Elizabeth Spike

Elizabeth brings 20 years of professional experience in and outside the classroom to the 2018 ee360 Fellowship cohort. She started her career in Wildlife Biology working on the Spotted Owl Demographic Study and Sensitive Endemic Plant Species Project in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She taught Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Science in various schools both public and private, urban and suburban. She is an avid volunteer for various community organizations, including serving as the Chair of the Houston Regional Group of the Sierra Club and being an active member of the Houston Climate Movement, Zero Waste Houston, and the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience. Elizabeth has launched campaigns and projects and collaborated in different ways to educate the public and advocate for the natural environment, such as the Single Use Plastic Rating Tool, Young Adult Sustainability, Rapid Response, Post Harvey recovery, 5th Ward Beautification, and the Spotlight on Sierrans series. Elizabeth has strong interests in air quality, climate change, plastic pollution, women’s issues, youth engagement, and environmental ethics and justice.

About Elizabeth‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Elizabeth is very excited to be an ee360 Fellow. She seeks to assist Breathe DC as it expands its Community Health program to include air quality education to high schools in metropolitan DC. Together, with technical assistance from the Baltimore-Washington Chapter of the Air and Waste Management Association, they will create clean air advocates. They will establish and support a network of students from area high schools to monitor air quality and share geographic and seasonal ozone and particulate data. High schoolers will ultimately convene at a student-led conference to ask community leaders, from the government, business, and nonprofits, for mitigation strategies for local ozone and particulate pollution. The project essentially bridges environmental education to advocacy, inspiring young people to engage in civic life.