Gen Zs and millennials are feeling the heat as the impacts of the climate crisis hit closer to home than ever. These 30 youth leaders are pushing back, driving an impact revolution.
More than any other generation, Gen Zs and millennials are feeling the heat, with the brutal impacts of the climate crisis clearer than ever and fuelling a global wave of climate anxiety. UNICEF surveyed nearly 3,400 young people in 15 countries across Africa, Asia, and North and South America and shared the findings at Climate Week NYC in September. They found that more than half (57%) experience eco-anxiety. Rather than looking away, youth leaders are channelling their emotions into action. But it isn’t always easy.
How the top 30 are selected
Every April, Corporate Knights opens the 30 Under 30 nominations to the public. An internal team narrows the list of submissions down to a short list of 50, then the panel of judges each submit their top 30 picks, and votes are tallied.
Judges
Senator Rosa Galvez
Canadian senator and president of the ParlAmericas climate change network
Kat Cadungog
Executive director, Foundation for Environmental Stewardship, and a 2022 Corporate Knights 30 Under 30
Kyra Bell-Pasht
Director of research and policy, Investors for Paris Compliance
Adria Vasil
Managing editor of Corporate Knights and bestselling author of the Ecoholic book series
Kayah George
25, VANCOUVER
TULALIP AND TSLEIL-WAUTUTH NATION WATER PROTECTOR AND FILMMAKER
Kayah George used to play in a creek behind her grandmother’s house, but the water has become so contaminated by upstream construction that people started developing rashes. “Many of the places where our family traditionally held ceremonies are now too polluted to be able to use,” George says. Carrying the teachings of her Tulalip and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, George has been on the front lines fighting against the Trans Mountain Pipeline for more than half her life, defending her people’s sacred inlet and the southern resident orca whales from a sevenfold increase in tanker traffic. She recently cowrote, directed and produced a short film entitled Our Grandmother the Inlet on the intrinsic connection the Tsleil-Waututh people have to the “Burrard” Inlet; it premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival this fall. “It’s the artist’s job to make the revolution irresistible,” George says, referring to a quote from Toni Cade Bambara that “changed everything” for her. “I set out to create art that did just that.”
Alex Lidstone
29, CALGARY
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
CLIMATE CAUCUS
When climate emergency strikes, it’s not the federal government that shows up first. Local governments are the ones on the front lines of wildfires, floods and droughts; they’re also proving to be the fastest to act when it comes to taking bolder climate action. “That’s critical during this decade of transformation,” Alex Lidstone says. As someone who grew up in a province ravaged by smoke and fire, she joined Climate Caucus, a non-partisan network of elected officials, with the hope of driving system change. “We began experiencing intense fire seasons unlike those I had seen before, and I decided to dedicate my life to this work.” Since she took the reins at Climate Caucus, Lidstone has proudly helped grow the network from roughly 300 to more than 650 elected leaders, helping them work together in times of crisis and make building back better easier. As for the fires, they may be growing stronger, but so is Lidstone’s resolve to find solutions. Making partnerships, she says, is critical: “Don’t leave yourself to tackle this challenge alone!”
Julien Beaulieu
29, GATINEAU, QC
LAW LECTURER, UNIVERSITÉ DE SHERBROOKE
Almost half the world’s largest corporations have pledged to go net-zero, but far too many of them are “climate-washing,” Julien Beaulieu says. In 2021, the competition lawyer worked with the Québec Environmental Law Center to file one of the first-ever climate-washing cases in Canada, aiming to reform Canada’s consumer protection laws to better regulate net-zero pledges and carbon-neutrality claims. He’s also teaching one of Canada’s first graduate law courses on responsible investment, shareholder activism and environmental disclosures to help “shift the way a new generation of legal practitioners thinks about the role of corporations.” Impressive for a person who readily admits that “sustainability was never really my thing” until friends convinced him of the urgency of the environmental crisis. “Their engagement made me realize how much sustainability is a foundational issue that is intertwined with every other social issue that we’re facing right now.”
Kristen Perry
26, TORONTO
MANAGING DIRECTOR, SPRING INVESTING COLLECTIVE
Kristen Perry is blazing a trail for under-represented Canadians to participate in impact investing. “I work to help our growing portfolio of predominantly women-led and BIPOC-led sustainable businesses to grow and thrive,” says Perry, who happens to be the youngest leader of an angel network in Canada – Spring Investing, the largest early-stage impact investing network in the country. “I’ve been drawn to entrepreneurship and sustainability from a young age,” she says. “Studying business, I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied in my career if I wasn’t leveraging my skills, resources and time to work towards something beyond myself.” Over the course of her career, she has supported hundreds of entrepreneurs through incubation, acceleration, investment readiness, fundraising support and founder coaching. Spring has been able to catalyze more than $22 million into early-stage impact ventures. “There is a $4-trillion annual gap in addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. I believe that private markets have a big role to play in making the world a better place.”
Sabrina Kon
29, VANCOUVER
HEAD OF COMMUNITY AND IMPACT, CHOPVALUE
Making a difference, one chopstick at a time. That is the ethos at ChopValue, a Vancouver-based company that repurposes used chopsticks into furniture and design products. As head of community and impact, Sabrina Kon has built and oversees the company’s chopstick-recycling program, working with more than 1,500 partners across more than a dozen cities on three continents. The company has so far given 120 million chopsticks a new life. “By repurposing used chopsticks into furniture, this is just one example of giving a new life to a disposable item that is typically ordered from Asia, travels to the rest of the world and is used for only 20 to 30 minutes before being discarded,” says Kon, who started her career managing a portfolio of philanthropic funds to enable the execution of climate projects at ClientEarth, an environmental law firm. “There’s a lot of work to be done to advance the circular economy and ensure that we are moving away from a linear ‘take-make-waste’ system.”
Michael Mousa
29, TORONTO
SUSTAINABILITY CONSULTANT, DIALOG; CHAIR, CARBON LEADERSHIP FORUM TORONTO
As a second-generation Egyptian-Canadian, there was a lot of pressure on Michael Mousa to become a doctor, lawyer or engineer. “I chose engineering school,” Mousa says. “That’s where I started to understand the complex issues facing our built environment, environmental justice and the connection between health, equity and sustainability.” Clearly, he chose wisely. Today he’s the Canada chair of the Carbon Leadership Forum, where he leads a team in empowering the building industry to address an issue it long ignored: the embodied carbon lurking in building materials. Through his work as a sustainability consultant at the architectural, engineering, interior design and planning firm DIALOG, Mousa says he tries “to centre equity in all my efforts by addressing the impacts of the built environment on humans.” But recent climate events have given his work a greater sense of urgency. “Our built environment was designed for a climate that no longer exists.”
Sophia Mathur
16, SUDBURY, ON
ACTIVIST AND LEAD PLAINTIFF IN CLIMATE LAWSUIT
Sophia Mathur can’t vote yet, but she has spent more than half her life making her voice heard on the defining issue of our time. The high-profile climate activist was the first Canadian student to join Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future climate strike in 2018, has lobbied politicians on a host of environmental matters, and helped convince her hometown of Sudbury to declare a climate emergency in 2019. Perhaps most notably, she is the lead plaintiff in a legal case (Mathur v. Ontario) in which seven Ontario youths are suing the Ontario government for weakening the province’s 2030 climate target, arguing that it violates the fundamental rights of youth and future generations. No climate lawsuit like it has advanced as far in the courts in Canada. Although a judge dismissed their case this year, the group is appealing. “If you are young, it is important that we share our voices about the climate crisis and talk to parents and people that can make those decisions,” Mathur says. “Spread the word about how important it is to vote for climate-concerned politicians and empower people to vote.”
Tyler De Sousa
25, WATERLOO REGION, ON
CO-FOUNDER AND COO, CIRCULR
Tyler De Sousa’s first brush with the ethos of circular living came through his grandparents, Portuguese immigrants who understood that nothing is truly “waste.” His grandfather made things out of scrap metal, and his grandmother sewed frayed clothing back to life. “That’s the mentality that brought me to Circulr and that influences our approach,” he says of the start-up he co-founded that works with grocery-store brands to return glass jars dropped off by customers so they can be reused. “We know that everything we call waste could be a valuable resource.” Circulr has worked with 22 brands and facilitated the reuse of 25,000 jars, which helped eliminate 3,932 kilograms of carbon dioxide that would have been expelled in creating new glass. “A lot of measures today are band-aid-style solutions for problems that have been ingrained in our existing systems,” De Sousa says. “What we do at Circulr is try to reimagine our relationship with packaging to change the system itself.”
Zaffia Laplante
26, TORONTO
CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, SKYACRES AGROTECHNOLOGIES
As an Indigenous woman from Northern Ontario, Zaffia Laplante grew up spending her summers by the lake or in her grandmother’s garden. “It is something I cherish deeply and has had a large impact on who I am today,” she says. A member of the Métis Nation of Ontario, Laplantefounded Hempergy, an award-winning hemp-waste insulation start-up, in 2019. Now she is the chief strategy officer of SkyAcres, which is bringing vertical farming technology to rural and First Nations communities to increase food security. SkyAcres has grown more than 40 different types of fruits, vegetables and herbs using 90% less water than conventional farming. It’s also helped drive down the cost of food in pilot locations. “If you have an idea, no matter how big or small, find like-minded people and work together,” she says. “It’s better to create a community of impact than try to do it yourself.”
Lena Courcol
28, MONTREAL
ACQUISITIONS MANAGER, NEW MARKET FUNDS
Growing up in Shanghai, Lena Courcol witnessed a city transform under the forces of globalization. “It drove my curiosity for sustainability in the built environment, our sense of place, social justice and how our neighbourhoods can shape the way we live,” she says. Developing partnerships to establish hybrid solutions to complex problems, like the affordable housing crisis, is her specialty. “This takes a lot of work, but getting everyone in the same room to collaborate on a project is extremely rewarding.” As the acquisitions manager at New Market Funds, she led the fund’s largest transaction to purchase more than 500 units of affordable housing from the private sector through non-profit ownership. More than 800 additional units are in the pipeline to be acquired by the end of the year. Next on her to-do list: reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% or more for all of New Market’s building acquisitions. “This work is only just beginning . . . and it’s my role to figure out how to get us there.”
Fired up: Meet 30 youth leaders sparking change – Part 2
Fired up: Meet 30 youth leaders sparking change – Part 3
Source: Corporate Knights
