Neighborhood Leader - Alice Kosowsky

In the midst of the COVID lockdown of 2020, Alice Kosowsky took stock of where she was at in life and challenged herself with a question - “Were I to die next week, would I feel okay? Would I feel like I had done enough?” Her answer was no.

“I knew people‘s lives who were affected by dumping, air pollution and living in the wrong place. As a health care professional, I saw a lot of exposure lead and seen all kinds of diseases related to the environment. I felt like I was not doing enough.”

Kosowsky resolved to focus on her longtime passion for environmentalism. She entered the Neighborhood Leadership Program to help develop the relationship building skills she knew she needed to make a difference.

“I am not a natural social organizer,” she said. “I have always been an outsider, individualistic expert type. The program helped me develop skills that I had never developed before -- talking to people and learning how to lead from behind.”

Since attending NLP, Kosowsky won a seat on the Hamden Solid Waste and Recycling Commission, where she is helping the city develop a plan for how to handle its solid waste after the Hartford trash incinerator’s closure in July 2022. She is helping the city apply to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for a Sustainable Materials Management Grant.

“If approached well, this is a win win for any municipality. If we devise a good plan, we could reduce the increase in our taxes and we can reorient people’s ideas toward waste,” she said.