Evelyn
Mayo
Director of the URI
Paul Quinn College
Bio
Evelyn’s last point of departure before leaving the U.S. as a child was Austin, Texas. She spent her childhood moving around Europe and Asia, which exposed her to different cultures, languages, foods and ways of life. After graduating High School in Singapore, she moved back to the U.S. where she pursued an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science at Barnard College, Columbia University in New York City. In 2017, Evelyn moved to Dallas, Texas to pursue her interests in environmental justice and community organizing. She worked in poverty law as an advocate for fair housing and environmental justice issues from 2017 to 2021 with Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas and Disability Rights Texas, while also acting as Chair of the Board of Downwinders at Risk. Evelyn is AICP certified and received her masters in city and regional planning from the University of Texas at Arlington. She was the inaugural Urban Research Initiative Fellow and is now the Director of the URI at Paul Quinn College, where she leads research and advocacy efforts to use planning as a tool to address systemic racial injustices in Dallas.