TOS50 Member Details

                Jenine Tankoos (a.k.a. “Green Jenine”) is a regular contributor to the TOS50.com website.   We are proud to announce that Jenine was named winner of the 2010 Volunteer Catalyst Award by One Change, an organization based in Canada with more than 12,000 volunteers in 900-plus communities. The award recognizes outstanding community leaders who have acted as catalysts for significant environmental action.

 

In her career as an environmental scientist, Jenine held several positions with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency working on issues including environmental education, landfill regulation, recycling programs, and the Superfund Program. She coordinated the production of EPA Region II’s first State of the Environment Report, which had over 15,000 copies distributed. Additionally, Jenine worked for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection where she educated residents of the Croton watershed about the ways in which their behaviors affect New York City’s water supply.   

 

                One of Jenine’s great passions is to motivate people into taking action when it comes to improving the current status of the environment.   With that in mind, she has devoted much of her time to volunteering in the environmental arena as well. For nearly ten years, Jenine was a docent for The Bronx Zoo in New York where she taught children about wildlife and conservation, and wrote a monthly newsletter column called “Conservation Corner.”     Currently, Green Jenine is Chair of the Environmental Commission of her town in New Jersey and hosts a local television show about green issues.  Jenine also runs a portrait photography business, known as J9 Photo Design, where she is often known to pause an outdoor photo session to talk with the children she is photographing about nearby nature such as a flower or squirrel’s nest.

 

Jenine hopes that more people will continually come to realize that small actions in their daily lives add up to big changes for environmental protection. Jenine tells TOS50 that using energy saving appliances and reusable shopping bags, fixing leaky faucets, and taking shorter showers are all examples of ways in which we can individually help to collectively make a change for the better.

 

Jenine has a B.A. from Barnard College of Columbia University and an M.S. in Ecology from Fordham University.