lucky7 When Electrification has Power Beyond Its Climate Benefits

This article is part of a special section on the Climate Forward conference hosted by The New York Times.

Jamal Lewis’s path to climate work started when he came close to losing his life.

In 2014, Mr. Lewis, a Maryland native, was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing a communications major and playing basketball, when he developed a staph infection in his bloodstream. Doctors put him into a medically induced coma for six days. He said he came so close to death that his parents were told to call in the family to say goodbye.

When he woke up, he said, he had a clearer sense of what was important and decided to change his life’s focus.

“I switched my major while I was in the hospital bed to environmental science, and that was a decision that I made to pour myself into things that actually made me happy,” Mr. Lewis said.

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He decided to devote himself to helping people suffering the harmful effects of toxic chemicals and fumes in their homes, a problem that he had never thought about much.

After college, he earned a masters in public health at Columbia University, focusing on environmental health. He joined Rewiring America, a nonprofit group founded in 2020 that is dedicated to electrifying homes and businesses around the country, and he is now a senior director of implementation learning and integration. The organization’s stated mission is to convert the 1 billion fossil-fuel-powered machines in the country to electric alternatives, and last year the voting rights activist Stacey Abrams became its senior counsel.

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