Deja Perkins

Deja Perkins is an American urban ecologist. She has spoken out vocally against racism in STEM fields, is a co-organizer of Black Birders Week, and is president of the BlackAFinSTEM collective. She graduatated from the North Carolina State University and now is a PhD student at the NC State's Center for Geospatial Analytics, where she examines the spatial data gaps in environmental participatory projects to better understand conservation and nature gaps in urban neighborhoods. Some of her current interests are in the intersection of environmental justice and conservation where she aims to study and take a closer look to how human culture and bias have impacted avian habitat destruction in cities. Some of her latest projects and work are conservation efforts that aim to target climate change in a urbanized cities and metropolitan areas. .

Awards and honors
In 2022, Perkins received the National Wildlife Federation's National Conservation Young Leader Award and was honored by North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper as a Black STEM Leader.