Alicia Valair's Page

Born, raised, and continuing to live & work in the South Bronx, Majora Carter travels the world in pursuit of resources to improve the quality of life in her environmentally challenged community. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 after writing a $1.25M Federal Transportation grant to design the South Bronx Greenway with 11 miles of bike and pedestrian paths connecting neighborhoods to the rivers and to each other - securing over $20M to begin construction in 2008.

She has created riverfront parks and green roofs; dramatically increased the number of trees in the South Bronx; worked to remove an underused expressway in favor of positive economic development; and successfully implemented one of the nation's first urban green-collar job training efforts: the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training program—seeding her community with a skilled green-collar workforce that has both a personal & economic stake in their urban environment.

Her vision, drive, and tenacity earned her a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, a place on NY Governor Spitzer's Energy and Environment Transition Team, the Clinton Global Initiative’s Poverty Alleviation Panel, NYU’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Humanitarian Service, and the National Audubon Society’s Rachel Carson Award.

She started 2007 as one of Newsweek’s “25 To Watch”, was named one of “50 most influential women in NYC” by the NY Post that summer, and ended the year as one of Essence Magazine’s “25 most Influential African Americans”.