Cameron Oglesby is an environmental justice advocate, oral historian, and journalist who is dedicated to re-centering the voices, narratives, and knowledge of historically disinvested communities in conservation, environmental policy, storytelling, and corporate decision-making. 

 

She is a double alum of Duke University, receiving a Master of Public Policy (2023) concentrating in environmental policy, corporate sustainability, and environmental justice, and receiving a Bachelors in Environmental Science and Policy (2021) concentrating in Ecology.

 

Cameron spent her seven years in North Carolina working with university and community leaders to establish climate education initiatives, leverage institutional power to foster longstanding relationships, and report on the intersection of environmental racism, infrastructure and policy, and land and agriculture. She is the founder of the Environmental Justice Oral History Project – a storytelling repository documenting environmental racism in the U.S. South; an Advisory Board Member for the Rural Beacon Initiative – a North Carolina-based social enterprise attempting to connect disinvested, rural, and BIPOC communities to renewable energy and regenerative agriculture; as well as a Member of the Warren County Environmental Action Team's Strategic Planning Team.

 

Among other accolades, Cameron is a National Geographic Young Explorer, a 40 Under 40 Awardee with Young, Gifted, & Green, a Future Leader Climate Fellow with the Aspen Institute, an EE 30 Under 30 Leader with the North American Association of Environmental Education, and a Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the Op-Ed Project. Her written and audio journalism has appeared in The Nation, The Margin, Atmos Magazine, The Assembly NC, Grist, Southerly, Scalawag, Environmental Health News, Yale Climate Connections, Earth in Color, and INDY Week.

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In her capacity as a storyteller, she has spoken on environmental justice policy for the EPA, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, and NATO; is featured in an internationally viewed documentary about the birth of the EJ Movement; gave a lecture for the Chisholm Legacy Project's Black Liberation and Just Transition Certification program on the importance of narrative building in environmental justice communities; and wrote a chapter on the modern environmental justice movement for the Radical Communications Network/New Press's forthcoming anthology on 21st-century movement building (launching May 2025). In collaboration with Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis, she is currently writing her first book: a primer on the layered history of environmental racism and the under-covered history of Black land ownership, health disparities, and nature access in the U.S.

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Her work is inspired by her own connection to ancestral farmland in Maryland that’s been in her family for almost 100 years.