the South, originally from Mississippi, but I grew up for about a 5 year stint of my adolescence in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In what some people consider to be the Cancer Alley corridor, this 85 mile stretch of land between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana that houses over 150 or so chemical companies, petrochemical companies, and other pollution generating facilities. And while we lived in Louisiana, I always recognized that the pollution index was always high, the air smelled bad, the water smelled and tasted bad, and just anecdotally, I noticed in terms of my skin that before moving to Louisiana, I didn't have any problems, you know, with my skin that I can remember or that I knew of, but after living there, I was diagnosed with a condition called hypopigmentation. And the doctors could never figure out what it was. I had these really light colored splotches on my arms and legs, and doctors ran a battery of allergy tests. 

They tried to figure out whether it was in my diet or something that we were using, maybe a laundry detergent, you know, or other types of, you know, personal care products, but we could not make any sort of linkage to any of those things, so they gave me a topical cream, sent me home. And I sort of just dealt, you know, with that condition from the time that I lived in Louisiana. And when I moved away, it went away. Um, so I began to just, you know, recognize that there was something about that environment that perhaps was impacting my health and what really drove that point home for me is that my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, not that we can link her diagnosis to what we may have been exposed to. But just the fact that that possibility existed sort of gave me this impetus to want to explore more about how the environment impacts health and quality of life and to try to do something about it and once I also understood. That there were high rates of cancers, birth defects, and miscarriages, you know, in that cancer alley area that I think encouraged me and pushed me into this work even further. That is a powerful getting started story for sure. And so, so you made the connection and you're like, I want to do something about this. So how did you decide what to do about it? Did you have a plan or you just took a step in the right direction? I would say that I just took a step in the right direction. When all of this began to make sense to me, I was a college student and so I was a a student actually at Spelman College, uh, so I am back at my alma mater, uh, giving back, but I was a student there and I was studying chemistry and engineering, but I ran across a professor who Did a lot of environmental research and I got involved in a program that he was affiliated with that was an undergraduate research program with the EPA and so that allowed me an opportunity to do research during the school year on campus with this professor and during the summer, I got a chance to have an internship at EPA and during that internship, I ended up working in the super fun hazardous waste division. And going out to communities, mostly in the state of Georgia, but communities that were facing some similar challenges as communities in Louisiana were facing. 

And so after participating in that internship the first time and engaging, beginning to engage in this environmental research, it sort of came to me that I wanted to continue down the science track, but I, I wanted to use that science as a tool for social change. And that I wanted it specifically to work with and in communities who are facing environmental threats and harms. And so while I didn't necessarily, you know, have a plan at first, it began to unfold as I had these experiences. That's awesome. I love that. I coach a lot of young people and trying to find their path or figure out what they're doing. I think they're doing something wrong, but I love these examples of your career doesn't always, you don't always find it a lot of times it just finds you. And so that's a great story of that. And then going further, when did you decide to teach what you were learning? I decided to teach what I was learning, I think a lot later. Both of my parents are college professors and growing up I thought, well, I don't want to do that. And so at one point, you know, I thought maybe I would go to law school and, you know, according to my husband, you know, it's never too late for law school. I ask a lot of questions. So, you know, at some point after, you know, working with communities, but also engaging with young people and figuring out ways to, I just sort of develop pathways for people behind me to also Look into environmental issues and to seek out career opportunities in the environmental and environmental health fields. Something just clicked to me that it would be great to be able to give back. 

To work with people, you know, with my younger sisters and brothers sort of coming behind me and so before coming to Spelman in the current position that I'm in, I did do some adjunct work there, as well as uh some teaching at other institutions like Agnes Scott College, which is also a liberal arts college for women in the Atlanta metropolitan area. I also did some work that was sort of non-formal, you know, education with high school students. Through the National Wildlife Federation and a program that I helped to co-found in the Atlanta area called the Atlanta Earth Tomorrow Program, and so that was all about engaging high school students in environmental issues and helping them to find pathways, you know, into environmental careers as well, so. The combination of those experiences helped me to understand that it was important for me to get back and to try to invest in the next generation to make sure that there would be people down the line who could continue to work on some of these pressing environmental issues. Yeah, that's awesome. So we've been doing it 7 years now. So what sort of, or maybe longer if you were somewhere else, but, um, what kind of proud moments or just things have happened over the years that that make you continue to want to do it? The proud moments are when I see students succeeding, flourishing, when I see them get very passionate about the work and in some cases, you know, take it further than you think they're going to take it. I'm reminded of some students, um, one student in particular, Serena Eccles, who is now working on a joint Masters of Public Health and a master's in anthropology at the University of South Florida. She was one of my students at Spelman College and just an amazing student, got involved in research, um, did a lot of work in the community. She volunteered with the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance as well. Before she graduated from college, she wrote a children's book about environmental issues and yeah, she, you know, she took what she had done, you know, with some of the experiences that she had and turned it into something very tangible. She also pioneered sort of an oral history project that I had tasked her with during the pandemic and it was an example of something that she took much further than I imagined, you know, when I gave it to her as an opportunity to engage with something, you know. 

While regular internships, you know, weren't very possible, this was, you know, an opportunity to tap into the rich history, culture, knowledge, and, and sort of the ecological history of the West Atlanta community and to understand how community members had been engaged in conserving. An urban forest on the west side of the city and she took that and made it even, you know, bigger and better than I thought, you know, it would be and it's something that's continuing today. So that's just kind of one example of one student, but there are a number of students who just really get into the work, find their passion, find What their specific role is and they move forward. And when I hear those stories, when they get back in touch with me and, you know, give me an update on what they're doing and what they've been achieving, those are the things that bring me so much joy and that make all of it worth it. That's awesome. That is an amazing story. Yeah. Goebels, I went to USF so I love to hear that work continuing there. You also mentioned the, actually you didn't mention, you mentioned a different effort, but you are been working with the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance. Can you tell us what they do and your involvement? The West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, affectionately known as WAA, is a community-based environmental justice organization that works to grow a cleaner, greener, healthier and more sustainable West Atlanta. This organization was founded really in the aftermath of a community struggle in southwest Atlanta, in which community residents found out, sort of almost by happenstance that the city of Atlanta was planning to build a mini wastewater treatment plants in one of the community parks, and this was a plan that was largely being pushed forward without. 

Community engagement, you know, these were perhaps the days before the serious pushes that we see now on authentic community engagement and so when community members found out about this proposal, they were opposed to it, they began to do their research to understand, you know, how other cities were dealing with some of the water challenges that the city of Atlanta was dealing with and ultimately proposed for the citizens plan for how the city would address those issues and through a pretty long fight. Ultimately, the community was successful in getting the city to abandon that plan and to move, you know, with the citizens plan and after that they were able to alter, you know, public policy on another water related plan that they thought was going to negatively impact them and it was sort of decided that after those fights that there needed to be an organization in place that would not only Safeguard the community in terms of looking out for these potentially negative projects, but that would also put forward a positive vision for what we want the West Atlanta community to be, and the idea is that we would improve our community through protecting, preserving and restoring our natural resources, and I came together with other residents of the west side of the city of Northwest and southwest Atlanta. To form the organization and to make sure that that, you know, voice was in place to really, you know, assist and to work with community members who were fighting these, you know, various types of environmental struggles. 

Yeah, what a great organization and so much needed. There's also a project you're working on called the Urban Heat ATL. Is that part of Wawa or is that a separate thing? Urban Heat ATL is a collaboration really between Spelman College, Georgia Tech, and Wawa with support from the city of Atlanta's mayor's office of sustainability and resilience, and Urban Heat ATL is something that we, it's a multi, a very, I guess an interdisciplinary research initiative that was born in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in the Sort of not aftermath, but after there began to be some studies released that that showed that in historically red line communities in places across the country, including Atlanta, that people were experiencing more exposure to extreme heat, that it's, you know, essentially hotter in some of those places and the studies that had come out were looking at satellite data and we wanted to Do something in which we could get community members on the ground collecting their own data to really understand, to better understand where urban heat islands were, to better understand how communities were being impacted, and to make sure that there is community voice in the solutions that need to be implemented. To address issues of extreme heat, especially as we anticipate that these issues and challenges will just increase and will be exacerbated, you know, moving forward in the context of climate change. Yeah, absolutely. They don't call it hotliner for nothing. It is, it can be really hot and then if you have these other areas that are like Yeah. Even hotter and less sometimes access to enough energy for air conditioning and things like that, it can be even more devastating, right? So. What results have you seen so far? are you in the initial stages? So in the initial stages, we definitely are finding that in some of those historically red line areas that, you know, what some other studies have found is that these are some of the places where it is hottest, we have started to also overlay some of our heat. And temperature data with things like tree canopy as well as, you know, looking at demographic issues and we also had a hunch, had a very strong hunch that is, you know, proved to be true that some of the areas that are populated by communities of color, by low to moderate income populations, you know, are the areas that are being hit hardest. Right now we are also working with a group, a small group of community champions who are community members who are passionate, you know, about issues of extreme heat and uh climate change, and so they are conducting their own research and sort of trying to answer their own questions with their data, and so some of them are looking at things like What is happening, you know, in the areas where there might be sort of senior high rises and and places where a lot of seniors, elderly people, if you will, are concentrated and, you know, they're looking at what some of the potential impacts might be with respect to higher temperatures in those areas and we're, you know, also just trying to understand. 

Get a better handle on what our city's response has been, how they engage in making determinations on how they respond to these situations where there is extreme heat or, you know, how do they trigger something like when it's time to open a cooling center, you know, for the city. And what information do they use to determine where those cooling centers are. So we're, you know, trying to use our data to help inform decision making that will help to make Atlanta more resilient and, you know, to, to really safeguard those communities who are facing the most vulnerabilities. Yeah, that's a really great effort, which kind of was along the lines of my next question was, once they do have this data or recognize an area as being extreme heat, what are, aside from a cooling center, what are some of the things that they might do? Would they install trees or something else? Well, when we are identifying areas. That are, you know, urban heat or characterized by urban heat islands. There are a number of things that can be done, and it does really depend on the location. In some cases, you know, maybe the answer is planting more trees. The city also, when I say the city, just kind of generally speaking, is a, a part of something called the Smart surface. This coalition and so they're, you know, looking at ways that whether it's tree canopy or other types of green infrastructure might help to, you know, cool some areas down. Some cities are looking at things like cool pavement, trying to change the, I guess material that is used for, you know, some of our outdoor structures, in fact. There was some a policy passed that ensures that there will be different types of shingles that people will need to install on their roofs once uh roofs have to be replaced to try to make those surfaces lighter so that they are not capturing, you know, heat and sort of storing it as much as the darker surfaces. So there are a long list of things that can be implemented and we're working through a long list of recommendations now to share with the city and others. Yeah, and I think that's really cool that, you know, we're talking about local community involvement and engagement. I think sometimes like we You hear a bunch of stuff from the federal government and it's kind of like, you know, that's not necessarily what's happening in all places. 

So the community focused approach, right? Getting data from the community. What are the challenges with doing that? How do you turn that data into policy for the city? I mean, it sounds like you've been pretty successful here, and I think that's like a good model for other people who are listening in other communities and that maybe want to do the same kind of thing. So what recommendations do you have for them? I think there is a a huge benefit in using community generated data and getting people involved in Characterizing their own communities and diagnosing what some of those problems and challenges are and then using that information to develop solutions, you know, policy solutions, social change solutions, you know, whatever is needed. The challenge can be that lay community members who are the ones that I often engage in this type of work are not always seen as credible. Yeah. In scientific research, we definitely work with our community members and quite honestly, we use the same sorts of protocols that we would, you know, use to train college students, you know, to train graduate students who are becoming, you know, scientists and so you can do the same thing. Community members in terms of the same sorts of protocols for any type of projects in which we're collecting data with the community there is a quality assurance and a quality control plan so you know there are standard methods and protocols for, you know, some of this work that we use and we don't. Not use that just because we're working with lay community members. And so what we have found despite that challenge is that when we, you know, try to build relationships with, you know, people in government at all levels, we can. Sort of begin to get over a hump once they start to see the type of data that community members are putting out there. When they see what's being generated, in most cases, you know, government officials don't always just take that data as their bible. But they, they can, and in many cases have sort of repeated, you know, some of the work that the community residents have done, and they've come up with the same things. We were talking earlier about the urban heat project, but water quality monitoring is, is another area in which, you know, I and the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance and others have worked with community members to help, you know, collect water samples and we partner with other. Nonprofit organizations like the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, which has something called the Neighborhood Water Watch. 

And so through that type of collaboration, we've been able to get data that community residents have collected in front of the city. And again, they didn't take it as the Bible, but they did their own research and came up with some of the same things and from that they didn't then took action and so. I know I'm kind of getting long-winded with it, but the, the bottom line is that you sort of keep working at it. You show time after time, you know, how this community data is connected to the community stories that people tell, and, you know, when we find those folks who are willing to listen, it all makes sense and it can help us to move in a positive direction, you know, changes is definitely still kind of slow. But we're definitely opening a lot of doors by getting community members engaged in this type of scientific work. Yeah, and I'd love to hear that, and I think like, you know, communities, I think it's always in government disservice if they don't at least listen to communities and I, I know there's many examples of communities changing a project. I mean, we've talked about a couple already, you know, it made me think of one of my all-time favorites where And an old woman living in a neighborhood just raised her hand and stopped an entire traffic study in its tracks, and she's like, you guys aren't gonna do what you're saying. I know that because I live here. And it was impactful, powerful, changed the whole project. It was really cool to see. And, you know, I think without people listening, that doesn't happen. And I know that's always kind of, it's always a challenge for people who are looking for that kind of thing, right? You know, there's a funding fear sometimes, like how are we even gonna pay for water quality testing? How do we get there and then get our information in front of those good listeners? Such a good question. Funding is always an issue for sure. Through some of the efforts that I've been engaged in, it's been all about collaboration with other organizations, in some cases, you know, coming together to apply for funding. In the past, entities like the federal government have been, you know, decent places where you could, you know, get research funding and even research funding that includes, you know, community and participatory scientists and hopefully, you know, that is something that we can rely on again, you know, in the future. Although I've definitely seen, you know, as of late, so many grants that have been terminated due to, you know, current challenges. 

So it just takes collaboration and partnership, leveraging resources. A lot of times it's, you know, academic institutions working with communities as well and through those collaborations, you know. This can be leveraged to assist communities in that type of work. Yeah, I think it's a great point. And it's one of the thing I want before I wrap up the community angle here. We talked about water quality, we talked about heat. What are some of the other things that, you know, citizen scientists could track? What are the other types of resilience projects can they work on to improve their own lives? Locally, in addition to water quality monitoring, in addition to things like uh heat monitoring, folks are doing a lot of uh community-based air quality monitoring as well. That one is, is pretty, it's a growing area, folks are really doing it across the country. They're definitely doing it here in the Atlanta area as well. And, you know, when you think about, you know, things like water quality, air quality, you know, temperature and heat, those are things that are, are pretty, you know, critical for folks, and people get that connection pretty instantly and generally want to be engaged in that work. People are also doing things like soul testing, those are maybe 4 common things that people are monitoring, but community science, citizen science. Participatory science is so broad, it's so, you know, wide open that for just about anything that you can think of, people are, you know, out there engaged in monitoring things in their local environments. That's really cool. So there you go. Uh, that's to all communities out there. You can do it all. I love it. For students and early career professionals who are kind of interested in the same exact kind of work, like wanting to help communities, wanting to be engaged with communities, what kind of skills do they need? What kind of advice would you give people who are just starting to engage with their community? I would tell folks who are just starting to engage with their communities just to be open, to build trust first before asking for anything from communities. I think that that would be the thing that I would most recommend. That's something. That I try to really echo to students at various levels, you know, who are interested in being engaged with communities, you know, really, you know, try to build those relationships, get to know folks, let them get to know who you are before, you know, there's something that you're asking communities to do. And oftentimes if those relationships are developed in a very authentic way. 

Then there is generally an opening and a way that students and young professionals and others can bring their talents, gifts, skills and capacities, you know, to communities to assist with the challenges communities are facing, and so that relationship building, I think, is first and foremost, letting the community sort of be the teacher is also important. You might have skills, you might have a lot of knowledge in the area in which you were trained, but we should also recognize the lived experiences and local community knowledge that residents also bring to the table, and we can figure out how that all works together to advance the change that we want to see happen. So those are the things that I would recommend to folks who would want to get involved with their communities. Yeah, that's great, and it's kind of like a community, like if you have an idea and you go in, I'm gonna start testing the water here, but if you talk to people, they tell you, well, the issues we have, where we see it is here, here, here, and kind of point you to the right direction to see those kinds of things. Is that kind of what you, you mean? That's exactly what I mean. It's about really letting the community lead, you know, even though you might have skills or interest in helping the community, sometimes, you know, coming from the outside. We might, you know, have ideas that are not the priorities that the community has, and so it's important to hear from community members to hear what their priorities are and to respect their right to self-determination in terms of what they, you know, want to focus on in terms of the things that they, you know, want to try to accomplish that is critically important. I'm gonna follow up with a sort of a good trouble question. Because you were at the center of this, I'm guessing. Our original question was something about if someone's interested in getting into environmental justice, what skills would they need? What habits matter most to get into that? As in the last year, has this changed for your students and Spelman and everyone else because we can say and can say whatever we're allowed to say. 

And how they're looking for jobs. What have you seen? Definitely in the last year, things have started to shift and change in terms of folks being able to find, you know, work, especially, you know, in certain sectors. And so that, that's been, it's been very challenging. But what I do try to encourage folks with is that, you know, quite honestly, the skills that we need to address environmental justice issues are needed now more than ever. We've just got to be creative and innovative about how to make that work happen and, you know, I will say that from the perspective of community-based organizations and nonprofits who do environmental justice work, they've never really We had a whole lot of funding, you know, so it's always been about that creativity. It's always been about the innovation. It's always been about leveraging partnerships and resources and so, you know, that work just obviously has to continue, but in terms of the skills, you know, there are analytical skills that I think are very much needed. If folks who are studying something related to the environment get a chance to take a class in geographic information systems, um, having those GIS skills are really, really, really important. To help, you know, with mapping and geospatial analysis that can help to identify, you know, where there are hazards and stressors perhaps overlapping, you know, with where there are social vulnerabilities helping us to, you know, really understand the impacts of everything that's happening, you know, to environmental justice communities. Also I would just say. Folks who are community minded, who are willing, you know, to work in a collaborative fashion with community members who are willing to be taught, you know, by communities and not just, you know, come in again with the knowledge and skills that they have, but, you know, to be open to learning how to engage communities in a really authentic way, learning how to listen, those. Listening skills are really, really important. Yeah, there's, there's so much, I think that, that we need folks to sort of bring to the table, and it definitely is getting more challenging, you know, right now in terms of where the jobs are. 

But I guarantee you, in not too long, the need, you know, if it's not already apparent, will become so critically apparent. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing all that. One of my concerns is that I went to school 3 years ago, preparing myself for environmental justice, and as I'm graduating now, I can't find any jobs because they're not in the titles. Do you see as an instructor and the students you're working with at the work that you do, is there something adjacent, some other, or is it just community? Like what should they be looking for to find the jobs? That's a good question, and I hadn't thought about that, but yes, I, I do think, you know, we're looking for terms like community. I think there are some other terms that are escaping me right now that I'm starting to see show up in different places that public health, public health, which also that one's a little sketchy because, you know, a number of public health roles have been. eliminated or, you know, scaled back quite a bit as well. But I think looking for community, public health, local action, I think you've stumped me. There are a list of things and there's some things that I have seen just very recently, but it is escaping me right now. That's no problem. I'm stumped as well. It's just, I think a moving target at this point in time, but hopefully we land back at something else that we students can recognize and get into those roles. We're going to move into something now we call our field notes segment. It's the part of the show where we talk to our guests about memorable moments doing the work. And for all of us environmental professionals, there is some sort of stage, some field. If our biologist is outdoors for our academics, it's in the classroom or giving presentations. 

So we're looking for your funny, scary, awkward field story with us so we can share them on a future episode if you're listening. You can submit them at info@evironmentalprofessionalsradio.com. And Na’Taki, has anything popped into your mind over the years? Something that stands out, it's just like, wow, that was interesting. Well, one thing, and I didn't talk about this sort of in my origin story earlier, so it wasn't really, you know, funny, scary, or anything like that, but it was impactful and just very memorable for me. That works too. And so when I had this internship with the US Environmental Protection Agency that I talked about earlier, working in the Superfund hazardous waste division. I went to a public meeting in Tipton, Georgia, so this is South Georgia, and at that time, you know, I was really just coming into my own understanding, you know, what work could be like in the environmental field, you know, I had recently sort of just, you know, tapped into the fact that I wanted to do environmental work moving forward, and I thought that I could connect really well with this community in Tifton, they were fighting. A couple of different facilities that had been operating there and were shut down and, you know, there were Superfund sites around these communities and so I was down with the public engagement team and with the engineers who were my supervisors and we were going back and forth in terms of what the community wanted to see and the clean up alternatives for the site and I thought that I was gonna make this connection, you know, with the community leaders, and I'll never forget that one of the community leaders said to me, are you with us or are you with the EPA? 

As if, as, as if, you know, being with the EPA meant that I wasn't, you know, sort of on the side of the community. And so that was, you know, for me really a learning opportunity to understand, you know. How and why in some cases there might be some distrust, you know, on behalf of communities when they think about, you know, government agencies and historically how communities have been, you know, overlooked or, you know, how some of these pollution cases haven't been enforced in the ways that they should have been and that was just kind of this wake up. Call for me. Not that, you know, EPA at that time was bad or anything like that, but it's certainly put me on a path to thinking about how I could do work, you know, with communities and leverage resources and partnerships, you know, with others to make sure that community needs were met. It just sort of put me on notice that. It might take a little bit of something more to make sure that those community needs are being met, that trust has to be built and developed and, you know, all of those things that now are a part of my practice in terms of working in and with communities. It started with that statement that really, you know, helped me to consider what my role was, you know, even as an intern and how I wanted to use that moment in my future as an environmental professional. Yeah, that's a great story. I love it. In there. Well, it's true. It's like, you know, there's people who work for Mosaic, which is a large evil corporation in Florida, but they're doing a lot of environmental work and so there's there are people who need to know day in and day out what their mission is, and I think that's really cool that you kind of got an insight into that early on. Yeah. Yeah. And now we're getting towards the end of the show, we flip it over to personal interests because again as environmental professionals, we all got cool stuff going on outside of our day jobs. 

So, and you mentioned that you write poetry in your free time, and we just recently had another guest who did um spoken word, I think, but also poetry. So what inspires you to write poetry and what do you find yourself writing about, if you don't mind sharing? I don't mind sharing. I write poetry really just about things happening around me, things in the world. I do write about environmental issues and nature a little bit as well, but I would say that most of my poetry has been about, you know, things happening in the world and oftentimes to There have been, I've been inspired by people, by individuals, and they, you know, might sort of be the subject of poetry as well, but it's kind of a mixed bag of things. I sometimes don't write as much as I want to, so I'm, I'm trying to keep myself, you know, honest. When you ask what I like to do in my, in my spare time, I gave that even though I'm trying to do a lot more of it than I have been doing most recently, but it's been a passion and interest, you know, since I was a lot younger, you know, back to, I can definitely remember at least back to high school, writing a lot of poetry and it's, you know, been a constant since then. That's awesome. I used to write a lot of poetry when I was younger too, and most recently, have you heard of the Pen women, American Penwo group? I have not. That's the um actually that's not their full name. It's the League of American Penwomen Association or something like that. Uh, they've been around for that they're having their centennial next year, I believe, and I was at, I'm a member in the central New York area and I was asked to submit something for their 100 year anthology and uh I was like, well, I haven't officially written a full poem. I've dabbled in a couple of things, but I was like, let me give this a shot. So I'm really excited that comes out, but yeah, I will um I'll follow up and give you their actual name. But that would be fantastic. Great group and maybe would inspire you. And I have to also, I would be remiss, I think Nic and I both, if we didn't mention Ron Deverman, he is, has been a long standing member and support of NAP and he's almost our official poetry writer, and, uh, he reads his poetry sometimes we need him back on to read another one. It's been a while. Um, I'm gonna doubt that you have something nearby, but do you have something in your brain or nearby you would read? I do not. Laura trying to put her on the spot. What are you doing? Oh, yeah. We all need more poetry in our lives, OK? We do that I can agree with, but well, next time, next time you're on the show, you're gonna have to bring a poem. Yeah, be a requirement. With advance notice, I can do that. Awesome. 

Well, we are running out of time. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about? I think I am in good shape here, if you all are. That's all good. Well, um, where can people get in touch with you if they would like to connect? What's the best way? Folks can connect with me on LinkedIn, but you know what, I have no idea what that handle is. Um, if you call it a handle, I don't know if you call that if that's what you call LinkedIn. Handle, ID name, title, I don't know. Yeah. So folks can find me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to connect with me, and if they Google my name or put it in the LinkedIn search bar, they should be able to find me. I know that wasn't good. Maybe I can actually look up my LinkedIn and I feel like it's something long. I think if you put Na’taki, it's probably gonna come up. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say too. Doctor Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, I think they'll. Or maybe the 20 others will pop up surprisingly. You never know. Well, uh. I don't know. I think that's a great way to end. We've, it's very long. I'm looking at the profile. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no worries at all. We got, we've got it. We're all set. Thank you so much for being on. We really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. This was great. It's a lot of fun. Thank you. And that's our show. Thank you, Na’taki for joining us today. 

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