Simone McFarlane
A circular economy advocate with a background in urban planning, Simone McFarlane believes that everyone’s environment should match their dignity. As a Robertson Scholar, she studied at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. There, she deeply explored just urban development through the lens of urban planning, environmental management, sociology, and data science. Through her degree in Urban Ecology, experience with global service work, and professional experience in urban planning, she has witnessed the bottlenecks in climate resilience. That is why she is committed to advancing transformational change in these fields.
Simone comes from a first-generation Caribbean American family. Raised in the American south and firmly rooted with her Caribbean heritage, she intimately knows how one’s environment shapes their privileges. This perspective inspired her to embark on a gap year in Latin America prior to starting university. This year of service work propelled her interests in environmental justice, thus pointing her toward her Urban Ecology degree.
In college, Simone served as Co-Director to “CompostMates”, a free food-scrap pick-up service for UNC students. Across her two years of leadership, the organization diverted over 1000 pounds of food scraps from the landfill and redirected them to community gardens. Simone knows that a more just food system is interdependent with a more equitable urban environment. This conviction makes her an enthusiastic champion for food and environmental justice.