Alumnae as Change-makers

Abby Greensfelder ’91 and McKenna Dunbar ’19 are two names you may not know now, but chances are someday soon, you will. Both Greensfelder and Dunbar are deeply rooted in social justice causes and are tilling new ground as change-makers in their respective fields of women’s equality and environmental justice.

Greensfelder is founder and CEO of Everywoman Studios, where she focuses her films on women’s issues most recently by producing a documentary that looks at gender pay inequities through the lens of the highly decorated U.S. Women’s National Soccer team. Dunbar is a junior at the University of Richmond, where she is winning grants to conduct energy audits to educate marginalized families about energy costs and how to make their homes more energy-efficient. She has her sights on becoming a renewable energy attorney with a concentration on environmental justice issues.

The seeds of social activism to bring about equity were sown, in part, at NCS. For Greensfelder, just attending the all-girls school—leaning on the camaraderie and support of group sports, trusting the power of her voice to be heard, and believing that she could achieve an inspiring career and raise a family—made her realize that anything is possible, including gender equality.

“I started Everywoman Studios because I wanted women to have a voice in content and feel empowered,” Greensfelder says. “Coming up in the media industry, first as an executive and then as an entrepreneur and a producer, I saw an ecosystem that was not giving equal opportunities to women and diverse voices. I felt there was an opportunity to create a different and broader idea of what it means to be a woman, and that was not being seen in a lot of the content that was being made. I felt that I was in a position to fill some of those gaps.”

Greensfelder says she “went looking for stories about women in places and spaces that we don’t often hear about.” And thus her documentary, LFG, was born. LFG follows the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team—a decorated team of athletes who has won numerous U.S. Olympic gold medals and World Cup titles—as they filed a pay discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation for salaries that were much less than what the U.S. men’s soccer team was paid. The documentary details discriminatory working conditions compared to their male counterparts. The women’s team asked, and ultimately received, equanimity to travel in the same or similar charter airplanes as the men’s team, stay in equivalent hotels, and receive similar support in trainers. 

In March 2019, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team sued their employer, the U.S. Soccer Federation, for not paying the women equally. Amid the controversy, the former head of the U.S. Soccer Federation, Carlos Cordeiro, stepped down last year. Now, Cindy Parlow Cone, a former soccer player who has long advocated for equal pay, heads up the organization. Cone and the team settled the working-conditions claim, allowing the women’s team to travel under the same conditions as the men, for example, but the U.S. Soccer Federation has still not agreed to pay the women equally. The lawsuit is currently going through the appeals process.

It was a long time coming, Greensfelder says. “I think that this team is sort of unique in that it had unparalleled success. You can’t argue with their success—it is objective and it’s unparalleled,” says Greensfelder. They have been successful not just as a women’s team. They have been more successful than the men in terms of their record.”

Telling the story of pay and other gender workforce inequities by focusing on the fight of the U.S. Women’s Soccer team was a “cultural moment story for women” and a “great way to look at this issue of equal pay and women’s equality in sport,” says Greensfelder.

Sports were a big part of Greensfelder’s life at NCS. She played lacrosse and field hockey for the school and was head of the school athletics association, which she says gave her an early start serving in a leadership role.

“I think really what I took from NCS is confidence in my voice and confidence in being a leader,” says Greensfelder. “I did not realize it until people commented to me how comfortable I was speaking up in class, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Why is that strange?’ I learned to trust my own voice and be confident in my leadership capabilities in that moment, and that is what NCS gave me.”  

Dunbar also credits NCS for giving her ample opportunities to lead and to discover her passion. Dunbar, along with a partner, won a $10,000 environmental justice grant earlier this year from Projects for Peace. They used the grant to perform energy audits in Portsmouth, Va., a town with a high percentage of elderly people on fixed income with a 22 percent poverty rate for Black and Hispanic people, Dunbar says. She also won a $2,000 scholarship from North Face that she invested in educational materials to hand out to residents.

“I was the tech girl in high school and even middle school when I competed in robotics championships,” says Dunbar, who was captain of the Cyber Patriot team as well as the robotics team at NCS. “I really loved science—natural science in particular—always loved gardening, and always loved being outside. I was in the Voyageur program at NCS, so that really fostered my love of the outdoors, and I was thinking, ‘How could I combine this into a career and something that I would be fulfilled in and find a purpose?’”

The more she researched, Dunbar found her answer—climate change.

“I’ve always been interested in the environment. I think one of the clear moments of ‘Oh, maybe this is what I might want to pursue’ was in 8th grade on a trip I took at NCS. We went to Costa Rica and looked at the ecology there,” says Dunbar, who is pursuing a BS in business administration with a concentration in international business, a BA in environmental studies, and a minor in anthropology. “We learned about sustainable agricultural techniques, hiked in the jungle, and visited a lot of natural landscapes. That really ignited an interest in the environment for me.”

Dunbar says climate change is important because it impacts the entire world. “It’s very devastating because millions of people’s lives depend on a few countries and mitigating these disparities.

It’s unfortunate and just goes into deeper versions of systemic inequities that all of us need to address,” adds Dunbar. “I don’t want to be fatalistic and say it’s too late to change our pathway, but it is nearing that point.”

In Virginia, Dunbar says she found many environmental injustices due to systemic inequalities.

“The Hampton Roads eco-district is a largely African American community, with vulnerabilities of rainstorms due to sea level rise as well as climate change,” says Dunbar. “Due to my interest in renewable energy, clean energy finance, and sustainable development, I wanted to pursue a community-development, environmental education program in this area to combat and mitigate the energy burdens that marginalized residents are facing.”

Dunbar surveyed more than 35 homes in Portsmouth, asking residents questions to determine energy burdens and then providing them with reading resources. Later, as a thank you for participating, Dunbar and her friend came back and brought gifts of sustainability packages, including surge protectors, power cords, water efficient shower heads, LED bulbs, and $25 Amazon gift cards.

So, what’s next for NCS alumnae change-makers, Greensfelder and Dunbar?

Greensfelder says she, along with other filmmakers, are crafting an impact campaign and partnering with other organizations, like Proctor and Gamble, to take LFG around the country. “We’re using it as a motivational tool to right these wrongs.”

Greensfelder is also working on her next project, From Grandma with Love, about immigrant grandmothers who share their knowledge, traditions, and love of food with the world.

Dunbar also developed a free, three-week, hybrid summer program called REESD (Renewable Energy Education and Sustainable Development) as an extension of the Projects for Peace initiative. With REESD, Dunbar connected one middle school student, nine high school students, and one college student with environmental topics such as clean energy and sustainability. The program exposed younger students from marginalized communities to environmental topics and gave them the resources to grow their own ideas in their communities. The students were each given a $200 stipend.

“What I’m hoping is they found some sort of purpose in the program to motivate them to follow whatever career path they want, just knowing they have resources and people behind them supporting them along the way in pursuing an environmental career,” says Dunbar. 

This story, written by Dawn Onley, a freelance writer based in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, originally appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of NCS Magazine.