BIO

Sophia Kianni is an Iranian-American environmentalist studying climate science and public policy at Stanford University. She is the founder and executive director of Climate Cardinals, an international nonprofit with 8,000 volunteers in 40+ countries working to translate climate information into over 100 languages. She represents the U.S as the youngest member of the inaugural United Nations Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change.

Sophia’s work has been featured in news outlets including Forbes, CNN, Business Insider, BBC, NPR, ELLE, TIME Magazine, The Guardian, NBC, and even on the front page of The Washington Post. She was previously a fellow with PBS NewsHour and has written for news outlets such as MTV News, Cosmopolitan, Refinery 29, and Teen Vogue. She is a prolific public speaker and has spoken at universities across the country including Columbia University, UC Berkeley, Emory University, and Harvard University. She gave her debut TED Talk as the closing speaker at the inaugural TED Countdown Conference.

She has been named VICE Media’s youngest Human of the Year, a National Geographic Young Explorer, and BuzzFeed’s youngest Woman to Watch.