Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Diamond Spratling. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Diamond, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

My motivation behind starting Girl Plus Environment stems from my lived experiences in Detroit and seeing other Black and Brown communities alike who are also disproportionately impacted by environmental exposures. It didn’t sit well with me knowing that my community is continuously exposed to unsafe drinking water, poor air quality, landfills, and so much more– or that this has become normalized among our communities. These exposures have significant impacts on our mental and physical health, wellbeing, and life expectancy. I couldn’t sit on information like that without doing something. I needed to make sure that Black and Brown communities were aware, engaged, and felt empowered to say no to environmental racism.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an impact-driven environmental justice activist and non-profit leader motivated to mitigate health, racial, and environmental inequities in Black and Brown communities. I actually built the national nonprofit, Girl Plus Environment, in order to empower more Black and Brown girls, women, and non-binary individuals to stand up for environmental justice in their own neighborhoods. I am a Detroit native and 2x TEDx speaker who has spent more than seven years at the intersection of environmental justice, racial justice, and health equity. I’ve led many climate and environmental justice initiatives for cities and organizations across the globe such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bloomberg Associates, WaterAid International, Climate Advocacy Lab, and Greenlink Analytics.

My upbringing on the Westside of Detroit actually had a significant impact on my decision to join the environmental justice movement and start my own environmental justice advocacy organization. Growing up on the Westside of Detroit, there wasn’t much education on climate issues and there definitely wasn’t any climate empowerment. I mean, I always knew the air smelled bad and that there were factories less than a mile from where my family and I lived. Detroit was at the forefront of the automobile industry after all. But what I didn’t know was that this wasn’t the reality for other people around the country, even those who had only lived a few miles away from me. It wasn’t until my father finally made enough money to move us to the nearby suburb where I learned that the air didn’t smell bad for everyone and that some neighborhoods actually do have access to safe parks.

This motivated me to not only study environmental policy in school, but to be a leader in the environmental sector to better advocate for healthy environments, especially for people who looked like me. I remember coming home each summer back to Detroit to share all the climate knowledge I had gained from school and family and peers just feeling so out of the loop. I thought to myself, “how do we advocate for climate justice without even knowing it exists… without even knowing that we were being disproportionately impacted even as contributing the least?” It didn’t sit well for me so I knew I had to do something.

This prompted me to start Girl Plus Environment, a national non-profit organization created to better educate, engage, and empower Black and Brown girls, women, and non-binary individuals to stand up for environmental justice in their own neighborhoods. My vision is to see Black and Brown girls, women, and non-binary individuals at the forefront of environmental justice decisions and leadership in order to successfully mitigate environmental barriers and improve the overall quality of life for Black and Brown communities across the U.S. Girl Plus Environment works to create and share tools, resources, and information about environmental justice to its members that is educational, makes learning exciting, and urges our communities to feel empowered to join the movement.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

While GPE is still working to grow our social media audience almost daily, we’ve had a lot of success in the last nine months. We actually increased our audience by over 600 followers in just a few months. This came as a result of many changes within our organization. One of the first things I did was get serious about our marketing and branding efforts which is something that most nonprofits drop the ball on. I took a month away from the programmatic work and created an intense marketing and branding strategy that included things like brand fonts, colors, target audience, and quarterly goals and metrics. I also worked with an amazing organization Neta Collab through their pro bono nonprofit initiative where I gained a ton of insight from a company centered around purpose and branding. One of the greatest impacts I think actually came from hiring really awesome social media managers (arii lynton smith and Hilary Moore) who knew a ton more about social media than I did. One of my biggest lessons learned with social media was that even though we were delivering heavy content, this didn’t mean we couldn’t communicate it in a fun trendy way. We truly had to figure out how to make environmental justice sexy.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One of the things I’ve had to learn is that being passionate about environmental justice was not enough to get up and start a nonprofit organization. Building a nonprofit from the ground up takes a lot of work and takes a business-mindset as much as it needs someone who is passionate about the work. I don’t think in 2019, I truly knew what I would be getting myself into, but I learned that while we are a nonprofit, we are still a business that has to prioritize the operational work too. I learned that marketing and branding was critical for growing our reach and impact, while diversifying our revenue streams is important for the sustainability of the organization. Nonprofits have to keep the lights on too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.girlplusenvironment.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/girlplusenvironment/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/girlplusenvironment
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/girlplusenvironment/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/girlenvironment