Loh, Penn
Penn Loh
Penn Loh is a leader in environmental justice, community organizing, and environmental policy and planning. Loh is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master in Public Policy Program and Community Practice at Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. From 1996 to 2009, he served in various roles, including Executive Director since 1999, at Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE), a Roxbury-based environmental justice group. Loh has published broadly on environmental and social justice issues. He has served on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council’s Health and Research Subcommittee, the Massachusetts Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, the Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Advisory Council, and the boards of the Environmental Support Center, the Environmental Leadership Program, New World Foundation, and Community Labor United. He is a trustee of the Hyams Foundation and Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board member.
“Think through what kind of difference you want to make in your life, in this world, and figure out how that can connect to a career.” -Penn Loh, 2005
Loh, P., Ackerman, Z., Fidalgo, J., & Tumposky, R. (2022). Co-education/Co-research partnership: A critical approach to co-learning between Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and Tufts University. Social Sciences, 11(2), 71. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11020071
Loh, P., Shear, B.W. Fight and build: solidarity economy as ontological politics. Sustain Sci 17, 1207–1221 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01165-4
Loh, P., & Agyeman, J. (2019). Urban Food Sharing and the emerging Boston Food Solidarity Economy. Geoforum, 99, 213–222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.08.017
Penn Loh was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, PA. He attended North Penn High School, a public school in Pennsylvania. Loh’s mother is a professional librarian, primarily a homemaker, and his father is an electrical engineer. Following his father’s footsteps, Loh attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1990. While at MIT, he took a class taught by Noam Chomsky and Louis Kampff called “Intellectuals and Social Responsibility.” The course profoundly influenced Loh as it helped him realize that the jobs engineers were funneled into were about making money and not about making the world a better place. He reflected on his internship in a company that built missiles and ultimately decided that electrical engineering wasn’t really for him. He had never considered himself an “environmentalist,” so he didn’t consider a career in the field right away.
At the time, Loh believed that being an environmentalist meant recycling and being in the outdoors. Though he thought these things were great, he didn’t consider them as pressing or as relevant as issues of social justice or the plight of communities of color. Consequently, he did not pursue an environmental track.
However, shortly after graduating from MIT, Loh stumbled across an environmental position while searching for work in the non-profit sector. He worked as an energy research analyst with the Tellus Institute, an environmental consulting group. His work was heavily quantitative – focusing on how much energy could be saved by conservation initiatives. Loh also worked on computer programming developing software for utility companies. The software helped companies determine potential pollution reductions and energy and money savings from implementing conservation programs. When he worked on these projects, corporations concentrated on demand-side management in their conservation efforts. That is, they focused on things such as financing projects to encourage people to switch to less energy-intensive compact fluorescent light bulbs.
Loh received a scholarship to complete a master’s in Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated in 1994, but not before serving on an Affirmative Action Committee for the program; he wanted to help diversify the student body. Before attending graduate school, Loh had been active in social justice issues. He was heavily involved in South African divestment campaigns while attending MIT. However, it wasn’t until he went to California that he could clearly see the connection between social justice and the environment.
“At UC Berkeley, I met people involved in the environmental justice movement, which was blossoming in 1992, and realized that I could do work that followed my passion for social justice and still put to use some of the technical skills I had learned in my undergraduate career…I was ‘radicalized’ in college. [I] developed a political consciousness. I was involved in activism work on campus at MIT…everything from anti-apartheid to confronting military research….During that time, I didn’t see the connection between racism and militarism and the environmental movement.”
Meeting undergraduate students who had started Nindakin, a student-of-color environmental justice organization, was an eye-opening experience and a turning point in Loh’s life. Loh considers those students – though younger than he – his first mentors.
For two years after graduate school, Loh worked with the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, a non-profit research think tank. Loh’s work involved investigating water sustainability issues in California. He also had the opportunity to work on environmental justice issues while there, including work on reports regarding population, immigration, and social justice. Finding the connection between technical skills and social justice application made him continue with a career in the environmental field.
Loh returned to the Boston area in 1996 and started working with Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE). At ACE, he had the privilege to be part of campaigns that switched the entire public transit bus fleet from dirty diesel to cleaner alternatives. He helped win Massachusetts’s first environmental justice policy. He first started as Director of Research and Development when there were only four people on the staff of ACE. Loh spent about half of his time doing fundraising and the other half providing technical and communication assistance to many of the programs that aided environmental justice groups. He developed workshops on community mapping and used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to help community groups.
He was promoted to Associate Director of ACE when the co-directors/founders of organization decided to leave. Loh assumed more of the financial, administration and communication duties of the organization in his new position. The co-founders encouraged Loh to continue to grow his role within the organization and provided him with the confidence needed to do so. In 2000, the board appointed Loh as the Executive Director of ACE.
As executive director, he did a bit of everything. In addition to managing the general affairs of the organization, he was still involved in fundraising, personnel management, and board development, and he sometimes acted as a spokesperson for ACE. Under Loh’s tenure as the Executive Director of ACE, the staff size of the organization doubled. It currently has eleven full-time staff as well as part-time youth organizers. Loh says, “ACE is very diverse. We try to figure out how to go deeper and to live the experience every day. It isn’t just about having a group of people together with different skin colors. What does it mean to be multi-racial and multi-class? How do we belong to an organization that strives for that, and how can we best develop work to fight against some of the institutionalized racism and classicism that is present everywhere? It is ongoing work.”
Under Loh’s leadership, ACE actively sought people who would grow and advance throughout their tenure in the organization. In a 2006 interview while still Executive Director, Loh said, “I think it is my responsibility to make way for the new leadership when my time is up here…I will do this for a while and then move on so someone else can take it to the next level.” Loh feels that the leadership in the organization must turn over to someone in the community who advanced through ACE the way he did.
Since 2009, Loh has been a full-time faculty member at Tufts University Department of Urban & Environmental Policy and Planning, helping to prepare students to be “practical visionaries.” In 2013, Loh became a Lecturer and Director of Master of Public Policy Program and Community Practice. As director, he advises the master’s degree, a mid-career Master of Public Policy Program. In 2017 he was promoted to Senior Lecturer. And in 2021, he became Associate Chair. He continues to direct the Master of Public Policy Program.
Loh is married to Jackie Cefola, and they have two daughters. They live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Loh enjoys biking, swimming, running, and home brewing.
Loh has been honored with numerous awards, including the EPA Environmental Merit Award, Barr Foundation Fellowship, 2007 Tufts Multicultural Service Award, Spring 2018 Community Labor United, Salt of the Earth Award, June 2019.
Loh feels lucky to get paid to do what he is passionate about. Knowing that he is contributing to long-term social change and being able to work with “amazingly dedicated” and diverse people has been incredible. As Loh sees it, “The situation that I am in is not typical. It is rare and special.” He feels that many of his career choices were a function of his being in the right place at the right time. He said he never could have imagined the path that he has taken, but his life and opportunities have just been an evolution. He says, “I wouldn’t be doing this if it was just a job.”
For Loh, his career highlights come when he sees people – particularly young ones – feeling empowered and actively engaged in making a difference in their communities. Loh says there have been many instances of youth growing and exercising leadership over the years. A few years after ACE transformed into a member-led organization, he transitioned out of leadership. Kalila Barnett now leads ACE. Barnett was born and raised in Roxbury, where ACE is based, organized in the community, and served on ACE’s board.
Mentorship of graduate students and recent alums is a big part of Loh’s work. Racial Equity in Policy and Planning (REPP): https://as.tufts.edu/uep/resources-community/fellowship-opportunities/racial-equity-policy-and-planning-repp-fellowship
Neighborhood Fellows (for mid-career Master of Public Policy): https://as.tufts.edu/uep/resources-community/fellowship-opportunities/neighborhood-fellows-program
Interview conducted by Multicultural Environmental Leadership Development Initiative staff. 2016. University of Michigan – School of Natural Resources and Environment. Ann Arbor, MI.
Taylor, Dorceta (Ed.). 2005. The Paths We Thread: Profiles of the Careers of Minority Environmental Professionals. Minority Environmental Leadership Development Initiative, University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment.
Survey and interviews conducted by Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Sustainability Initiative staff. 2022-2023. Yale University-School of the Environment. New Haven, Connecticut.