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Sustainability and Social Justice
Staff
Abigail Abrash Walton, Assistant to the President for Sustainability & Social Justice
Abigail Abrash Walton is on faculty at Antioch University New England's Department of Environmental Studies, where she founded and directed the award-winning Advocacy Clinic and teaches courses in leadership for change, political economy and sustainability, advocacy, environmental justice, and nonprofit management. She also serves as Assistant to the President for Sustainability & Social Justice and chairs Antioch's Sustainability and Social Justice Committee, through which she has led the development and implementation of AUNE's 2006 Social Justice Audit and 2007 Sustainability & Social Justice Action Plan. She also chaired AUNE's Energy & Climate Action Task Force, which set the goal of carbon neutrality by 2020, and has led the implementation of AUNE's two Greenhouse Gas Inventories. She is AUNE's Implementation Liaison for the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment. She is also founder and principal of ActionWorks, a consulting firm that specializes in organizational development and strategic planning.
Abigail has worked in the arenas of human rights, social justice and sustainability research, advocacy and community organizing at the international, national, state and local level, including as program director for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights and New Hampshire Citizens Alliance, and as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program. She is a member of the City of Keene's Planning Board, Master Planning Steering Committee and Cable Television Commission and served on the New Hampshire State Commission Studying the Feasibility of Public Funding of Elections.
Abigail's publications include "Conservation through Different Lenses: Reflection, Responsibility and the Politics of Participation in Conservation Advocacy," in the journal Environmental Management, "The Victims of Indonesia's Pursuit of Progress," a New York Times opinion piece, "The Amungme, Kamoro and Freeport: How Indigenous Papuans Have Resisted the World's Largest Gold and Copper Mine," in Blackwell Publishing's The Globalization Reader, and "Let Freedom Ring: Recharging and Consolidating 'Inside the Beltway' Activism," which appears in Feminist Approaches to Social Movements, Community, and Power. She also has served as a commentator for media outlets including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, National Public Radio, "Democracy Now" and "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer."
Abigail holds a M.Sc. in Political Theory from Mick Jagger's and George Soros' alma mater, the London School of Economics and Political Science, a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Permaculture Design Certificate from the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center. She finds joy in the sustainable pursuits of gardening, canoeing, singing and birding locally.
Monica Foley, Solid Waste Coordinator
Monica is a first year Environmental Studies student concentrating in the Science Teaching Certification Program. She earned a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of North Carolina, and for the past several years has worked in a variety of farm and garden settings where she gained valuable experience working with composting systems big and small, hot and cold. This past year she was a farm intern at North Country School in Lake Placid, NY and was inspired by the scale and efficiency of their composting system, and hopes to help Antioch move toward reaching their full potential in waste management. She is continually amazed by the power of decomposition and is thrilled to have the opportunity to develop a deeper knowledge of the process, and equally thrilled to be getting her hands dirty on a regular basis.
Rachel Brett, Green Guru
Rachel serves as Antioch University New England's Green Guru, a position with AUNE's Sustainability & Social Justice Committee. Rachel is a second-year master’s student in Environmental Studies concentrating in Environmental Education. She earned a B.A. in History from Brown University in 2007, where she helped initiate and launch a composting program in one of Brown’s dining halls and taught environmental education at a local middle school. After graduating college, Rachel led a service learning/internship program at the University of Denver where she helped students run sustainability, voter education, and homelessness programs; she has also taught environmental education in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. When Rachel was six she asked her parents to change her name to “Nature Girl.” She has always loved being outside and is excited to be a part of, and contribute to, a community that shares her passion.
Bola Afolayan, Social Justice Coordinator
Bola is a first year Antioch University New England PsyD. (Clinical Psychology) student. She earned a B.A Honors degree in History and an MBA with a concentration in Management Studies from Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife, Nigeria. She also holds a Master of Science in Computer Information System degree from Southern New Hampshire University. She has been working in the world of advocacy for the past 13 years. Her experience includes serving on the Program Committee of the University of New Hampshire, President’s Commission on the Status of Women, where she helped to start the international Women’s Club of UNH. She also worked for eight years with victims of domestic and sexual violence and their children. She is currently the vice chair of the board of directors of the Manchester, NH-based Women for Women Coalition, an advocacy organization that helps immigrants and refugees originally from Africa -- and their families -- to integrate culturally, socially and economically. She also is currently an adjunct lecturer at the Women's Studies Program of the University of New Hampshire. Bola loves gardening in her spare time!
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