User:Sillygoof23/Vernice Miller-Travis

Born in New York (state) in 1959, Vernice Miller became a political and environmental activist. She grew up in New York and received her degree from Columbia University in 1982. Shortly after in 1998, she married Charles Travis. Throughout her life, Miller-Travis was a political and environmental activist, focusing her efforts on the impact of the environment in relation to populations of people of color. She spends her time advising and consulting with organizations that deal with environmental policies and support in order to share her knowledge in public engagement and conflict mediation that benefit communities.

Childhood
Vernice Miller-Travis was born on February 18, 1959 in Harlem, New York. Her parents, Harold G. Miller and Helen L. Lyles, both worked in the hospital she was born, Harlem Hospital Center. They later divorced when Miller-Travis was six years old. Her father was from The Bahamas, and Miller-Travis frequently visited the islands as a child. In her teens, Miller-Travis, lived with her mother and attended a public school in The Bronx. When the school's environment became too violent for her parent's liking, Miller-Travis was moved to a program called A Better Chance. The goal of ABC, was to create more educational opportunities for students of color and low-income families with scholarships to continue their education. Vernice received a scholarship to the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx. Graduating in 1977, Miller-Travis then went on to Barnard College.

Political Activism
As a politically active person, Miller-Travis was very passionate about racial and environmental movements. She protested against Barnard's investments in Apartheid in South Africa. Part of her scholarship was revoked and she had to work for the university in order to pay for her expenses while at the college. Due to her activism, the college asked Miller-Travis to leave the institution and she withdrew. She then went on to Columbia University to finish her degree. In 1987, she became a campaign director for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Her goal was to promote black voter participation in elections, specifically in the Mississippi Delta. In her roles, she is often in the center of recognizing racism and examining its role in the environment.

After Graduation
After Miller-Travis graduated, she began working for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. In the two years she worked at the non-profit, she helped coordinate their semi-annual national conference. In 1986, she was offered a job with the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice. As a research assistant investigating racial makeup of communities near hazardous waste sites, Miller-Travis worked for a year finding that waste sites were often placed in neighborhoods where people of color lived. Because of this study, the Environmental policy of the United States was impacted through the American environmental justice movement. Her report was one of the first to attempt to examine the impact of hazards waste placement of communities of color.

Environmental Activism
In 1988, along with Peggy Shepard and Chuck Sutton, the West Harlem Environmental Action was founded. WE ACT was founded with the goal of environmental justice in Northern Manhattan. They investigated and noted environmental health problems in West Harlem with a $1.1 million settlement against the City of New York for damages caused by the North River Sewage Treatment Plant. In 1992, Miller-Travis left the CCR to work for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. This gathering of government officials has a united goal of finding solutions to pollution and overconsumption of natural resources. One of her most notable impacts on the board was as the New York coordinator of the Citizen network, where she arranged tours of the city's "toxic" neighborhoods so delegates could directly see the communities that were impacted by the environmental hazards. Miller-Travis went back to school at Columbia in 1992 and studies urban planning, environmental law, and public health. In that time, she became Vice-chair of New York's Community Planning Board 9 and was able to look over land use, zoning, and development issues in neighborhoods in the zone. In 1993, Miller-Travis took a job as the first director of environmental justice for the Natural Resources Defense Council. In 1999, she launched the Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment, a partnership focused on revitalizing Brownfield land. While focusing on this project, she was able to serve on a Federal Advisory Committee to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. She was able to draft Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act, which was then passed in 2001 by Congress. In 2000, Miller-Travis joined the Ford Foundation where she worked to reduce poverty. She devoted much of her time in the foundation to educating and funding advocacy groups. Her main role in the foundation was establishing grants for those working in environmental justice. In 2007, she stepped down from her role as executive director but remained a consultant.