Speaker Series: Environmentalist Jerome Ringo on "The Green Economy: America's New Frontier" April 20, 2011

Jerome Ringo, former board chair of the National Wildlife Federation and the first African-American to lead a major conservation organization, will discuss “The Green Economy: America’s New Frontier” in the Penn State Behrend Speaker Series.

His presentation takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in the McGarvey Commons of the college’s Reed Union Building. Admission is free and open to the public.

After two decades spent working in Louisiana’s petrochemical industry—and watching pollution’s disproportionate impact on poor and minority communities—Ringo began organizing environmental justice organizations, becoming an outspoken supporter of increased minority participation in the environmental movement.

In 2010, after leading the National Wildlife Foundation and the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor, business, environmental, and community leaders working to create clean-energy “green collar” jobs, Ringo was named senior executive for global strategies at Green Port, a private company that works to establish or reinvent environmentally sustainable maritime ports around the world. He also is a member of The Green Group and of Newsweek’s Environmental Leadership Council.

In “The Green Economy,” Ringo will discuss why investment in a green economy can be a single solution to multiple problems. “There is opportunity in every facet of our economy, whether it be in green building, manufacturing wind turbines, implementing energy-efficient technologies or inventing the fuels of the future, for American industry to be at the forefront,” he says. “We can transform our own economy, and the world’s.”

Ringo’s Penn State Behrend Speaker Series presentation is supported by the Student Activity Fee, the Division of Student Affairs and the Harriet Behrend Ninow Memorial Lecture Series Fund.

For more information about Penn State Behrend’s annual Speaker Series, phone the Office of Student Activities at 814-898-6171.