Fred L. McGhee is an Innovative and award winning environmental protection and sustainability professional with over thirty years of experience in managing natural and cultural resources in the United States military, with non-profit organizations, and in the private sector. The second African American diving officer in U.S. Navy history, he began his career in sustainability in 1991 as an afloat environmental protection officer and hazardous waste coordinator on two U.S. Navy warships. McGhee earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000, the first African-American to do so. His scholarship and advocacy focuses on maritime and historical archaeology, particularly of the African Diaspora, and on public housing communities and affordable housing policy concerns. He is a leading scholar of American public housing communities and nominated Santa Rita Courts, the nation's oldest USHA (U.S. Housing Authority) public housing project, to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007, for which he was recognized with a 2008 Heritage Society of Austin Award. His nomination of Rosewood Courts, the first USHA housing project built for African Americans, was entered into the National Register in 2016.In the early 2000's Dr. McGhee was once again a natural and cultural resource manager for the U.S. military, this time in Hawai'i. In his capacity as Chief Archaeologist for the Air Force in Hawai'i he established the archaeological portion of the USAF's cultural resource management program. His base won the 2004 DoD environmental stewardship award for having the best cultural resource management program in the Department of Defense.Active in the private sector since 2004, McGhee is now also a nationally recognized greenbuilder and residential energy efficiency specialist, with a focus on the socially conscious construction of Passive House certified shotgun homes and prairie houses. He serves as president of the Montopolis Community Corporation and is overseeing the construction of the first house in Austin certified to the international Passive House standard.Dr. McGhee is the author of four books, including "Two Texas Race Riots," "Austin's Montopolis Neighborhood," and "The Black Crop: Slavery and Slave Trading in 19th Century Texas." His current projects include "Tarnish on the Violet Crown: the Rise and Fall of Public Housing in Austin, Texas," "Nothing Without Work," an oral history of the U.S. Navy's BOOST program, as well as a biography of 19th century Texas governor Elisha Marshall Pease.