Peg Spitzer is an interdisciplinary scholar and Research Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota, and master’s and doctoral degrees from American University in Washington, DC in International Relations with a specialty in the modernization of sciences and technology in the developing world. She tackles structural gender norms to empower women to speak up for their rights. Peg collaborates with innovators and entrepreneurs to conduct oral histories that uplift those who experience environmental degradation in their communities. She has developed two digital oral history projects, one on Women in US–Asian relations and the other on the implementation of a women-led irrigation technology in India, titled Mirroring Hope.

Prior to her work in climate change, Peg wrote a series of short biographies on women leaders in local communities; and served as a program consultant, with a specialty in Asian and Asian American studies, in Washington, DC for the Kluge Center for International Scholars (Library of Congress), Freer and Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the East-West Center. Her book, Empowering Female Climate Change Activists in the Global South:  The Path Toward Environmental Social Justice, was published in 2023.