Ashmont resident Sylvia Broude, executive director of the Toxics Action Center, was awarded the $50,000 Frank Hatch “Sparkplug” Award for Enlightened Public Service by The John Merck Fund last week.

Broude oversees Toxics Action Center’s six New England offices and supervises a team that organizes with nearly 100 communities each year
The award is granted annually to “an outstanding leader whose work embodies extraordinary creativity, dedication, and foresight,” according to the fund.

“Under Sylvia’s direction, the Toxics Action Center has been instrumental in helping local communities and residents become active leaders in closing down the remaining coal-fired power plants in New England and in fighting to stop a major buildout of natural gas in the region,” said Whitney Hatch, the chair of the John Merck Fund.

Broude has spent much of her career at Toxics Action Center, joining the team as a community organizer in 2006 after working with Sierra Club, MoveOn PAC, and the Fund for the Public Interest. She took over as executive director in 2012 and has directed Toxics Action Center’s work in recent years to prevent a wave of new incinerator proposals across the region and win progress towards zero waste as well as to transition New England away from coal-fired power plants and to clear the way for clean energy. 

Toxics Action Center trains activists to become clean energy champions for their states, and works to ensure that the communities hardest hit by pollution have a seat at the table to advocate for clean energy and climate justice.

The John Merck Fund, a longtime funder of Toxics Action Center, created the Frank Hatch Sparkplug award in 2006 to honor its longtime former chairman, Frank Hatch.  Whitney Hatch is Frank Hatch’s son. 

“I couldn’t be more thankful for the lifetime of critical support The John Merck Fund has provided to Toxics Action Center, first under the leadership of Frank Hatch and now, in his legacy,” said Broude. “From our early days working alongside community members to address to drinking water pollution in Woburn to our expansion into each New England state, The John Merck Fund has been there with us as partners and investors in our vision of clean air, clean water, healthy, just and vibrant communities, and a stronger people-powered environmental movement.”