Energy Justice Network Board
Frances Whittington (Chair) lives in Chester, Pennsylvania and served as a leader in the multi-racial, countywide DelCo Alliance for Environmental Justice when it stopped the world’s largest tires-to-oil refinery project from locating in Chester in 2008. She’s since fought plans for New York City trash trains that bring trash to burn in the nation’s largest waste incinerator, also in her City of Chester, a city known as one of the nation’s worst cases of environmental racism. Frances has served on the board since March 2008.Robin Hamilton (Secretary) is an Emmy-award winning television host, producer and moderator for townhalls and forums. She is founder and principal of the ARound Robin Production Company, where she creates videos for non-profits to help with fundraising, marketing and messaging. Working at the intersection of media and policy, Ms. Hamilton’s work is guided by the principle of providing information that can promote transformation. Her company has produced four documentary films. This Little Light of Mine: The Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer which chronicles the life of famed civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Her second documentary, Dignity and Defiance: A Portrait of Mary Church Terrell, was awarded a DC Humanities Grant and released in 2017. Our Alexandria, her third documentary, was awarded a Virginia Humanities Grant and won Best Documentary Short for the DC Independent Film Festival in 2020. Her fourth film, Odessa’s Reign is about a Black female gangster crowned ‘Queen of the Underworld’, who ran the most lucrative gambling ring in D.C. in the 1950s. In 2016, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Myanmar to create a communications campaign between local citizen organizations and the Burmese government. She received two master’s degrees, one from New York University, with a concentration in broadcast journalism, and a second in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, with a focus on public policy and media.
Traci Confer (Treasurer) lives in Philadelphia and started her activism in 1997, assisting with a successful local fight that stopped a proposed biomass incinerator in Morrisville, Pennsylvania. She later co-founded Energy Justice Network with Mike Ewall. She has a BA in Geography from Humboldt State University. Traci has served on the board since the non-profit first formally existed in 2002.
Richelle Lee is a Black single mother of an autistic child. Motivated by her personal experience with asthma and other health challenges, she became an advocate in Camden for Clean Air, a group that stopped a proposed microgrid from being powered by the trash incinerator that is the largest air polluter in Camden County, New Jersey. She’s the Communication, Press & Publicity Chair for the NAACP New Jersey State Conference, and is an Environmental Leadership Program senior fellow. Richelle has committed to her work as a freelance marketer, assisting community organizations with graphic design, community engagement, research, campaigns, and program coordination. Richelle graduated from Rutgers University with a B.A. in Africana Studies (Black studies) and Education. Richelle has served on the board since April 2021.