Abre' Conner

Abre' Leann Conner is an American attorney who currently works as the Director of the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Prior to this role she served as Directing Attorney for Health at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. She was named one of the Time Closers of 2026.

Biography She was born and raised in Lakeland and suffered from debilitating asthma in her youth. She later discovered that a cluster of smokestacks she frequently passed by were phosphate plants, and her belief that those contributed to her asthma drove her to focus on civil rights during her university studies at the University of Florida and then on environmental law during her law school at American University. She also served as policy head of the National Black Law Students Association during her time in law school.

She has become most notable in her current role as the Director of the NAACP's Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, where she focuses on stopping the environmental impact of AI data centers, as well as leading broader environmental justice initiatives of the NAACP such as the Jackson, Mississippi, water crisis.

She also worked as a professor in the Environmental Policy and Management Program at the University of California, Davis, and has testified in front of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Outside of her work, she sits on the American Bar Association Board of Governors and the Earthjustice Board of Trustees, and formerly sat on the Environmental Protection Agency Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions Federal Advisory Council (HBCU-MSI) and as Assembly Speaker of the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.

She was named as one of the Time Closers, a list of 18 Black leaders, in 2026. She was also named as one of the 40 under 40 by the National Bar Association and the University of Florida Alumni Association.