Peggy Mathews

Peggy has over 40 years experience working with environmental and social justice organizations, primarily in the Southeast. Over those years Peggy worked as an action researcher, community organizer, fundraiser, executive director, and for the past 25 years as a fundraising and organization development consultant and trainer.

For eight years Peggy worked as a coalfield community organizer and then as the first grassroots fundraiser for Save Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM) an environmental justice organization fighting strip mining and mountaintop removal in the coalfield communities of east Tennessee.

She went on to found Community Shares, a statewide federated fund for social, environmental and economic justice organizations raising funds together through employee giving campaigns in the workplace. Peggy was instrumental in the start-up and was a founding board member for three public foundations in the Southeast (Appalachian Community Fund, Southern Partners Fund, The Fund for Campbell County).

Peggy received her Bachelor of Science degree in community organizing and community development from the University of California at Davis. Peggy and her husband live in an intentional community on the Clinch River in far southwest Virginia with their two dogs.