U.S. Department of Energy/Provided
Mary Nichols, former chair of the California Air Resources Board, will be a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Mary Nichols ’66 brings fresh air to Cornell Atkinson
March 10, 2021
In the summer of 1964, Mary D. Nichols ’66 joined 30 other Cornell student volunteers to explain civics and to register Black citizens as voters in a deep-South Tennessee county. She traces her passion for justice and the environment to that moment.
“That experience is what led me eventually to law school and to environmental activism,” said Nichols, now an internationally acclaimed environmental regulator who has spent her career working for California governors and U.S. presidents to cool a warming Earth and to provide fresh air.