Sally Edwards, Sc.D
Research Associate , Lowell Center for Sustainable Production
Email:
Phone Number: 508-517-5363
Fax Number: 978-934-2025
Address:
Lowell Center for Sustainable Production
University of Massachusetts Lowell
One University Avenue
Lowell, MA 01854
Biography
Dr. Sally Edwards directs the Sustainable Products Project at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production. The Sustainable Products Project promotes the design and development of safer, healthier, and greener products through engaging stakeholders, conducting research, and providing information that can spark innovative, environmentally sound solutions. In 2007, Dr. Edwards convened a multi-stakeholder initiative of toy manufacturers, retailers, designers, children’s environmental health advocates, and government policymakers to improve the sustainability of children’s products.
Dr. Edwards has over 25 years of experience in the field of environmental health, including 14 years in the public sector at the US Environmental Protection Agency in Massachusetts and Alaska. She has also worked as a consultant on environmental sustainability with businesses and communities. Sally holds a MS in Environmental Health Science from Harvard University and a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University. She completed her doctorate in Work Environment at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Her book, Beyond Child’s Play: Sustainable Product Design in the Global Doll-Making Industry has recently been released by Baywood Publishing Company, Inc.
Profile
Dr. Sally Edwards’s original motivation to work in environmental health was simply a love for the environment. This affection has carried her through more than twenty-five, often challenging years, of work in environmental protection.
As an undergraduate, Edwards studied human biology, an interdisciplinary program that explored human impacts on and interactions with the natural world. When she was nineteen, she traveled to Indonesia to teach English as a volunteer and had an eye-opening opportunity to live in a non-Western culture. She went on to graduate school in public health, and then spent 14 years working in the public sector at both federal and state environmental agencies.
One of Edwards's proudest accomplishments is her work in Alaska to create an AmeriCorps program that trained members of Alaska’s Native communities in environmental leadership skills. “I like teaching others to be advocates for the Earth,” she says. That program, begun in 1995, is still going strong today.
Dr. Edwards still remembers vividly hearing the news of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. This disaster solidified her commitment to focus on prevention of environmental pollution through improved design of products and systems.
Edwards came to UMass Lowell in 2002 to pursue a mid-career doctorate in Cleaner Production. The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production attracted her because of its emphasis on working with a broad range of stakeholders and designing effective solutions to protect workers, consumers, and communities. “It’s a very positive place to work,” she notes.
