Peggy Shepard is co-founder and executive director of the not-for-profit WE ACT for Environmental Justice in New York in the USA.

Following an editorial role at Black Enterprise magazine, she changed jobs to speechwriting for the New York state government.

Shepard was the public relations director for the 1984 Jesse Jackson presidential campaign[2] and in the late 1980s she was elected the Democratic Assembly District Leader for West Harlem.

[4] On Martin Luther King Day in January 1988 Shepard was one of seven people that included Chuck Sutton, David Paterson and Hilton Clarke arrested for holding up traffic to protest about sewage polluting the local river system.

She, along with Chuck Sutton and Vernice Miller-Travis co-founded WE ACT the same year to campaign for environmental health and justice for the Northern Manhattan community.