Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services would like to highlight these twenty-four champions of the environment in honor of Women’s History Month 2024. The Climate Crisis is not gender neutral—uplifting the voices of women and non-binary environmentalists is crucial to building sustainable environmental justice and conservation efforts. We want to take the time to celebrate the contributions of these amazing advocates and the inspiration they continue to provide us with to live in harmony with our planet and fiercely protect the places where we live, work, and play.
Gayle Hazelwood: Gayle began her illustrious career with the National Park Service in Cuyahoga Valley. Throughout her career, Gayle worked to connect urban children to outdoor recreational areas—once stating that her “ideal turf involves less buffalo and more asphalt.” Gayle helped pioneer the Junior Ranger Program where the National Park Service would “recruit kids [for outdoor programming] by going to the different housing authorities and complexes, and literally meeting them where they are.” Gayle went on to become the first female superintendent of National Capital Parks—East where she would also receive the 2007 Fran P. Mainella Award.
Learn more about Gayle’s career here: nps.gov/articles Gayle Hazelwood Making Parks Relevant
Maria Gunnoe: Maria is native to Boone County, West Virginia—home to diverse hardwood forests and one of the most active mountaintop removal regions in the United States. For decades, Maria has stood up against the enormous influence the coal industry wields in the area to oppose the pollution, environmental degradation and risks these operations pose to communities. Maria took a position at the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition to educate and organize her community on the dangers of mountaintop mining. In recognition of her work, Maria received both the Goldman Prize and Wallenberg Medal. Maria’s work was also featured in three documentaries, Burning the Future: Coal in America, Mountain Top Removal, and The Last Mountain.
Learn more about Maria’s work here: goldmanprize.org/recipient/maria-gunnoe/
Claudia Lenz: Claudia is a 21-year old farmer from Star Prarie, Wisconsin, whose advocacy is led by a deep passion to build a sustainable future for agriculture. While Congressional Members float narratives that young people are simply no longer interested in farming while corporate entities take over the nations crops, Claudia takes to D.C. to say “I am interest in farming . . . but we are not interested in managing thousands of acres of a single crop, growing our livestock operations as big as we can, and continuing to deplete the resources we depend on.” Claudia is going to college for Natural Resource Planning while advocating for policies to improve the impending national Farm Bill.
Elaine Marsh: Since the 1970’s, Elaine has joined and led a wide array of environmental advocacy efforts—including her leadership in restoring the Cuyahoga River. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Elaine shared how she felt detached from nature but “At some point, I learned that the environment was responsible for people and not the other way around.” Elaine co-founded Friends of the Crooked River to share with residents the importance of the Cuyahoga River and advocate for better care of the waterway. Today the Cuyahoga River is a National Heritage River and an Ohio water trail. For her work, Elaine received the Lifetime Achievement (2005) by the Ohio Environmental Council.
In an interview, Elaine cherished the progress that has been made, stating that “Many people think that it took a long time to clean up our river. I think it is a relatively short time. . . in my adult lifetime, our river has gone . . . from a stream shunned by paddlers to a state-designated water trail . . . and from a water body for which people apologized to one that is celebrated worldwide. This happened because clean water became a public value. It took the sustained effort of countless people and organizations, enforced regulations, and many billions of dollars spent on investment in our clean water infrastructure. And that’s what it will take to continue the work and sustain the resource: community support, necessary regulations, in addition to the necessary public and private resources for protection and restoration.”
To learn more about Elaine’s work, visit: nps.gov/articles/ Elaine Marsh Champion of Cuyahoga River
Dr. Sylvia Earle: Dr. Earle is a marine biologist, oceanographer, author, and founder of Mission Blue which inspires action to explore and protect the ocean. She is also the first woman to be a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her life’s work has been dedicated to raising awareness about the effects of pollution and contamination in ocean wildlife.
Sylvia Earle: A life committed to regenerating the planet (video)
JoAnn Tall: A Lakota leader, JoAnn Tall helped stopped proposed nuclear weapons testing in North Dakota’s Black Hills, and also worked to prevent hazardous landfills from being located in the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations of South Dakoda. She won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1993. She is the Co-Founder of the Native Resource Coalition, dedicated to research and education for the Lakota people on issues of land, health, and the environment. Tall has served on the board of directors of the Seventh Generation Fund. She has increasingly taken on the role of an elder, focusing on providing spiritual guidance to youth while continuing to inspire both native and non-native people around the world to protect the environment!
To learn more about JoAnn, visit: goldmanprize.org/recipient/joann-tall/
Tessa Khan: Tessa is an environmental lawyer, Climate Breakthrough Award recipient, as well as co-founder and co-director of the Climate Litigation Network which supports legal cases regarding climate justice. She argues that national governments knowingly profit from raising carbon dioxide levels and causing damage to the environment like in the landmark case State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation which her team won.
Tedx Talk: How can we escape soaring energy bills? Stop using fossil fuels
Sophia Kianni: Sophia is the founder and executive director of Climate Cardinals, an international nonprofit with 9,000 volunteers, in over 40 countries, and working to translate climate information into more than 100 languages. She first became interested in climate change while attending middle school in Tehran when she noticed the stars were obscured by smog and started her environmentalism by translating articles about it from English into Farsi for her Iranian relatives. Now, she is the youngest person to ever serve as a United Nations advisor.
Instagram: sophiakianni X: @SophiaKianni
Tedx Talk: Language shouldn't be a barrier to climate action
Jamie Margolin: Jamie is a Colombian-American writer, community organizer, activist, and public speaker. She is the founder of Zero Hour, an international youth climate justice movement. Zero Hour led the very first Youth Climate March in Washington DC and 25 other cities around the world in summer of 2018.
Autumn Peltier: Autumn is an Anishinaabe Indigenous rights advocate from Ontario, Canada. In 2018, when she was 13, Peltier addressed world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly on the issue of water protection. In 2019, she was appointed Chief Water Commissioner by the Anishinabek Nation.
Youtube: Autumn Peltier, 13-year-old water advocate, addresses UN
Brianna Fruean: Brianna is an activist and environmental advocate for Samoa and the wider Pacific. At age 11, she became one of the founding members of 350 Samoa and a leader of environmental group Future Rush. Both organizations fight to combat climate change and promote sustainable development through awareness programs to spread the word around schools and communities in Samoa and the region.
Pattie Gonia: Pattie is an environmentalist, drag queen, and artist. Pattie is known for outdoors activism content on Instagram and Tiktok. Her first video gained more than 100 million views. Pattie’s activism is intersectional and focuses on environmental and LGBTQ+ issues, promoting acceptance of queer identities in the environmentalist and outdoors communities, and promoting awareness of climate change and its effects.
Julia “Judy” Belle Thompson Bonds: Native to Marfork, West Virginia, Judy led the fight against mountaintop mining from destroying her Appalachian homeland. As Massey Energy operations began to build a dam to prevent toxic coal sludge from entering her community, Judy left her job as a Pizza Hut Manager to work for Coal River Mountain Watch. Not only had Judy known of other communities being devastated by toxic sludge as dams failed, she credits her grandson as the catalyst for her advocacy. Judy often recalled visiting a creek with her grandson where dead fish were floating belly up around his ankles as he asked, “What’s wrong with these fish?”
Within Judy’s advocacy, a major win she secured was a partnership with the United Mine Workers Union that forced the mining company to use smaller coal truck loads that were safer for the workers and communities they drove through. Today, the memory of Judy’s work lives on The Judy Bonds Center for Appalachian Preservation located in Naoma, West Virginia. This center was created by the Coal River Mountain Watch in Judy’s honor and serves as the organization’s community center, office, volunteer housing, and sustainable economic demonstration site.
To read a more detailed biography, visit: https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/julia-bonds/
Barb Breshock: Barb is native to Youngstown, Ohio, and an alumna of West Virginia University. In 1979, Barb became the first female professional forester hired by the West Virginia Division of Forestry. Then in 1996, Barb was named employee of the year and her work would also result in the division receiving the “Excellence in Agency Partnership Award.” Notably, Barb also co-founded West Virginia Women Owning Woodlands which connects women to resources available for property management and encourages networking.
To learn more about the non-profit Barb helped establish, visit womenowningwoodlands.net
Kathryn Williamson: Kathryn is a West Virginia University Professor and co-founder of West Virginia Climate Action. Kathryn also led the West Virginia Climate Change Professional Development (WVCCPD) Project which worked to engage K-12 teachers and informal educators in climate change professional development. This project engaged educators across disciplines and institutions to build an engaging climate change learning community. This work should be both a resource and signal of optimism to other teacher education practitioners that this can be replicated elsewhere since it was an effective model in West Virginia, an area that is known for fossil fuel extraction.
To learn more about her research, visit the Journal of Sustainable Education.
Sophie Revis: Sophie’s passion to return highly urbanized areas around us into conservation oases has led her to become the Climate Resiliency Director at Groundwork Ohio River Valley. In this role, she works that investments are being made into climate change resilient policies and that they benefit vulnerable communities within the Cincinnati area. This work has included managing Climate Safe Neighborhoods program to engage communities in climate resilience planning and overseeing a youth workforce development program that helped kids enter STEM workforce or studies.
Learn more about Groundwork Ohio River Valley at groundworkorv.org Instagram: @groundworkorv
Varshini Prakash: Varshini is an Indian American climate activist who has been the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Sunrise Movement since 2017. The Sunrise Movement is a youth-led movement that advocates for political action on climate change. She has also written the book “Winning the Green New Deal,” which is a collection of essays about the Green New Deal and how it can be realized.
Kristy Drutman: Kristy, also known as Browngirl Green, is a Jewish Filipina American content creator, speaker, and educator who intertwines media, storytelling, and environmental advocacy. She is the Co-Founder of the Green Jobs Board, which is a climate tech start-up that shares sustainability-related job listings. She also hosts her own podcast, called Brown Girl Green, where she discusses climate-related content.
Rebecca Tickell: Rebecca is an environmental activist, film director, and producer. She has directed and produced several documentaries including Common Ground, Regenerate Ojai, Kiss the Ground, and One Prayer. They all feature different environmental issues, ranging from regenerative agriculture and pesticide use to climate change mitigation.
Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd: Pınar co-founded Queer Nature which “envisions and implements ecological awareness and place-based skills as vital and often overlooked parts of resiliency-building and echantment-tending.” Guided by their multi-gender, multi-cultural, and multi-racial parallel realities, Pınar works to create spaces where communities can safely talk about the intersectional lens of oppression and liberation while reconnecting people’s “earthy queerness [as] an act of resistance in a dominant culture that says we are unnatural and do not belong.” This year, Queer Nature will be offering a five day course on common tools and techniques for terrestrial mammal techniques. We encourage you to visit Queer Nature’s website to check out their programs, blogs, and more!
Selina N. Leem: Selina Leem is a climate warrior and a poet from the large ocean nation of Aelōn̄ Kein Ad, the Marshall Islands. Crediting her late grandfather for her deep awareness of the fate of her home, she has made it her mission to globally raise awareness of the climate crisis. Representing the Marshall Islands at the age of 18, Leem was the youngest delegate at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. Leem went on to many other global stages to speak on behalf of her people, including the 2021 TED Countdown Summit, being featured in the film Before the Flood, and speaking engagements at colleges around the United States.
For a more detailed biography, visit: hscu.edu Selina Leem
Aditi Mayer: As a multi-hyphenated storyteller, Aditi uses film, photography, journalism, and creative direction to weave narratives that span climate, craft, and culture. Aditi’s work critically examines the fashion industry through social and environmental justice lenses and has been featured in Vogue and National Geographic. Aditi shared in a Vogue interview that a defining moment in her life was when she was in high school, she had just began to explore her personal style and South Asian identity, when heard the news of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh. Aditi stated, “No longer was fashion just about a pretty dress. It was about the politics of labour, to the industry’s disproportionate burden upon communities of colour worldwide.” Aditi believes that “at its core, sustainability isn’t something you can buy. It’s an on-going process of interrogating power and unlearning exploitation.”
Xiye Bastida: Xiye is a Mexican-Chilean climate activist, known for her leadership in the Fridays for Future movement and advocacy for Indigenous rights. Hailing from the Otomi-Toltec Nation, she has amplified the voices of marginalized communities affected by environmental injustice on a global scale. Xiye was recognized for her commitment to intersectional climate activism and was awarded the 2018 Spirit of the UN Award. In 2020, she co-founded Re-Earth Initative which provides grants and resources to reimagine climate change advocacy and policies so they are more inclusive. Xiye also attends the University of Pittsburgh where she is pursuing a major in Environmental Studies with a concentration in policy.
Interview: penntoday.upenn.edu/news Climate Girl Xiye Bastida at Penn
Pam Murphy: Pam is the Development Manager of Third Act which is dedicated to “building a community of experienced Americans over the age of sixty determined to change the world for the better.” Their programs include organizing to register young voters and divesting pension plans from oil-funded banks. The work of the Third Act and people like Pam, has culminated in the creation of the Rocking Chair Rebellion, which has included hundreds of protests outside banks and on pipelines to urge people to pull their money from these banks and goose the consciences of bank executives. In a New York Times interview, as Pam sat outside of a Chase Bank with a sign that read ‘This bank funds climate chaos,’ she firmly said, ““I think anybody is complicit that is not trying to do anything.”
To learn more about the Third Act, visit: thirdact.org
