Meet our 2024 Henrietta Award Winner: Leigh Rappaport

It's our great honor to award community member, Leigh Rappaport with our 2024 Henrietta Award for Environmental Leadership & Achievement! 

Annually, individuals, organizations, and/or projects are nominated by the community for the Henrietta Award. This award recognizes an individual who has made a difference in the health of the Columbia Slough and its watershed through community engagement, education, and restoration. This year, the community nominated Leigh Rappaport, an amazing mentor to high school students, and young adults.

Leigh Rappaport pictured with Columbia Slough Watershed Council Program Coordinator, Liz Coll.

For over 21 years Leigh has served as the Natural Resource and Pathways Manager for a local alternative high school known as POIC - Rosemary Anderson, and before that, she was mentoring students at Open Meadow. Leigh spends her time helping her students grow into strong, persevering, and successful adults, often connecting students with community organizations and government agencies, in order to offer her students with life changing opportunities. The Council has had the pleasure of working with Leigh and all students in her program for over 6 years through stewardship opportunities, cleanup events, and more. Beyond that Leigh and their students have been dedicated to helping restore the Slough since 2008. Leigh has helped connect dozens of at-risk youth to amazing opportunities such as college scholarships, a variety of career pathways: environmental education, landscaping, construction, mentoring, US Forest Service, Port of Portland, and many more. Specifically through the partnership with the Council she has helped connect the at-risk students with activities and educational opportunities that they might not have otherwise had. Her students have been able to overcome their fears and learn new skills by taking a chance at canoeing for the first time or helping steward our vital green spaces. They have also had the opportunity to do water quality surveys, macroinvertebrates studies, trash cleanups, and more! It's a pleasure of ours to be able to work with such a devoted mentor in our community and to be able to work with all the students from POIC. 

Thank you Leigh for all that you do for the youth of the Columbia Slough Watershed!

2024 Nominees Include: Kitty Bohannon, Bill Bradford, Steve Cameron, Ryan Gilpin, Sam Harlow, Zora Hess, Clark Moss, Leigh Rappaport, Paul Taylor