NASHVILLE, TN — Majora Carter will be the keynote speaker at the annual J.U.M.P. Christmas Extravaganza on Thursday, December 6 at The Cal Turner Family Center at Meharry Medical College, 1011 21st Avenue North Nashville. The event is being held from noon – 1:30 pm.
In August 2001, after exploring and then declining to engage in a campaign for NY City Council, Majora Carter founded Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx), where she served as executive director until July 2008. During that time, SSBx advocated the development of the Hunt’s Point Riverside Park which had been an illegal garbage dump. Carter was a co-founder of the Bronx River Alliance [bronxriveralliance.org], and SSBx continued to carry on Carter’s involvement in Bronx River waterfront restoration projects.
In 2003, Sustainable South Bronx started the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training program, one of the nation’s first urban green collar training and placement systems. Other SSBx projects have centered around fitness, food choices (including the creation of a community market), and air quality.
In 2007, Carter co-founded Green for All with Van Jones. A December 2008 New York Times profile called Carter “The Green Power Broker” and “one of the city’s best-known advocates for environmental justice”.
Majora Carter’s TED talk was one of the first six publicly released talks to launch the TED.com website in 2006. Carter has made appearances in, and/or written, and produced television and radio programs, including HBO’s The Black List volume 2, American Public Media’s Market Place, and PRX’s This I Believe series and has hosted several pieces on urban sustainability with Discovery Communications’ Science Channel.
She has been featured in corporate promotional videos and advertisements for companies such as Cisco Systems, Frito-Lay, Intel, Holiday Inn, HSBC, Visa, Mazda and Honda.
In 2014, Carter was the on-camera and voice over host of “Water Blues – Green Solutions”, a one-hour documentary on Green Infrastructure in several American cities, produced by Pennsylvania State University TV for the Public TV Market. In 2015, Carter played “TSA Agent 1” opposite Meryl Streep in Ricky and the Flash, directed by Johnathon Demme.
From 2007–2010, Carter appeared on The Green, a television segment dedicated to the environment, shown on the Sundance Channel. The first season consisted of a series of 90 second op-eds shot in studio. The second season consisted of a series of short interview pieces with individuals taking uncommon approaches to environmental problems.
In 2008, Carter and Marge Ostroushko co-produced the pilot episode of the public radio show, The Promised Land (radio), which won a 3-way competition for a Corporation for Public Broadcasting Talent Quest grant. The one-hour programs debuted on over 150 public radio stations across the US on January 19, 2009, was renewed for the 2010/2011 season, and earned a 2010 Peabody Award, but went unsupported by the public radio funding organizations after that period, and has since stopped production.
Carter co-authored a white paper on Urban Heat Island Mitigation and a peer-reviewed article, Elemental carbon and PM(2.5) levels in an urban community heavily impacted by truck traffic.
After leaving Sustainable South Bronx, Carter has served as president of a private consulting firm, Majora Carter Group, LLC (MCG). In the June 2010 issue of Fast Company magazine, Carter was listed as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. In 2014, B Corporation (certification) recognized MCG as one of the “Best for the World”[49] according to its ranking among other B Corps of similar size.
In 2012, Carter’s consulting firm, Majora Carter Group LLC (MCG) accepted FreshDirect as a client to help the company and local organizations connect prior to its proposed relocation to the Harlem River Yards in the South Bronx.
South Bronx youth development NGO leader Maryann Hedaa stated that Carter “realizes that fighting poverty has to be a partnership between the public interests and the private interests.”