Wawa Gatheru is a Kenyan-American climate activist and founder passionate about bringing empathetic and accessible climate communication to the mainstream.
Harnessing her academic background as a Rhodes Scholar and her work as a youth climate activist, Wawa’s life goal is to help create a climate movement made in the image of all of us.
In 2019, Wawa was named the first Black person in history to receive the prestigious Rhodes, Truman and Udall scholarships for her environmental scholarship and activism.
She is the founder of Black Girl Environmentalist, a national organization dedicated to empowering Black girls, women and gender expansive people across the climate sector. She is an inaugural member of the National Environmental Youth Advisory Council of the US EPA, the first federal youth-led advisory board in the US History. She is also a Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with The OpEd Project, in partnership with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
Wawa sits on boards and advisory councils for EarthJustice, Climate Power, the Environmental Media Association, the National Parks Conservation Association, Good Energy, and Sound Future.
Wawa has been recognized for her work in outlets like the New York Times, NPR, Essence, NBC, among others, and has been recognized as a Glamour College Woman of the Year, a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient, L’Oreal Woman of Worth, a Grist 50 fixer, a Climate 100 leader by the Independent, an AfroTech Future 50, a Young Futurist by The Root, a Climate Creator to Watch by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 776 Fellow, a Public Voices Fellow by Yale, and was featured on the January 2023 digital cover of Vogue alongside Billie Eilish and 7 other climate activists.
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