Meet this jill-of-all trades working to ensure all Americans have access to energy security and upward mobility.
Independent Women’s Forum is pleased to announce that Donna Jackson, Director of Membership Development for Project 21, which is a black leadership organization under the umbrella of the National Center for Policy Research, is the latest entry in our popular series of Champion Women profiles.
While politicians like Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg fret that roads and overpasses are racist, Donna Jackson knows it’s the Biden administration policies that prevent more African Americans from prospering and joining a vibrant middle class.
Jackson testifies frequently before Congress on affordability, which is essential for upward mobility. So the Biden administration’s EV push is particularly misguided, she insists, because “blacks and others seeking to move up the economic ladder need affordable gasoline-powered vehicles even more than Americans in general.”
When Jackson testified last year before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works subcommittee on plastic manufacturing, she expressed a truly revolutionary (in the eyes of the Biden administration) notion—that industrial facilities near a struggling community are not something to be banned but can be a positive benefit. “The enemy,” Jackson declared, “is not trace emissions in the air and water from industrial activity. The enemy is poverty."
“The high-wage blue-collar jobs that these employers provide are, in many cases, the best ones available for those without college degrees. And if you look at the history of the creation of a black middle class over the last century, it is these gateway jobs that lifted up millions of families and broke the cycle of poverty,” Jackson testified.
When asked how she came by her views about minorities and environmental regulations, Jackson spoke powerfully of her own family history. “Let me give you a little bit of background about my parents, and my grandfather, and my aunt. They worked in factories,” she said. “They migrated from the South to the North, and subsequently we had individuals go to the Midwest and California because of the opportunities in the factories. I have relatives who worked at Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, U.S. Steel, and General Dynamics. Working for these companies was the basis for them to become middle class.” Donna has worked in marketing, political campaigns, and in both the public and private sectors.
This jill-of-all trades is working to ensure all Americans—including those in disadvantaged communities—have access to energy security and upward mobility. IWF’s Center for Energy and Conservation is fortunate to lean on Donna’s expertise and savvy in her capacity as an advisory board member.
We bet you’ll be impressed with her wisdom and energy, too.
