Dorothy Argyros, Esq. is a founding PEHKA Trustee. Born in Atlantic City, NJ, she was a Depression Era kid who worked in North Carolina on Civil Rights voting initiatives until she returned to NJ in 1960. Dorothy earned her BA degree at Kean College, and her Law Degree at Rutgers University. She remains a licensed attorney in NJ and works for social, environmental, and economic justice. She helped found Monmouth County Coalition for the Homeless, and Neighbors United, taking on Exxon Corporation over a neighborhood oil spill and ending with a cash settlement, clean-up of the site, and removal of the Exxon station. Her organizing leadership helped create an anti-eminent domain ordinance to prevent feeding private interest takeovers in Neptune, NJ. Dorothy is currently working to end abusive police practices and pickets each Saturday against the war. On May 4, 2023 PEHKA and the world lost our indomitable and tireless advocate for social justice. In her short 95 years on this earth she has left a mark that will endure many lifetimes. Rest in Power Dorothy L. Argyros.
Madelyn Hoffman joined the PEHKA Board in March 2023 and is PEHKA’ Treasurer. She has served New Jersey’s communities as a Peace and Environmental Activist for 40 years. From 1980 to 1998, sh
e served as the director of the Grass Roots Environmental Organization (GREO), an organization she helped found, dedicated to working with grassroots groups and communities to confront issues of toxic chemical pollution.
She worked with over 200 citizens groups and communities. From 2000 to 2018, she served as the director of New Jersey Peace Action and is currently the Co-Chair of the GPAX- Green Party US Peace Action Committee and a contributor to the Green Horizons Newsletter. She has traveled across the world to advocate for peace over the years, including to Afghanistan as part of a Global Exchange delegation; to Russia, after having visited Ukraine with a women’s environmental delegation in 1999; to Israel and Palestine for a conference on creating a nuclear weapons-free Middle East; and to Tunisia. In 2015, she joined many Japanese grassroots groups in commemorating the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasak and in 2016, she was part of a delegation to Syria. A clip of her speaking at a press conference at the UN got over 3 million views. In 2019, she visited Colombia and Venezuela on missions of solidarity and peace. In April 2023, Madelyn moved to Colombia, Latin America in order to help build that international solidarity.
Over time Madelyn has run under several Electoral Campaigns. In 1996, she was Ralph Nader’s vice-presidential running mate for New Jersey; In 1997 and again in 2021, she was a Green Party candidate for NJ Governor. In 1998, she was a Green Party candidate for U.S. Congress in District 12. In 2018, she was a Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate, running against Senator Robert Menendez, earning the most votes of any third party running that year. In 2019, she served as the campaign manager for Craig Cayetano, the Co-Chair of the Green Party of New Jersey’s council race for Ward 3 in Hawthorne. In 2020, Madelyn finished 3rd in the race for U.S. Senate against Senator Cory Booker and in 2021 she came in 3rd again in the race for Governor of New Jersey against Governor Phil Murphy.
Madelyn has helped build the Green Party, both nationally and within NJ. She represents the Green Party at numerous events, rallies, demonstrations, council meetings and organizations. She has spoken on behalf of Puerto Rican relief and struggle for independence, closing the ICE detention facility in Newark, Justice for Jameek Lowery in Paterson, obtaining driver’s licenses for all, keeping families together at the border, fighting for no border wall, ending homelessness, and much more. In the last year she has spoken on behalf of those affected in Palestine, Yemen, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, and most recently, Iran
Peter C. Lippman, is a founding Trustee and the Associate Director
of PEHKA’s Learning Environments program. His credentials include Associate AIA, REFP, M.Psych (CUNY), B.Arch (CUNY), and PhD in Secondary Education. For well over 25 years, Peter C. Lippman has dedicated his professional career to researching, programming, planning, and designing learning environments. Peter may be described as a thought leader in the field of educational architecture. At the end of 2011, Peter relocated to Perth, Australia where he extends the traditional role of the architect by integrating an Evidence Based Design approach. In doing this, the most innovative solutions are achieved for each project. Peter works internationally as an Educational Planner and Designer extending ideas about what learning environments are, today, and what the next generation of learning spaces may be in the future. He has presented and run workshops all over the world examining how pedagogy influences and shapes the learning environment. Furthermore, Peter has been published extensively and his book Evidence Based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools: A Responsive Approach to Creating Learning Environments was made available in September 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
MaryAnn Sorensen Allacci, PhD is PEHKA’s Executive Trustee / Director and the Associate Director of the Community and Environmental Health and Environmental Justice program. She has collaborated with community groups to reduce the effects of environmental exposures on health in Yonkers NY, South Philadelphia PA, Bronx NY, and Neptune, NJ. Her published research demonstrated a link between neighborhood factors and asthma emergency visits in Central Harlem and has documented how residents of an environmental justice community suffer cumulative risk from numerous community exposures. MaryAnn works to help build capacity of community groups and other private organizations to address solutions to social and environmental threats to well-being and to develop collaborations with colleges. She teaches about social and environmental effects of sustainable design, decolonizing sustainability, green buildings, and healthy building design as a faculty member of the NY School of Interior Design, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and Rutgers University, and has presented her work at many professional conferences. Her affiliations include Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, Community-Based Public Health Caucus, American Public Health Association, and Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues, Environmental Design and Research Association, and American Evaluation Association.