Kelly Henderson

Kelly is a sustainability professional, outdoor/environmental educator and non-profit leader with a particular interest in social justice education, experiential learning, youth voice in community development, STEAM education, place based education and project based learning. At Grounded Strategies, she leads the organization in collaborations with communities and schools that result in the activation of vacant land into green/play spaces. Outside of Grounded, she frequently co-facilitates dialogue across social identities as a means for relating social and environmental issues and centering interpersonal work in global change. In past roles, Kelly created and directed successful youth programs including: a residential Sustainable Leadership Academy high school summer camp, a chapter of the Global Council for Science and the Environment's EnvironMentors program (which aims to increase access to environmental careers for those historically underrepresented in the field), K-12 field trip experiences on a sustainable farm college campus, and various innovative professional development opportunities for educators, including Growing Teacher Advocates (a program that taught sustainable agricultural practices while educators also were in dialogue about how the food and education systems are racialized). Kelly has taught undergraduate and graduate level courses on “Education for Sustainability,” “Leadership in Sustainability,” “Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation,” “Intergroup Dialogue: Gender,” and “Experiential Learning and Classroom Partnerships.” She has worked in the green building, energy and outdoor/environmental education fields in various capacities. Kelly has a BA in Physics from Colgate University, an MSc in Sustainable Energy Systems from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and an MAT in Secondary Science Education from Chatham University. She sits on the board of Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) as well as the STEM Education for Sustainable Development and Network for Emergent Socioscientific Thinking Advisory Committee through the Smithsonian Institution’s Science Education Center.