City Cast 6 Award Winners: Sustainability

This year, City Cast DC is conducting our inaugural City Cast 6 awards, where we recognize six local leaders transforming six distinct industries — Politics, Food & Drink, Business & Development, Sustainability, Music, and Literature.

After months of research, interviews, and deliberation, we're proud to announce the winner of the sustainability category.

🏆 WINNER: Sebrena Rhodes

Chosen by our panel of experts.

Rhodes wears many different hats. She recently helped win a decades-long fight to create a community center in Ivy City, an area with almost no recreational spaces. She is also a ​​community organizer with Empower DC, and in 2020, she was also elected as the advisory neighborhood commissioner in ANC 5D01.

Most recently, she starred as the subject of the short film “People Rising: Ivy City”. It chronicles her fight to close National Engineering Products, a chemical facility that polluted Ivy City with formaldehyde and burning tar since the 1930s.

Rhodes is a D.C. native, born-and-raised in the Deanwood community, and a mother of six.

🙌 PEOPLE’S CHOICE: Brenda Lee Richardson

Based on votes by listeners and readers.

Brenda Lee Richardson is the Coordinator for the Anacostia Parks & Community Collaborative which strives to upkeep the park and river for the residents of Wards 7 and 8. She has spent the last 25 years in D.C., working on environmental justice, equitable development, and health issues.

🥈 RUNNERS-UP:

Nominated by other experts in the field.

• Rob Rubba – Head chef at seasonal veggie-focused restaurant Oyster Oyster.
• Dennis Chestnut – Executive Director at Groundwork Anacostia River DC which helps restore the Anacostia watershed with community action.

Our Selection Process:

To ensure the veracity of the awards, we chatted with dozens of field experts across D.C., conducted listener and reader polls, and did our own research to come up with nominations. Finally, we had you vote to choose a "People's Choice" winner. And we had our panel of experts — Washington Post's Michael Brice-Saddler, Axios' Anna Spiegel, and City Cast's David Plotz — confer and select a winner per category.