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2026 Environmental Justice awards

Shyquetta McElroy

Shyquetta McElroy is a powerful environmental justice leader in Milwaukee, serving as the Executive Director of the COLE Lead Safe and Healthy Homes Project. She mobilizes families impacted by childhood lead poisoning and works to eliminate lead hazards across the city. Shyquetta leads a highly skilled team of outreach workers who educate community members about the dangers of childhood lead exposure and the importance of testing. Her leadership extends to building connections between parents and policymakers. She brings families’ voices to community meetings, city hall, and the state capitol, ensuring that decision-makers hear directly from communities most affected by environmental injustice.

Laura Olah

Laura Olah has worked for more than 35 years to protect public health and the environment from toxic contamination. In 1990, she co-founded Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger (CSWAB), which grew into a leading voice for cleanup and accountability at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant in Sauk County and at military bases around the U.S. and its territories. Through research, organizing, and advocacy, CSWAB has blocked harmful proposals and advanced safer alternatives to the open burning, detonation, and incineration of munitions. Working alongside tribal partners, Laura helped secure the transfer in 2015 of more than 1,500 acres of the former Badger site back to the Ho-Chunk Nation, marking the first time the U.S. Army returned land to an Indigenous people east of the Mississippi. Laura and CSWAB have also been at the forefront of efforts to address PFAS contamination, advocating for statewide water quality standards and urging comprehensive testing near contaminated sites.

Bryan Rogers

Milwaukee native Bryan Rogers is a community organizer, writer, and strategist who currently serves as the Environmental Justice Director at Walnut Way Conservation Corp in Milwaukee. A thoughtful, intuitive, and trusted leader, Bryan brings people together across cultures and communities to design creative, practical approaches to justice and liberation through community self-determination and participatory democracy. With nearly two decades of organizing experience across the Americas—including student movements in Chile, Black liberation struggles in Brasil, and indigenous territorial defense in Honduras, anti-drug war work in Mexico and Colombia—Bryan integrates grassroots organizing, political education, and cultural strategy to build resilient movements rooted in care, dignity, joy, and love.

Lisa Anderson

Lisa Anderson has spent almost a decade fighting to secure safe drinking water for her small community in Portage County. She continues to educate local residents about the risks of nitrate pollution and the role of agricultural practices, while persistently urging regulators and elected officials to do more to protect public health. Along with fellow clean water advocates, she has organized regular well sampling, compiled water quality data, testified at government meetings and pushed for monitoring wells and stronger oversight. A self-taught expert, Lisa collaborates with scientists and supports other communities facing similar challenges, embodying courage, persistence, and a deep commitment to protecting Wisconsin’s water.

2026 Awards Celebration

Our virtual awards celebration took place on April 27, 2026. 

Thank you to our event sponsors!

Meet Awardees from Previous Years

Marco Marquez

Marco Marquez, a Milwaukee native, works closely with high school students across the state who are passionate about protecting our environment and protecting our future. He is the Wisconsin state director for Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE), where he works to educate, inspire, and support Wisconsin youth to become agents and leaders of change in the fight for climate justice. He also serves as a mentor with Wisconsin Badger Boys State Program, a leadership development program that trains and inspires high school students to become active and engaged citizens in their own communities.

Paul DeMain

Paul DeMain, also know by his Ojibwe name, Skabewis, is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. His connection to water began in childhood, when he spent significant time around the Wisconsin River and Lake Wausau. This early bond with water deeply influenced his lifelong commitment to environmental protection. As the former board chair of Honor the Earth, Paul advocated for protecting northern Wisconsin and the ceded territories from oil pipelines and other environmental threats. During his 40-year career as a journalist, he has worked to highlight the interconnectedness of environmental health and cultural survival.

Lee Donahue

Lee Donahue lives on French Island in the town of Campbell, a small community adjacent to the city of La Crosse. For almost four years, Lee and thousands of other Town of Campbell residents have been unable to drink their tap water due to toxic PFAS contamination. As a town supervisor, Lee has worked tirelessly to draw attention to this environmental and public health emergency and to advocate for a permanent source of safe drinking water for her constituents. In addition, she is actively engaged in advocating for new environmental health protections, including a statewide groundwater quality standard for PFAS.

Deanna Branch

Deanna Branch is a co-founder of Coalition on Lead Emergency (COLE), which seeks to end childhood lead poisoning in Milwaukee through education, policy changes, legislative action and government accountability. Together with her son Aiden, Deanna has also authored a children's book, Aiden the Lead-Free Superhero, to educate young readers about the dangers of lead exposure while instilling a sense of empowerment and resilience.

Maria Powell

The late Maria Powell was a co-founder of Madison Environmental Justice Organization (MEJO), an organization dedicated to working with low-income communities and communities of color throughout the Midwest to identify and reduce sources of toxic contamination. She worked tirelessly to break down cultural and language barriers between community members and decision makers.
MEA supported Polk County officials threatened with criminal charges by corporate industry lobbyists over efforts to protect water.

Lisa Doerr

Lisa Doerr is a proud part of Wisconsin's family farming tradition. She and her husband produce hay in Polk County for family-owned livestock producers. In 2019, when corporate developers began looking for land to build a massive hog confinement facility, Lisa played a central role in organizing a coalition of six towns to develop cutting-edge protective ordinances. Through her work with the Sustain Rural Wisconsin Network, Lisa continues to protect the health and wellbeing of rural communities.

Huda Alkaff

Huda Alkaff is an ecologist, environmental educator, and the founder and director of Wisconsin Green Muslims, a grassroots organization working to address environmental justice issues related to climate change, clean air and water, healthy food, solar energy, energy efficiency, waste reduction and transportation equity.

Guy Reiter

Anahkwet (Guy Reiter) is the executive director of Menīkānaehkem, also known as Menominee Rebuilders. He is a community organizer, author, amateur archaeologist, lecturer, and a member of the Menominee Constitutional Taskforce. As a water activist, Anahkwet has worked to protect the Menominee River from the Back Forty project, a proposed open-pit metallic sulfide mine near the banks of the river.

Dana Churness

Dana Churness has been involved in resource extraction resistance since she was 16 years old, beginning with efforts which successfully stopped the Crandon Mine. Most recently, Dana has been working to stop a water extraction scheme in the Town of Clover. This work led her and others to form Lake Superior Not for Sale, an organization opposed to the commercial sale of water from the Lake Superior watershed.
MEA submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the Coalition on Lead Emergency, who advocated for fair maps in Wisconsin.

Richard Diaz

Richard Diaz is a co-founder of COLE (Coalition on Lead Emergency). In his work with COLE, Richard advocates for solutions to Milwaukee's lead crisis that address racial and economic justice, as well as environmental justice. Richard also works as Midwest Regional Field Organizer of BlueGreen Alliance to solve environmental challenges in ways that create and maintain quality jobs and build a clean, thriving, and equitable economy.

Tom Kilian

Tom Kilian is co-founder of Citizens for a Clean Wausau, whose volunteers monitor the activities and impacts of current and past industrial polluters. Tom has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the way that Wausau's racially-diverse, working class neighborhoods have disproportionately borne the impacts of industrial pollution. Tom continues to advocate for environmental testing and remediation of toxic contamination and an end to industrial expansion in residential neighborhoods.

Brenda Coley

Brenda Coley has served in various positions in the non-profit and academic sectors and brings a long-standing commitment to social justice and community organizing. She currently serves as Co-Executive Director of Milwaukee Water Commons, where she works to catalyze Milwaukee as a true model Water City— a place where we all have a stake in the health of our waters and all share in their stewardship and benefits.

Edie Ehlert

Edie Ehlert is the founder of Crawford Stewardship Project, an organization based in Wisconsin’s driftless region that is dedicated to protecting rural communities from the harmful impacts of industrial animal agriculture. In addition, she has helped catalyze the formation of a number of other grassroots organizations that confront a wide range of environmental justice issues including water extraction, frac sand mining and fossil fuel infrastructure.

Philomena Kebec

Philomena Kebec is an attorney and policy analyst with Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission where she focuses on protection and implementation of reserved hunting, fishing and gathering rights. Philomena is an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and a member of the Ashland County Board of Supervisors.

Rafael Smith

Rafael Smith is Climate and Equity Director at Citizen Action of Wisconsin where he focuses on the way climate change disproportionately impacts people of color on the north side of Milwaukee. Rafael is also a member of the Milwaukee City-County Task Force on Climate and Economic Equity.

Charolette Baierl

Charolette Baierl is a grassroots organizer living in Door County. She was the first recipient of the Bill Iwen Environmental Justice Award. Charlotte worked closely with Bill and continues his legacy of fighting for citizens’ rights to clean water in Northeast Wisconsin.