Cameron Oglesby is an environmental justice advocate, oral historian, and award-winning solutions journalist who is dedicated to re-centering the voices, narratives, and knowledge of historically disinvested communities in conservation, environmental policy, storytelling, and corporate decision-making.
A 2023 NAAEE Environmental Education 30 Under 30 Leader, 2023 PCIC Young Climate Leader of Color Fellow, 2022 Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the Op-Ed Project, and 2022 Uproot Project Environmental Justice Reporting Fellow, her written and audio journalism has appeared in The Nation, The Margin, The Assembly NC, Grist, Southerly, Scalawag, Environmental Health News, Yale Climate Connections, Earth in Color, and INDY Week.
For her long-term coverage of climate and environmental justice in Eastern North Carolina and across the country, she was named Covering Climate Now’s Student Journalist of the Year (2023), a finalist for the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Reed Environmental Writing Award (2023), and the first-place recipient of the Society of Environmental Journalist’s Student Reporting Award (2022).
Her work focuses on histories of injustice, joy, resilience, and land stewardship in Black, Indigenous, and rural Southern communities.
In what ways does nature inspire or inform your work?
My work is most grounded in my connection to the land and nature of an ancestral farm that’s been in my family for almost 100 years. Specifically, the small acts of reciprocity, untamed beauty, and care that exist in the wildness of this land. This ancestral space is an entryway into rare, longstanding histories of Black land stewardship and the extraordinary abundance of the Earth, showcasing just how linked we are to the natural world.
What does it mean to you to be part of a thriving ecosystem?
The cultivation of relationships that build us up: spiritual, cultural, physical, natural, mental. It is the symbiosis of man to man, nature to nature, and man to nature that fosters joy, collective wealth, and the health of people and the planet.
