BIO / PROFILE
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Shalini Gupta has been involved with energy, climate and environmental justice movement building - with a focus on building frontline community capacity - for the past 25 years. She comes to MWEJN with years of experience in nonprofit management, environmental justice policy analysis, coalition building, arts/culture narrative work, entrepreneurship, and philanthropic organizing.
Shalini has worked with foundations, intermediaries, funder networks, donors, city and state government agencies, nonprofits, artists, and community based organizations across the country. Grounded in her community in Minneapolis, she was a leader in the 2023 push for zoning reform at the City of Minneapolis around heavy industrial facilities and cumulative impacts; and helped develop the city's groundbreaking 2013 Climate Action Plan, establishing Minneapolis' first environmental justice focused Green Zones Initiative.
She was a co-founder of the Midwest Environmental Justice Network when it was first started in 2009, and has also helped co-found and support many grassroots-based organizations in the region working toward environmentally just policy and land use development. Through her work with One Square World and ACE, she helped shape the City of Providence’s landmark municipal Climate Justice Plan, and the City of Boston's efforts to integrate community interests into their Building Emissions Performance Standard. A former governor appointee to the Minnesota Next Generation Energy Board, Shalini has held numerous board positions, including serving as co-Chair of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice Board of Directors and Chair of the Urban Bird Collective.
Committed to arts-based, culture-shifting organizing strategies, Shalini has worked with numerous community of color-led arts groups, most recently with Aniccha Arts on their Prairie | Concrete public arts project. She was a contributing author to the Walker Art Center's Fourth Wall magazine, is building a South Asian organic food business, and writing a children's book series that is intentionally shifting the current ecological paradigm toward one of reciprocity and social justice.
An immigrant as a child from Mumbai, India, since 1984 Shalini has lived in Minneapolis, the homelands of Dakota and Anishinaabe people. She is blessed to live here with her husband, two sons, mother, and a community of friends and extended family. She holds a BA in the Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago and a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale University. Website: www.sgupta.org
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