Paige is pursuing a dual master’s degree in landscape architecture and ecosystem science and management at UM-Ann Arbor, building on their skills with the goal of restoring and building community-led, widely accessible, sustainable greenspace.

Paige Hughart believes all communities deserve equitable access to sustainable ecosystems, healthy produce, and interdependent relationships with the earth. Growing up in metro Detroit, in a neighborhood without green spaces, Paige found comfort in their grandmother’s incredible garden. They leaned on this affinity when, determined to create stability for themself and pursue in-state college tuition, they enrolled themself in a Kentucky high school halfway through their senior year and tended local professors’ gardens to pay for their apartment. Paige has continued to grow and share produce ever since, growing in their conviction that fresh food and plants are a means to access community and resiliency.

After graduating with their bachelor’s degree from Western Kentucky University, Paige returned to the Detroit area and began working with 313Reads, a collective impact coalition working toward literacy equity in Detroit. Over the next five years, Paige grew their skills in community organizing, project management, and strategic planning, ultimately becoming the organization’s senior director of projects and operations.

Now, Paige is pursuing a dual master’s degree in landscape architecture and ecosystem science and management at UM-Ann Arbor, building on their skills with the goal of restoring and building community-led, widely accessible, sustainable greenspace. Most recently, they have served as a Catalyst Leadership Circle Fellow with the Graham Sustainability Institute, working with the City of Birmingham to help create a guidebook, application, and funding database to create a rain garden rebate program. They were also awarded a Peter and Carolyn Mertz Fellowship by the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability.

Paige’s professors and mentors remark that their “commitment to academic, sustainability, and social responsibility is second to none,” and that they are “on track to become a highly sought-after and productive young professional.”

CEW+ commends Paige’s commitment to advancing community-led, sustainable greenspace and names them a Margaret Dow Towsley Scholar.