Denise Abdul-Rahman is a staff member of the National NAACP Environmental Climate Justice Program (ECJP), as the Regional Field Organizer for the Midwest and Plain States and serves as the Environmental Climate Justice Chair of the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP. She employs the program’s three objectives: Reduce Harmful Emissions, Particularly Greenhouse Gases; Advance Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy; and Strengthen Community Resistance and Livability.
Denise holds a BS in management, an MBA in healthcare management, and a health informatics designation from Indiana University School of Informatics.
Her accomplishments include organizing over 85 attendees, representing several organizations across the Midwest to the United States EPA, Region V to present the “Our Power Plan,” as well as organizing the “Just Energy” Campaign. Denise called for Indianapolis Power Light to stop burning coal by 2016 and the plant stopped February 2016, and she led a contingent that was crucial to the defeat of House Bill 1320, a bill that sought to depict a narrative that ‘solar was unfair to people of color/African Americans and therefore a fee to distribute energy across the grid should be enforced to make it fair for all. The “Just Energy’ Campaign solidified the defeat and the victory rose to national coverage with LA Times and Bloomberg News.
She has had the privilege to speak and work with various academic institutions: DePauw University, IU McKinney School of Law, IUPUI School of Sociology, Purdue University, Indiana State University, IU-Bloomington, Smith (Popular Economics Summer Institute), Butler, and Wayne State-Law School. Denise provided a Keynote address for University of Chicago at Illinois (Freshwater Lab Summit), AALS Clinical Education conference, Global Citizen Year at Stanford University, Duke University, and IUPUI Richard Lugar Renewable Energy Center.
She has served as a Delegate to the Paris COP 21, as a Delegate to the Global Climate Action Summit, as the former Vice Chair for the Indianapolis Air Pollution Control Board, and as an advisor for the Thrive Indianapolis Climate Action Plan.
Denise has received the Faith Based Rev. Mozel Sanders Drum Major for Humanities Award 2020, the Indiana University Robert McKinney School of Law Environmental Protector Award 2019, and the NAACP Indiana Hazel B. Hunter Award 2019.
