Monday, May 2, 2022

1:00-2:15pm (ET)

This is a live streamed event. Advance registration required.

Awardees: Catherine Coleman Flowers, Founder, Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice 

Paul Polman, Business leader, campaigner and co-author of “Net Positive"

Catherine Coleman Flowers, Environmental Justice and Health Advocate, Founding Director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ), Author of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret


Catherine Coleman Flowers is recognized for broadening the scope of environmental justice to include issues specific to disenfranchised rural communities and encouraging policy and research to address failing infrastructure that causes continuous socioeconomic disparities in rural neighborhoods in the U.S. Flowers is an internationally known advocate for sanitation solutions and water access and chronicles her journey in her book Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. As Vice Chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, Flowers advocates for addressing the overlapping and synergistic impacts of climate change and inequality. She highlights the disproportionate burdens borne by those with the fewest resources and the most constraints on their civil rights and that reside in the most polluted places. Flowers was named 2020 MacArthur Fellow for Environmental Health Advocacy and serves as a board member of both the Natural Resources Defense Council and The Climate Reality Project. 


Paul Polman, Business leader, campaigner, Co-Author of “Net Positive: how courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take”, recently published October 2021. 

Paul Polman works to accelerate action by business to tackle climate change and inequality. A leading proponent that business should be a force for good, Paul has been described by the Financial Times as “a standout CEO of the past decade”. 

As CEO of Unilever (2009-2019), he demonstrated that a long-term, multi-stakeholder model goes hand-in-hand with excellent financial performance. Paul was a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel which developed the Sustainable Development Goals and which he continues to champion, working with global organizations and across industry to advance the 2030 development agenda.  

Paul’s new book, “Net Positive”, is a call to arms to courageous business leaders, setting out how to build net positive companies which profit by fixing the world’s problems rather than creating them. He Chairs IMAGINE, a social venture dedicated to systems change, and Saïd Business School, and he is Vice-Chair of the UN Global Compact as well as a B Team Leader. Paul is Honorary Chair of the International Chamber of Commerce, which he led for two years. 

About the William K. Reilly Award for Environmental Leadership

The William K. Reilly Award for Environmental Leadership was introduced by American University’s Center for Environmental Policy in 2013 to recognize individuals working on energy, environment and sustainability policy who have made substantial contributions to the field, introduced innovations, worked across political and other boundaries to engage diverse stakeholders and mentored others. Each year two awardees are recognized for their honor those who have demonstrated many of the hallmarks of Mr. Reilly’s career.