Jacqueline (Jacqui) Patterson is the founder of The Shirley Chisholm Legacy Project. She previously worked as the director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. These organizations work to solve connected problems involving the environment and fairness in society. Her efforts aim to help groups that face challenges, especially Black women, by offering support and working to create long-term improvements in systems to build a future that is both lasting and fair.

Early life and education

Jaqui Patterson grew up near power plants that burn coal on the south side of Chicago. Her mother moved to Chicago during the Great Migration, which was a major movement of African Americans from the South to the North. Her father was from Jamaica. Although she knew classmates with asthma, people in her church who needed special breathing machines, and her father had died from a lung disease called pulmonary fibrosis even though he had never smoked, she did not understand at first how the pollution in her neighborhood was causing these health problems. Her mother died at age 73 from colon cancer, her brother died at age 56 from bile duct cancer, and some of her childhood friends also died young. Patterson decided to work to reduce harmful substances in neighborhoods like the one she grew up in.

She worked as a volunteer for the U.S. Peace Corps in Jamaica and earned a Master's degree in Social Work from the University of Maryland and a Master's degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.

Career

Patterson began her career wanting to be a special education teacher. However, her time in the Peace Corps showed her how big problems in education and healthcare affect communities, often because of systems that take resources and control others, such as Shell Oil polluting water in Jamaica. This made her understand how political and economic systems harm human rights, which led her to focus on social justice work.

After earning her master's degrees, Patterson worked as a Research Coordinator at Johns Hopkins University, studying public health and policy. She also worked as an Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, helping with social justice issues. Later, she became the Assistant Vice-president of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health, helping communities facing public health challenges. She then worked as a Senior Women's Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid, aiming to improve gender equality worldwide. These experiences helped her learn how to address problems by considering many different factors at once.

From 2009 to 2021, Patterson was the founding director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program (ECJP). She helped communities and NAACP chapters fight environmental unfairness that harms communities of color and low-income groups. Under her leadership, the ECJP worked on issues like clean water, the effects of carbon emissions, and fair land use. She co-wrote the Coal Blooded report, which showed how pollution from coal plants harms nearby communities, especially Black and Latin American people. She also shared this information with others.

In 2021, Patterson started and became the executive director of The Chisholm Legacy Project, a center that supports Black leaders working on climate justice. Based on the Just Transition Framework, the project works to create fair changes led by people most affected by environmental and social issues. Unlike some larger organizations that focus on one problem at a time, The Chisholm Legacy Project addresses environmental issues, poverty, racial discrimination, and gender inequality together. For this work, Patterson received the Earth Award at the 2024 TIME Women of the Year gala.

Awards and recognition

• 2021 Heinz Award for the Environment
• 2023 Women and The Green Economy Leadership Award
• 2024 TIME Women of the Year – Earth Award

Selected articles and book chapters

• Patterson, Jacqui (April 23, 2010). "Climate Change is a Civil Rights Issue." The Root.
• Patterson, Jacqui (April 16, 2011). "Gulf Oil Drilling Disaster: Gendered Layers of Impact." On the Issues.
• Patterson, Jacqui (2013). "Equity in Disasters: Civil and Human Rights Challenges in the Context of Emergency Events." In Standaert, Diane M.; Gilmore, Dorcas R. (eds.). Building Community Resilience Post-disaster. American Bar Association. ISBN 9781627221788.
• Smith, Jackie; Patterson, Jacqueline (2018). "Global Climate Justice Activism: 'The New Protagonists' and Their Projects for a Just Transition." In Frey, R. Scott; Gellert, Paul K.; Dahms, Harry F. (eds.). Ecologically Unequal Exchange. Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-89740-0. ISBN 978-3-319-89739-4.
• Patterson, Jacqui (2021). "At the Intersections." In Johnson, Ayana Elizabeth; Wilkinson, Katharine K. (eds.). All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. Random House. pp. 194–202. ISBN 9780593237083.