JENNIFER HIRSCH TO BE ICA FELLOW

Nonprofit professional Jennifer Hirsch will join the ICA as a Fellow, focusing on the future evolution of ICA’s Accelerating Green Initiatives in Chicago’s 77 Community Areas project.

Hirsch was most recently Senior Urban Anthropologist and Urban Anthropology Director at The Field Museum’s division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo). She has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University and a Bachelor of Arts in American Culture from Northwestern University.

Hirsch comes to the Institute as a creative and passionate leader with more than 15 years of experience working on community development, sustainability, and cultural diversity in nonprofit, government, and educational institutions in the U.S. and Japan.

As a Fellow, part of Hirsch’s work will entail promoting her most recent project, the Chicago Community Climate Action Toolkit (online at climatechicago.fieldmuseum.org), in which ICA is a partner. Created in collaboration with over 40 Chicago region partners, the Toolkit includes over 60 multimedia tools to help communities develop their own sustainability and climate action projects. The Toolkit represents the culmination of Hirsch’s work co-leading the community engagement process for the Chicago Climate Action Plan with the former Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Environment Suzanne Malec-McKenna. The process has been showcased as a best practice by the U.S. Department of Energy. Hirsch will be conducting a workshop on the Toolkit at the Sharing Approaches That Work conference on September 15, 2012.
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"We’re honored to have Jennifer join us in our efforts at the Institute,” said Terry Bergdall, President and CEO of ICA. "Her experience in research, community development and fundraising will be invaluable in our sustainability work.”