TCLP Announces 2025 Shirley Chisholm Black Femme Leader Wellness Sistership Awardees

To celebrate the 101st birthday of Shirley Chisholm on Nov. 30, The Chisholm Legacy Project (TCLP) is thrilled to announce the awardees of the 2025 Shirley Chisholm Black Femme Leader Wellness Sistership, a personal and professional development award program to support Black femme frontline leaders in climate and environmental justice.

Recognizing the entirety of Black femme leaders, this sistership will provide a range of personal and professional benefits deemed by the leaders to be critical to their wellness and success, such as a stipend, coaching, holistic security and virtual assistance.

Here are the nomination statements from TCLP’s Organizing Team: 

Belinda Joshaway is a powerful embodiment of Shirley Chisholm’s legacy of service, justice, and fearless advocacy. As the operator of Hughes Christian Outreach Ministry and the Hughes Food Pantry in Hughes, Arkansas, Belinda serves over 253 families, nearly triple the number she supported when she first began. Despite sweeping funding cuts and ongoing personal financial strain. In a town facing chronic flooding, deteriorating infrastructure, school closures, and severe economic hardship, her pantry has become one of the only stabilizing community anchors. 

By providing food, emergency support, and community organizing leadership, Belinda is on the front lines of climate justice: she meets the immediate survival needs worsened by environmental neglect, while working toward long-term solutions like a community garden, a resource hub, and Wi-Fi access for residents. Her unpaid labor, deep compassion, and commitment to building local resilience uplift the entire town of Hughes and reflect the bold, people-centered leadership honored through the Shirley Chisholm Sistership.

Ponice Howard exemplifies the spirit of Shirley Chisholm through her unwavering, unpaid commitment to protecting and uplifting the most vulnerable residents of Bernice, Louisiana. As the owner and director of Heavenly Devine Early Learning Center, Ponice has sustained the only Black-owned childcare center in a community facing deep economic decline, closed grocery stores, and worsening climate-driven infrastructure failures. When severe erosion and flooding, caused by the city’s failure to maintain a ditch behind her property, began threatening the safety of the children in her care, Ponice paid out of pocket to a family member to install a makeshift drainage system to prevent further collapse of the land. 

The childcare center recently lost key state and federal funding that previously supported the  center. Even as she faces significant financial hardship herself, she has continued to serve families who would otherwise have no access to early childhood education. Her leadership is climate justice leadership: she is protecting Black children from environmental harm, advocating for equitable infrastructure, and modeling community-rooted resilience. Ponice’s self-sacrifice and steadfast love for her community embody the courage, integrity, and servant-leadership honored through the Shirley Chisholm Sistership.

Stay tuned to learn more about these awardees as we release their full profiles in 2026! 

Learn more about the 2024 launch of the Sistership here, and meet the inaugural awardees, Roishetta Sibley Ozane and Judy “Adjua” Williams.

Equally Laudable Leaders—Please Support Their Work

Please join us in celebrating and supporting our 2025 nominees. Read their nomination statements below!

• Marquita Bradshaw: Marquita Bradshaw is a young brilliant African American EJ and political strategist. She was the Democratic nominee for US Senate in TN in 2020 (the only Black woman in the nation that year). She now serves as Executive Director/Founder of Sowing Justice, an EJ organization utilizing EJ principles to increase civic engagement beyond voting with organizing tools and resources for healthy and safe environments.

• Montina Cole: I am continually awed by Montina’s commitment to helping communities as they navigate the threat posed by pipelines in their community. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) originally created a position for Montina as the EJ Attorney for the agency – the first Black woman (and only person so far) to hold this position. Montina resigned because she felt that the needs of communities were not considered by the agency, among other reasons. 

• Torend Collins: Torend is an incredible sister who is always lending a hand without asking, especially for a sister. She is a climate leader, co-worker and friend.

• Erica Hall: Erica is a member of Green Leadership Trust and a 2025 Cecil Corbin Mark Vanguard Leadership Fellow. Based in Florida, Erica is a trusted community leader with an extensive track record fighting for environmental justice. Erica has a multi-disciplinary background as a community economic development practitioner, community organizer, environmental justice advocate, board member, Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) facilitator/trainer/consultant, and senior legal professional.

• G. Erica Phillips: For more than four decades Erica Phillips has served in pivotal roles as an on-air radio journalist, marketing executive, public health and GIS professional. She is a co-founder and former staff member of the Los Angeles African Film Festival. Aside from her professional duties, Erica is also a cultural ambassador. She lived in Abuja, Nigeria for two years helping to stand-up the African Community Bridge Foundation.

• Kristi Pullen Fedinick: Kristi exemplifies leadership, justice, and humility in service. She identifies as a Black woman and has been a champion for environmental and climate justice for more than a decade, shaping policy and practice at national and federal levels while ensuring that members of impacted communities—too often reduced to data points—are recognized as people with valuable expertise. Her work with GIS mapping and working with EJ communities as a volunteer, speaks volumes about her commitment to doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

• Doria Robinson: Doria is executive director of Urban Tilth, a community-based organization building a more sustainable, healthy and just food system. She is also a founder of Cooperation Richmond, a worker-owned community developer, and is on the steering committee of Our Power Richmond, which is part of the Climate Justice Alliance.