Our Story

PoP is the only multicultural media platform of its kind, publishing stories by BIPOC for BIPOC. We focus on uplifting our people’s environmental justice stories and we do so in a way that is both nuanced, sensitive, and in-depth. Our approach is to build community relationships first.

Our job is to tell raw and unfiltered stories from the frontlines. We take a non-traditional approach to environmental storytelling and focus on race, culture, politics. We empower our audiences to listen first and consider specific community-driven solutions and calls to actions from impacted communities directly. Our ethos is simple: deliver trusted stories for our people.

Back in 2021, Shilpi Chhotray and Patrice Simms came together to launch a multicultural media platform that would feature the stories of people most heavily impacted by plastic pollution, climate change, and environmental injustice. With her many years of experience serving as a media liaison for the Break Free from Plastic global movement, Chhotray was a go-to source on plastic pollution, climate change and intersectionality. She frequently made appearances in the NY Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, BBC, and Al Jazeera. It did not take long for Chhotray to discover that select perspectives dominate the environmental discourse, while other voices are simply ignored.

Patrice Simms currently serves as the VP of Litigation for Healthy Communities at EarthJustice. And as an environmental lawyer with decades of experience in the non-profit space, teaching, and in government - including as a professor at Howard Law and at Harvard Law, as an attorney with the Environmental Protection Agency, and as a political appointee with the Department of Justice - Simms has a deep understanding of how environmental law and policy fail the communities most in need of protection. Together, Chhotray and Simms recognized the urgency and need for storytelling that influenced hearts and minds.