Careers
Join our team and be on the frontlines of Environmental Justice in DFW!
We encourage women, LGBTQIA+ candidates, and BIPOC individuals to apply.
There are currently no open positions at Downwinders at Risk. Please reach out if you are interested in joining our Board of Directors or volunteering with our organization.
About Downwinders at Risk:
Over almost 30 years Downwinders at Risk has acquired the reputation of being one of the most effective grassroots groups in the country. We pride ourselves on working with, and on behalf of, those most impacted by air pollution. We show a fierce, unwavering dedication to our constituency. We advocate with imagination and creativity. We use the best science. The Executive Director is expected to embody Downwinders’ culture of being the group that “undoes done deals,” “moves mountains” and “sends polluters packing.”
Founded in 1994 by Midlothian and Southern Dallas County residents living next to the largest concentration of cement manufacturing in the US, Downwinders at Risk led the national campaign to close EPA loopholes that allowed cement kilns to operate as cut-rate hazardous waste incinerators. In 2008, hazardous waste-burning in Texas cement kilns ended and in 2010 the last obsolete “wet kilns” were closed. Downwinders became Dallas-Fort Worth’s full time clean air watchdog. In 2010-11 we assisted Frisco residents in shutting down a 50-year old lead smelter that had been operating illegally and emitting dangerous levels of lead-tainted air pollution. In 2012-13 we led a successful campaign among Dallas residents to write and pass the most protective gas drilling ordinance in Texas, essentially banning it in the city.
In 2017 Downwinders centered its work around the reduction and elimination of Particulate Matter air pollution. Because predominantly BIPOC neighborhoods suffer from disproportionate exposure to PM, our focus on eliminating that pollution means we’re working to actively dismantle the institutionalized racism responsible for so many disparate health outcomes in those neighborhoods. We’ve partnered with overburdened neighborhoods to defeat new batch plants, led the fight to close and clean-up the infamous “Shingle Mountain,” and worked to roll back racist zoning in Southern Dallas. We’re one of the few groups in the nation using land reform to clean the air. We’re the leading Environmental Health and Justice organization in North Texas, an area the size of several New England states.
Downwinders at Risk Education Fund is a 501c3 group. Downwinders at Risk is our 501c4 organization.
Our mission statement:
“Downwinders at Risk Education Fund is dedicated to taking effective action on behalf of those being harmed by air pollution. Our goal is to build a strong grassroots constituency and create new strategies for clean air in North Texas. We do this by informing, connecting, and mobilizing citizens to become active participants in the decision-making that affects the air we breathe. In doing so, we improve both the quality of our air and the quality of our democracy.
We’re committed to working for environmental justice with communities impacted by the worst pollution; to deliver the best science to those communities; to make decisions about pollution and polluters more democratic; to provide solutions to the problems we spotlight, and to funding staff devoted to grassroots empowerment.”