Top row from left to right: Secretary Deb Haaland, Suzy Schlosberg, Turquoise Ashley, Adelina Avalos | Bottom row from left to right: Cathay Cowan Becker, Olufemi Lewis, Angela Jiang, Kelly Lynch
Throughout Women’s History Month, we’ve been celebrating the contributions of women leaders who are making history by working to protect their communities and the planet. Learn more about these incredible women leaders and let us know in the comments if there are any women leaders in your life who you would like to highlight!
Deb Haaland
Recently confirmed as the Secretary of the Interior, Haaland is the first Native American to lead a cabinet-level agency. She will oversee more than 500 million acres of public lands and play a major role in implementing President Biden's climate agenda and upholding every American's right to a healthy environment.
Suzy Schlosberg
"As I continue to learn and discover my role in this movement, I am grateful for the women of Chicago who supported, inspired, and showed me what environmental activism could be. Now at college, I hope to help our divestment team build student power and move our institution away from fossil fuels."
Suzy is currently a student activist at Johns Hopkins University and was the ’18-’20 co-director of the Chicago Youth Alliance for Climate Action.
Turquoise Ashley
Turquoise brings her bold and innovative ideas to the sustainability space as a volunteer with 350 Chicago. As a diversity, equity, and inclusion professional, she knows the importance of centering the call for justice as we build sustainable communities. "It means access for underrepresented groups to more efficient energy resources. It means equity for all, particularly the Black community. It means a positive impact for the generations to come."
Adelina Avalos
Adelina is an environmental justice activist and a freshman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she studies environmental economics and policy. She was a leader with the Illinois Youth Climate Movement, where she helped organize a 7,500-person protest.
“Environmental justice is important to me because it puts my community first when we are always left behind. I found love and support in my fight for environmental justice and I won’t stop until we see it across the planet.”
Cathy Cowan Becker
Cathy Cowan Becker is the Ohio chair of the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 campaign, which gets cities, states, and towns to commit to 100 percent renewable energy. She successfully led two ballot initiative campaigns in central Ohio in 2020. Columbus and Grove City are now committed to transitioning to 100 percent clean, renewable energy through a community choice aggregation program.
Olufemi Lewis
Olufemi Lewis is a National Distributed Organizer for Healthy Communities as well as a mother, daughter, sister, and avid community organizer for the people. She formerly worked on the Ready for 100 Campaign as the Southeast Regional Organizer, while also serving on the board of the forest-protection nonprofit Dogwood Alliance. Her experiences with environmental and structural racism have led her to lend her voice to movements that are working to dismantle systems of racial inequality and oppression.
Angela Jiang
Angela was born to Singaporean and Taiwanese first-generation immigrants and raised in Gwinnett County, Georgia -- the most ethnically diverse county in the Southeast.
She holds her cultural heritage as a coastal immigrant very close to heart as she organizes communities for racial and economic equity, climate action, and liberation in the South.
Kelly Lynch
Kelly Lynch supports community-led solutions to systemic racism and climate change across the US. She believes in the power of equity and shared accountability as tools for healing.
Top row from left to right: Tessine Murji, Iyana Simba, Neha Mathew-Shah, Kyra Woods | Bottom row from left to right: Allison Cavallo, Gretchen Waddell Barwick, Nicole Saulsberry, Wahleah Jones
Tessine Murji
Tessine is a Conservation Organizer with the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club. She works with Sierra Club campaigns to change the narrative around environmental issues, and organizes activist trainings for the Ready For 100 team and its partners as Chicago moves closer to a just transition to renewable energy. She also represents the Sierra Club with the Illinois Green New Deal Coalition and works with the Sierra Club's solidarity team to support and amplify local environmental justice struggles.
Iyana Simba
Iyana works as the Clean Water Policy Director at the Illinois Environmental Council. “I've always had a self-interest in environmental issues because I recognize that environmental degradation threatens already scarce resources. This ultimately threatens the rights of women, people of color, LGBTQ folx, and other marginalized groups whose current privileges are tied to environmental, political, and economic stability."
Neha Mathew-Shah
Neha is theSierra Club’s International Environmental Justice representative and the cofounder of our Progressive Workers Union. "My work is about strengthening the collective; to build relationships, elevate and secure peoples’ rights to thrive, work, and be paid equitably; to globally connect and resource exchange between localized movements for justice.”
Kyra Woods
Until recently, Kyra was a Clean Energy Organizer with the Sierra Club’s Illinois Chapter. Recognizing the interdisciplinary nature of climate issues, Kyra works to strengthen existing partnerships and develop new ones across the city so that Chicago's clean energy transition will be centered on values of solidarity, innovation, and equity.
Allison Cavallo
Allison Cavallo, student activist at Brown University and former director of the Chicago Youth Alliance for Climate Action, hopes to bring perspectives of social justice and equity into spaces of power throughout her academic career.
"As the world grapples with the consequences of climate change and environmental degradation, it is more important than ever to ensure that women and marginalized communities have a seat at the table."
Gretchen Waddell Barwick
Gretchen holds a master’s degree in social work from Washington University in St. Louis and has worked in the social justice and advocacy space for over a decade. She is the Sierra Club’s Missouri Chapter Director.
Nicole Saulsberry
Nicole joined the Sierra Club in 2019. She lobbies on behalf of the Sierra Club and helps to draft strong bills that benefit underrepresented communities.
Wahleah Jones
Wahleah Johns of Tonizhoni, Arizona, is a Tribal member of the Navajo (Diné) Nation. She cofounded Native Renewables, an organization working to provide solar energy for tribal communities. Wahleah was tapped by President Biden to serve as a senior advisor at the US Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, where she will advance energy solutions for Indigenous peoples.
Top row from left to right: Stephanie Hicks Willett, Dejah Powell, La’Veesha Rollins, Dominique Thomas | Bottom row from left to right: Joyce Singh, Britt Harris, Mila Marshall, Jessica Girard
Stephanie Hicks Willett
Stephanie is a leader, teacher, minister, and advocate. She is fighting alongside AAMD Pine Grove Project to stop construction of a 1,200 acre landfill in Cumberland, Virginia, and engaging local Black students in environmental justice work.
Dejah Powell
Dejah Powell is the Sunrise Movement’s Lead Organizer for the Midwest.
"I LOVE the ocean and the lake here. When I realized climate change would affect these things and the people I love, I couldn't stand by. I'm fighting like hell for a #GreenNewDeal so I can enjoy these things without fear that I'll lose them."
La’Veesha Rollins
La’Veesha founded Concerns Citizens of Charles City County, Virginia, to fight toxic power plants in her community. She hopes to make the organization a model for energy generation and sustainable jobs by researching, developing, and maintaining community-led sustainable energy systems.
Dominique Thomas
Dominique is a grassroots organizer, researcher, and Afrofuturist Black feminist nerd based in Harlem, New York. She created The Climate League, a BIPOC training program to learn organizing and campaigning skills, focusing on racial justice in the climate movement.
Her main objective is to uplift the labor and stories of those who have been erased from the climate movement, utilizing an organizing orientation where communities can empower themselves.
Joyce Singh
As the manager of the Prairie Oaks Reserve, Joyce has dedicated two decades to ensuring that the woodland reserve flourishes for years to come. She says the most effective way to properly manage a reserve is to "stop and observe the land." The next best way is to learn from Joyce herself.
Britt Harris
Britt Harris is the Sierra Club’s Acting Senior Manager of Strategic Implementation.
“I’m honored to be a Black woman. My commitment to my community is to leverage my gifts and power for our collective healing and liberation.”
Mila Marshall
Mila has been in the environmental sector for over 10 years. She was the host of Living Healthy, Living Green on WVON, and is the current host of Living Chicago Show, a social media project that connects conservation to city living.
Mila is the author of A Student's Guide to Being Successful in the Sciences. She works as the Clean Water Advocate for the Sierra Club’s Illinois chapter, and is finishing a PhD focused on urban food systems at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Jessica Girard
Through her work with Native Movement, Jessica aims to dismantle white supremacy in order to heal communities and species as the earth transforms. She uses a social and climate justice lens to build community within the climate justice movement. Jessica is also the founding director of the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition.
Top row from left to right: Mary Black, Alessandra de la Torre, Dr. Amanda Millstein | Bottom row from left to right: Alice Sung, Tara Rodríguez Besosa
Mary Black
Mary believes that the key to environmental liberation is centering people closest to the problem and closest to the power. This means organizing at the intersections of race and climate and creating communities that can envision themselves as free from systemic oppression.
Mary uses TikTok (@SunlampBlack) to share her perspective as a Black woman environmentalist. She’s also on the Environmental Advisory Board for the city of Raleigh, where she represents environmentally marginalized communities, and a Field Organizer for Climate Action North Carolina.
Alessandra de la Torre
Alessandra de la Torre is an Energy Justice Organizer with Rogue Climate.
“I became concerned with intersections of environment, public health, and racism in the Bay Area, where I was born and raised. I now lead work in Oregon transforming energy systems to benefit communities most impacted by climate change.”
Dr. Amanda Millstein
As a pediatrician and co-founder of Climate Health Now, Dr. Millstein works to mobilize trusted health voices to advocate for a rapid, just transition off fossil fuels.
Dr. Millstein’s goal is to ensure that health professionals are prepared to lend their voices to call attention to climate change as a health emergency and push for the systematic change necessary to protect our health and our kids' future.
Alice Sung
Alice is an architect, Founding Principal of Greenbank Associates, a sustainability change agent, and a passionate advocate for real-world greenhouse gas emissions reductions and zero-carbon K-14 public school districts.
“As we decarbonize our building/energy sector, we need to prioritize public school buildings, beginning with those in our most impacted, underresourced communities, to equitably meet zero carbon at the scale we need by 2030.”
Tara Rodríguez Besosa
Tara (she/her/they/them/ellx) is one of the creators of El Departamento de la Comida, a grassroots collective in Puerto Rico that works with small farmers and the queer community to decolonize agricultural practices and support the exchange of powerful plant knowledge. Tara is also part of OtraCosa, a queer collective rural homestead.