Climate change is real, and it’s here. Thankfully, so are women.
A 2024 United Nations report grimly warns that “urgent action must be taken to prevent catastrophic spikes in temperature and avoid the worst impact of climate change.” Erratic weather patterns, wildfires, hurricanes and floods are already showing us shades of what an unlivable world could look like.
While current leadership is unwilling to tackle or even recognize the issue – the Trump administration has removed the term “climate change” from many government websites – ordinary citizens, community watchdogs and activist organizations around the world continue to sound the alarm. Folks like those at Extinction Rebellion engage in regular acts of civil disobedience, while groups such as the Climate Emergency Fund funnel money toward such efforts. Prominent activists like Jane Fonda have elevated the issue from their considerable platforms, inspiring new generations of eco-warriors.
Research shows that women around the world are more vulnerable to the climate crisis, so it’s perhaps no surprise that women are often front-and-center in these call-outs and actions. In honor of Earth Month, here are several women leaders who have dedicated their lives, and work, to combating climate change.
(Credit: Valerisa Gaddy)
The 2024 Winners of 'Women in Science Incentive Prize'
You might not recognize their names, but Valerisa Gaddy, Heather Holmes, Juliet Pilewskie, Onja Davidson Raoelison and Danielle Touma – the winners of our 2024 Women in Science Incentive Prize – have done innovative work in the field of extreme weather. These scientists are helping us better understand and navigate droughts, wildfires, thunderstorms and more as they become an increasingly large part of our lives.
(Credit: 3 Cricketeers)
Claire Simons
Our food supply problems seem likely to get worse before they get better. Thankfully, women like Claire Simons, co-founder of 3 Cricketeers, are working hard on offering us an eco-friendly alternative – even if it might be hard for some to stomach. Her cricket-based snacks are introducing the sustainable concept of eating insects (something more than a quarter of the world does, by the way) to diners throughout the U.S.
Rachael Slattery
At Wild Harmony Farm in Exeter, Rhode Island – a family farm that sells organic pork, grass-fed beef and pastured poultry – Rachael Slattery and and co-owner Ben Coerper use regenerative agriculture techniques, which help restore soil health and reduce the impacts of climate change. It’s sharply different from how most food in the U.S. is produced today, which is why Wild Harmony Farm hopes to share its methods, like cover cropping and rotational grazing, with other small farmers.
(Credit: Matt Mais of the Yurok Tribe)
Amy Cordalis
Talk about thinking globally and acting locally. Amy Cordalis has led efforts to restore the Klamath River, which runs from Oregon into Northern California and empties out into the ocean, amid a water crisis that has killed its fish population. She’s a lawyer by trade, and was appointed general counsel for the Yurok Tribe in 2016. In 2024, she was named a “Champion of the Earth” by the UN for her role in the largest dam removal and river restoration project in history.
Karin Washington
An urban farmer and food justice advocate, Karin Washington is the co-founder of both Rise & Root Farm in Orange County, New York, and Garden of Happiness in New York City. She fights for the belief that nutritious food is a human right by ensuring access to it in underserved neighborhoods – like the ones she grew up in. Still today, “healthy food is based on the color of your skin, how much money you make, and where you live,” she told The Story Exchange – and her mission is to change that by empowering other urban growers.
(Credit: Natural Evolution)
Traci Phillips
Traci Phillips’ Natural Evolution recycles dead cell phones, washed-up computers and more, so they can’t clog landfills and release toxic substances into the environment. The Tulsa, Oklahoma, entrepreneur says her Native American roots inspired her to turn a personal mission into a successful business. “My tribe, many years ago, believed we had a responsibility and we were actually stewards of our surroundings and our earth,” she told us. “It feels like I am fulfilling that.”
Briana Warner
Fast-growing kelp can help mitigate the impact of climate change by removing carbon and nitrogen from the water. And compared with land plants and animal meats, kelp is loaded with digestive and nutritional benefits. Yet 95% of edible seaweed is imported – something Briana Warner, CEO of Atlantic Sea Farms is on a mission to change.
Nona Yehia
Architect Nona Yehia thought there must be a better way for Wyoming residents to get fresh produce than importing it from other states. Several years after that initial thought – and following some healthy skepticism from naysayers – Vertical Harvest finally opened in 2016 as the first vertical farm in the northern hemisphere. Today, the farm produces lettuces, tomatoes, microgreens and more for restaurants, shops and her community as a whole.
(Credit: Greenpeace)
KlimaSeniorinnen
We’re still buzzing over the group of women took their climate change concerns to court – and won. The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in 2024 that the Swiss government failed to effectively act on curbing the effects of climate change, after the Club of Climate Seniors, a 2,000-member group of 64-and-older Swiss women, brought the matter before them. Experts said the case sets “a crucial, legally binding precedent.”
Jessica Schreiber
Jessica Schreiber is fascinated by trash. And in New York City, where she runs fashion recycling startup Fabscrap, there is plenty of it: Residents alone produce some 12,000 tons of it a day. Her nonprofit works in the city’s world-famous fashion industry, picking up and reselling its textile cast-offs — yards of cotton, strips of wool, pieces of luxurious silk, linen and leather. As commercial waste, such scraps aren’t eligible for the city’s residential recycling programs, and more often than not, they end up in landfills. “That, to me, was unacceptable,” she told The Story Exchange.
Sarah Montgomery
“As we look at climate change, [amaranth] is a plant that’s so healthy, and that can adapt to so many different places and conditions,” says Sarah Montgomery, co-founder of Qachuu Aloom Mother Earth Association, who hosts events to share ancestral knowledge. The plant is native to Central America, but with permission from a collective of Maya Achi farmers in Guatemala, its seeds are being sown in the U.S. – a boon, Montgomery says, as the solution to climate change lies “within nature. We just need to learn how to listen.”
Kerry Kelly
“Climate change, population growth, water diversions — all those are acting together to cause a big decline in the level of the Salt Lake,” says Kerry Kelly, associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of Utah and a 2022 winner of our Women in Science Incentive Prize. “And that’s leading to big air quality problems here.” The dust left behind by the drying lake now kicks up on a regular basis, irritating eyes, noses and mouths, and making it tougher for people to breathe – which is why she’s hard at work developing low-cost sensors to monitor air quality.
(Credit: Lucy Sherriff)
Diane Ragone
In a world threatened by climate change , breadfruit has been increasingly seen as a stable crop that can help combat global hunger. Diane Ragone is the director emeritus of the Breadfruit Institute of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, based in Hawaii. For more than three and a half decades, she has been studying, analyzing, growing and preaching the breadfruit gospel. Almost single-handedly, she has brought this superfood to the world’s attention.
(Credit: Rise St. James, Peter G. Forest/Forest Photography, LLC)
Sharon Lavigne
Sharon Lavigne is the founder of RISE St. James, a grassroots environmental organization dedicated to preventing the expansion of petrochemical plants in and around her home in St. James Parish, a district located between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The fumes from a nearby plant didn’t just fill the air there; they likely also gave Lavigne autoimmune hepatitis, a disease created when the body’s immune system attacks the liver. She told The Story Exchange that “if the industry wouldn’t exist, I wouldn’t have these problems.” Now, she’s doing her part to mitigate their harmful effects and save others from the same fate.
Sharon Rowe
Sharon Rowe admits that part of her reason for launching Eco-Bags Products, Inc., which makes and sells reusable totes, lunch bags and more, was to have more control of her time. But first and foremost, Rowe wanted to offer her neighbors – and all of us – an alternative to wasteful single-use plastic bags. “[W]hen I realized there were other people thinking like I was [about plastic bags], I decided to start a business,” she told us. Since launching, Eco-Bags has been featured by the likes of Oprah and Time Magazine.
(Credit: The Soapbox Project)
Nivi Achanta
Nivi Achanta is the founder of Soapbox Project, a platform that provides bite-sized climate action plans. She was inspired to launch after she noticed her friends disengaging from the news after finding current events to be too overwhelming to process. Today, the Seattle entrepreneur says she’s proud to have built a virtual space that allows people to get involved in social and environmental justice at a more comfortable pace.
Amy Keller
Amy Keller, whose family sells the famous Dum Dum lollipops, makes fruit chews from misshapen produce. The goal is to reduce food waste – a big problem to solve, as about 40% of food is wasted globally. The discarded produce often winding up in landfills, where it rots and produces methane, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Through its industrial machinery and equipment, Keller makes fruit chews at a mass scale, allowing her and her team to rescue an estimated 1 million fruits and vegetables a year.
Editor’s Note: This post, updated for 2025, was originally published April 18, 2024.
