Dr. Antwi Akom

Dr. Antwi Akom is a champion of healthy communities, and like many of our past Inspire Speakers Series presenters, his definition of community health is impressively open-ended.  Dr. Akom seeks to connect environmental health with societal well-being, equal opportunity education with economic equity.  He is a nationally recognized leader in environmental economics, youth development, and the sociology of poverty and education.  In the burgeoning environmental field, Professor Akom sees an opportunity to engage students in vulnerable populations to be innovative business and community leaders in the 21st century.  Dr. Akom’s idea of creating “shareable cities” calls for car sharing, house sharing, tool sharing, and shared decision-making.  He sees too many communities today with limited access to resources and wonders what the cities of our future would look like if we designed them with everyone in mind.

Professor Akom’s research has largely focused on answering two questions:

1) How do we create more just, sustainable, and smarter cities? 

2) How do we create more democratic models of civic and community engagement?

Check out Dr. Akom’s presentation at the 2013 EcoDistricts Summit.

More about Dr. Akom:

• Associate Professor of Urban Sociology in the Department of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University
• Co-Director, Educational Equity Initiative at the Cesar Chavez Public Policy Institute
• Co-Founder, Institute for Sustainable Economic, Educational, and Environmental Design (I-SEEED)
• Director of STEM Education, East Bay Green Corridor
• Co-Founder, Environmental Sustainability Planning Network (ESPN)

Awards & Recognition:

• Recipient, 2011 New Connections Junior Health Investigator Award
• Recipient, 2010 Research Infrastructure in Minority Institutions (RIMI) Investigator Award, provided by the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities
• 2013 Finalist for the Echoing Green award

Books in Progress:

• Ameritocracy: The Racing of our Nation‘s School Children
• Revolutionary Urbanism: Race, Climate Justice, and the Politics of Pollution in Cities and Schools; editing with Professor Jason Corburn from U.C. Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design/City Planning

Event Appearances:

Dr. Antwi Akom and Grant Ervin | October 9, 2014