2025 American Climate Leadership Awards Selection Committee
ecoAmerica is thrilled to have another stellar group of climate leaders and advocates on board for the 6th annual American Climate Leadership Awards. Join us, and apply today!
Judges Include
Alexandria Villaseñor
Cofounder, US Youth Climate Strike Movement
At the age of 13, Alexandria co-founded the U.S. Youth Climate Strike movement, part of the youth-led international Fridays for Future movement. Now, at the age of 16, Alexandria has become an internationally recognized environmental activist, public speaker, author and founder of several more initiatives, including the climate education-focused non-profit, Earth Uprising International. She has addressed the Democratic National Convention, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum. She is a contributing author to All We Can Save, an anthology of women climate leaders, and a child petitioner for the ground-breaking international complaint to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, Children vs. Climate Crisis. Alexandria also serves on the advisory board for the national climate policy platform Evergreen Action, and she is the youngest Junior Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences. For her work, Alexandria has received the Earth Day Network Youth Leadership Award, The Rachel Carson Environmental Justice Award, the Common Good American Spirit Changemaker award and was included on Politico’s top 100 people influential in climate change policy list.
Aishah-Nyeta Brown
Climate Storyteller
Aishah-Nyeta is a creative climate storyteller from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Her art is influenced by texture and a sensory understanding of the environment in which we inhabit. She has experience managing social media and creating a strategy for successful posting online in more than one space.
Everything has a story, but how can we tell it together for ALL people to understand?
Aishah-Nyeta is a multidisciplinary justice seeker with a background in fine arts, performing arts, climate change/ environmental sustainability, the FEW nexus (food, energy, & water), community resilience, and photography. She maintains integrity at the core of everything she does.
She has been doing climate work since the age of 17 when she first studied the topic at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Her work has taken her around the world and back, making her more passionate about advocating for the greater good, specifically vulnerable populations (BIPOC, disabled, & children).
Margaret Klein Salamon, PhD
Executive Director of Climate Emergency Fund
Margaret is a clinical psychologist turned climate activist whose work helps people to face the truth of the climate emergency and transform their despair into effective action. She is the executive director of Climate Emergency Fund, raising money for and making grants to disruptive climate activists. She is the author of Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth (2023), a radical self-help guide for the climate emergency.
David Pogue
Climate Expert
David Pogue was the New York Times weekly tech columnist from 2000 to 2013. He’s a six-time Emmy winner for his stories on CBS Sunday Morning, a New York Times bestselling author, a five-time TED speaker, host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS, and creator/host of the CBS News/Simon & Schuster podcast Unsung Science.
Jeff Goodell
Writer
Jeff Goodell’s latest book is the New York Times bestseller The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. He is the author of six previous books, including The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, which was a New York Times Critics Top Book of 2017. He has covered climate change for more than two decades at Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. As a commentator on climate and energy issues, he has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. He is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow.
Xiye Bastida
Climate Justice Activist
Xiye Bastida is a 22-year-old Mexican climate justice activist, Indigenous rights advocate, and storyteller. Through her Otomi roots, she champions Indigenous wisdom and principles as a solution for the climate crisis. She was an organizer with Fridays For Future and is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Re-Earth Initiative, an international youth-led organization that supports frontline youth across 27 countries. Xiye received the 2018 UN Spirit Award and was named TIME100 Next in 2023. She is currently a senior at the University of Pennsylvania studying Environmental Studies and Policy.
Graham Hill
CEO of The Carbonauts
Graham is the founder and CEO of The Carbonauts. They help Fortune 1000 companies build climate-literate, sustainability enthusiastic cultures via tools such as live, interactive sustainability workshops. One of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” and featured on the covers of Inc. and Dwell Magazines, Graham is a successful serial entrepreneur and highly sought-after speaker known for his ability to eloquently explain how we can all create a simpler, wealthier, greener and happier planet.
For the second year, Jerome Foster II will join as co-host
Jerome Foster II is an American environmental activist. He is the youngest-ever White House advisor in United States history, as a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council within the Biden administration. Foster is a leading voice for marginalized and working-class communities in spaces pushing for social, economic, and environmental justice.