Olga Morales-Pate, an accomplished and experienced leader in environmental justice and rural community development issues, became CEO of the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) in October 2022. RCAP is a national non-profit network providing opportunity, assistance, and practical guidance to small communities in all fifty states, U.S. territories, and tribal lands to ensure access to safe drinking water, sanitary wastewater disposal, and economic prosperity for all rural America. 

As Assistant Director of Community and Environmental Programs, she led a team of 48 and managed an annual portfolio of nearly $10 million in grants and contracts. Olga also developed and led the Western RCAP's regionalization work and authored legislation that established the 

New Mexico Colonias Infrastructure Fund which has secured $144.6 million for 263 infrastructure projects since 2011. She also served on the EPA’s National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC), where she established strong working relationships with the agency while leading advisory efforts on issues such as climate change, hydraulic fracturing, carbon sequestration, and harmful algae blooms and cyanotoxins among others.  

At Tulane, we are eager to learn more about how the RCAP works with rural and often overlooked communities -including the many challenges- in order to elevate rural voices and build local capacity/sustainability to improve the quality of life by having access to water.  Olga’s work around water inevitably resonates with our local community in New Orleans, the Mississippi, and the Gulf as a living example of how water and climate change have shaped and will continue to shape every fiber of our histor(ies), locally and globally. To learn more visit https://global.tulane.edu/