The awards ceremony will be held on November 12 in New Orleans and virtually starting at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
The Community Sentinel Award for Environmental Stewardship honors leaders across the U.S. working to protect their communities from environmental injustice.
Established in 2015, the award recognizes frontline environmental and climate justice work addressing the impacts of fossil fuels and industrial pollution through organizing, advocacy, research, education, storytelling, and community care.
Each each awardee receives a $1,000 honorarium and programming to uplift local advocacy
Here are more on the honorees from Pennsylvania.
-- Zulene Mayfield - Community Sentinel, Chester, Delaware County
Zulene was born, raised and educated in Chester. She is a family-oriented person who enjoys the comfort of a large and loving family, and it was that love of family that led her to join a group of residents concerned about what was being billed as the Westinghouse trash-to-steam plant.
She was the youngest of the group and the only woman of color. She became chairperson of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL) in 1993, a year after the group formed.
CRCQL has defeated numerous waste processing facilities, shut down the nation’s largest processor of infectious medical waste, and successfully sued a sewage treatment and sludge burning plant, resulting in increased EPA and DEP fines.
It also filed a Title VI lawsuit against the DEP alleging a discriminatory practice of issuing permits in Chester, the first of its kind in the nation, and its actions led Pennsylvania to create the Office of Environmental Justice.
Zulene helped form Campus Coalition Concerning Chester (C4) at Swarthmore College, has served on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (NEJAC), and advises C4 and CRCQL’s Choices Environmental Youth Leadership Group.
She is now leading her community and its allies in mobilizing against Penn America LNG, a proposed liquefaction facility that would be the largest LNG facility on the East Coast.
-- Qiyam Ansare - Emerging Leader Award, Homestead, Allegheny County
Qiyam is the Executive Director of Valley Clean Air Now (VCAN), an environmental justice nonprofit fighting for clean air in Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley, home to U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works.
A community organizer rooted in the region, he has worked since 2019 to help residents hold industrial polluters accountable and assert their right to clean air under Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment.
With Clean Water Action, he led the campaign that won Pittsburgh’s plastic bag ban, helped secure EPA rule changes that reduced toxic emissions from coke oven batteries through fenceline benzene monitoring, and spearheaded a Community Health Assessment with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
He has raised more than $4.5 million for grassroots groups in Allegheny County and serves on the Allegheny County Air Pollution Control Advisory Committee.
-- Karen Feridun - Community Choice Award, Berks County
Karen is a Pennsylvania-based activist and co-founder of two statewide coalitions, the Better Path Coalition and No False Climate Solutions PA.
Her work in the anti-fracking movement began in 2010 when she founded Berks Gas Truth, and she went on to co-found Pennsylvanians Against Fracking and serve on the national steering committees of Americans Against Fracking and the Stop the Frack Attack Network.
In 2022 and 2023, she was the lead organizer of the Pennsylvania Climate Convergence in the state capital.
Her work spans local, regional, national and international levels, and she has written and spoken on these issues in The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and The Hill, and at a COP21 side event, the DNC platform committee meeting in Orlando, the National Geographic Society and New York’s Society for Ethical Culture.
In 2020, she was invited by The Philadelphia Inquirer to argue in favor of banning fracking, opposite then–Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who argued against a ban.
Visit the 2026 Community Sentinel Awards webpage for more information.
(Photos: Zulene Mayfield, Qiyam Ansari, Karen Feridun.)
[Posted: October 9, 2026] PA Environment Digest
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