The Edward L. Cooper Community Gardening and Education Center has hired Donnyell Bourgeois Jr. as program director of its Clean Energy Awareness Campaign to “spread the word” about the benefits of going green.
Bourgeois brings considerable professional experience from the engineering, transportation, and infrastructure sectors, having worked with notable Massachusetts organizations involved in Massachusetts energy transition, such as GLX Constructors, MassDOT and Massport.
As a project manager for RINA, a U.S. based engineering & design, construction and management service, Donnyell worked with the MBTA Quality, Compliance and Oversight Office to manage a client’s response to safety management inspections. He also managed deliverable submissions to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) on behalf of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).
Bourgeois also served as the professional development chair for the Boston Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers from 2020 to 2021. Serving in this role during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic imbued him with a newfound attention for science education and engineering literacy in Boston’s underserved minority communities.
Bourgeois says he is excited to contribute to the health and wellness of Boston’s communities with this unique outreach campaign. “Our central message is three-fold,” he says. “We want homeowners to know that they can save money by installing solar panels and weatherizing. We want small business owners to prepare themselves to own assets in clean energy projects. We want current and prospective employees to make good money in clean energy professions.”
The Edward L. Cooper Community Gardening & Education Center, Inc. (ELCC) is one of Boston’s oldest community gardening initiatives. Under the leadership of Edward L. Cooper, the “Seeds of Hope” were planted by the senior citizens of Roxbury in an effort to both utilize and beautify unattended vacant lots in their neighborhood. Our goal is to become an environmental learning oasis in the heart of Roxbury.
Bourgeois earned a B.A. in pre-law and an M.Eng. in technical entrepreneurship and mechanical engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
