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Sophia Kianni

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Sophia Kianni (born December 13, 2001) is an Iranian-American social entrepreneur and climate activist. She is the founder and president of Climate Cardinals, a nonprofit offering climate change information in multiple languages, serves on the EPA's National Youth Advisory Council, and as an advisor to the United Nations. She is the youngest United Nations advisor in US history.[3][4]

Sophia Kianni
Kianni in 2023
Born (2001-12-13) December 13, 2001 (age 22)[1][2]
NationalityAmerican
Alma materStanford University
Occupation(s)social entrepreneur, activist, public speaker
Organization(s)Climate Cardinals, United Nations
AwardsForbes 30 under 30
Vice Human of the Year
Teen Vogue 21 under 21
BBC 100 Women
Websitesophiakianni.com

Activism

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Kianni speaking at the Black Friday climate strike in 2019

Kianni became interested in climate activism while in middle school in Tehran when one night the stars were obscured by smog. Kianni described it as "a signal that our world is heating up at a terrifying pace."[5] She later joined Greta Thunberg's group, Fridays for Future, and took time off from school to support action on climate change.[5] She also helped organize the 2019 Black Friday climate strike.[6] In 2019, she became a national strategist for Fridays for Future and national partnerships coordinator for Zero Hour.[7][6]

 
Jane Fonda (left) and Kianni (right) at Fire Drill Fridays DC event held in front of the Capitol Building.

In November 2019, Kianni skipped school to join a group of protesters organized by Extinction Rebellion who intended to stage a week-long hunger strike and sit-in at the Washington, D.C., office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, demanding that she speak with them for an hour on camera about climate change.[8] Locally, there were roughly a dozen participants; at 17 years old, Kianni was the youngest, and one of two women.[2][9] Kianni was not a member of XR, and only participated in the first day of the sit-in, but gave a prepared speech and interviews to the press, and continued the hunger strike remotely.[2][10] Kianni wrote about her participation in the protest for Teen Vogue,[5] and in 2020 acted as an XR DC spokesperson.[11][12]

In 2020, Kianni's physical activism was curtailed by the school closing and social distancing requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic, and her scheduled speaking engagements at colleges including Stanford University, Princeton University and Duke University were delayed.[13][14] Kianni was able to continue her activism remotely with her talk at Michigan Technological University.[15] In addition, Kianni decided to accelerate development of a planned website, Climate Cardinals, that would translate climate change information into different languages.[13]

In July 2020, Kianni was named by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to his new Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, a group of seven young climate leaders to advise him on action for the climate crisis.[16][17] Kianni was the youngest in the group, which ranged from 18 to 28 years old.[18] She was the only one representing the United States, and also the only one representing the Middle East and Iran.[19][20]

In September 2021, Kianni was one of 4 co-chairs of the Youth4Climate event in Milan, preliminary to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP26.[21][22] Climate Cardinals translated the resulting Youth4Climate manifesto into the 6 official languages of the United Nations.[23] At COP26 itself, in November 2021 in Glasgow, Kianni spoke at several panels, and met with António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations.[24] In October 2022, Kianni was covered by Vogue Arabia for representing the UN and speaking at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.[25] At COP28, Kianni announced her We Wear Oil campaign, designed to draw attention to the contribution of fossil fuels used in fashion to the climate crisis.[26] Images of her doused in apparent petroleum appeared in Women's Wear Daily and Vogue Arabia.[27][28]

In 2023 she joined the board of directors of the Museum for the United Nations - UN Live,[29] and was one of 16 appointed by Michael S. Regan to the first ever Environmental Protection Agency National Environmental Youth Advisory Council (NEYAC).[30][31]

Writing and speaking

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Kianni wrote a 2019 article for Teen Vogue about the Pelosi office hunger strike.[5] In 2020, she wrote two articles about the effects of the coronavirus, for the Middle East edition of Cosmopolitan magazine about the effects on her extended family's celebration of Nowruz,[32] and another for Refinery29 about the effects on her daily schedule as a climate activist, which was widely syndicated.[1] She wrote an article for MTV News for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, which she helped coordinate,[33] and another in 2022 for The Washington Post about how she lives sustainably in college.[34] In 2023, she partnered with Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate to write a CNN editorial calling US President Joe Biden's endorsement of the Alaskan oil drilling Willow project a betrayal.[29][35]

In 2021, Kianni began hosting a podcast for The New Fashion Initiative, interviewing experts involved in the fashion industry about addressing climate change.[36]

Kianni has spoken at several conferences around the world, including Web Summit,[37] the 2022 Arch Summit,[38] Washington Post Live,[39] BBYO Insider,[40] Public Interest Environmental Law Conference,[41] New York Times Events' Climate Hub,[42] and TED Countdown.[43]

Climate Cardinals

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Climate Cardinals is an international youth-led non-profit organization founded by Kianni in 2020 to offer information about climate change in every language. It was named for the northern cardinal, the state bird of Virginia, and a metaphor for information flying around the world.[44][13] Kianni was inspired by the years she spent translating English-language climate change articles into Persian for her Iranian relatives, as Iranian media barely covered the subject.[13] She says she noticed informational content about climate change is either available only in English, or at best in Chinese and Spanish, making them inaccessible to speakers of other languages.[44]

Climate Cardinals was launched in May 2020, and had 1100 volunteers sign up to become translators on its first day.[45] They also partnered with Radio Javan, an Iranian language radio with over 10 million followers, to share graphics and translations with Iranians.[44][46] Climate Cardinals is sponsored by the International Student Environmental Coalition as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which allows students who participate in its translations to earn community service hours for their work, either fulfilling school requirements or improving college applications.[44] By August 2020, the group had over 5,000 volunteers, with an average age of 16.[47] By December 2020, it had 8,000 volunteers and partnerships with UNICEF and Translators Without Borders. The organization has reached over 350,000 people with over 750,000 words of climate information translated.[19]

In 2023, Climate Cardinals partnered with the Google Cloud AI-powered Translation Hub to translate 800,000 words into 40 languages, which Kianni says is as much output in three months as in the previous two years.[48]

In April 2024, Google.org donated $400,000 to Climate Cardinals, one of its first rounds of funding for a youth-led climate organization.[49]

In August 2024, Climate Cardinals hired its first full-time Executive Director Hikaru Wakeel Hayakawa, a founding director of Climate Cardinals.[50]

Recognition

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In December 2020, Kianni was named one of Vice magazine's Motherboard 20 Humans of 2020, for being the U.S. representative for United Nations Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change and starting Climate Cardinals.[51][52][19] In December 2021, Kianni was named one of Teen Vogue's "21 under 21" for her climate activism.[53] In November 2022, she was named one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Climate Activism for 2023.[4] Business Insider named her one of the "Climate Action 30" global leaders working toward climate solutions.[54] In November 2023, Kianni was named to the BBC's 100 Women list (one of the world's inspiring and influential women).[55]

Personal life

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Kianni lives with her mother, father, younger sister, and two pet lovebirds, in McLean, Virginia.[7][14] She studied at Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Middle School, where her team won the statewide Science Olympiad,[56] and at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, where she was a National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalist.[13][57] After graduating from high school in 2020, she attended Indiana University. She transferred to Stanford University in 2021, where she is majoring in Science, Technology, & Society and studies climate science and health policy.[58][34][59]

Kianni received extensive media attention as an example of a teenager reacting to the social distancing measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic: CNN, Time magazine, and The Washington Post wrote about how she and her friends were moving personal interaction and even their physically cancelled senior prom to Zoom video chats and TikTok videos.[7][14][60][61]

References

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  1. ^ a b Kianni, Sophia (April 22, 2020). "What It's Really Like To Be A Climate Change Activist In Quarantine". Refinery29. Archived from the original on April 25, 2020. Retrieved April 22, 2020. Also available as Kianni, Sophia (April 22, 2020). "What It's Really Like To Be A Climate Change Activist In Quarantine". Yahoo News. Archived from the original on April 24, 2020. Retrieved April 22, 2020. and Kianni, Sophia (April 22, 2020). "What It's Really Like To Be A Climate Change Activist During Coronavirus". MSN. Archived from the original on July 3, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  2. ^ a b c Felton, Lena (November 18, 2019). "Meet the 17-year-old climate activist who skipped school to hunger strike at the Capitol". The Lily. Archived from the original on April 18, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  3. ^ "UNA-USA Advisor". United Nations Association of the United States of America. Retrieved May 13, 2024.
  4. ^ a b Peluso, Olivia; Bosilovski, Igor (November 29, 2022). "Sophia Kianni". Forbes. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  5. ^ a b c d Kianni, Sophia (December 11, 2019). "Why I Went on Hunger Strike at Nancy Pelosi's Office". Teen Vogue. Archived from the original on April 22, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  6. ^ a b Nayak, Anika (December 20, 2019). "Best Sustainable Gift Ideas for Your Environmentally-Conscious Friends". Teen Vogue. Archived from the original on September 28, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  7. ^ a b c Andrews, Travis M. (March 30, 2020). "We're all video chatting now. But some of us hate it". Washington Post. Archived from the original on April 26, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
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  26. ^ "Campaign Report 2023". Fossil Fashion Campaign. Retrieved May 6, 2024.
  27. ^ Richford, Rhonda (December 6, 2023). "Sophia Kianni Launches 'We Wear Oil' Campaign". Women's Wear Daily. Retrieved May 6, 2024.
  28. ^ Firth, Livia (December 5, 2023). "Iranian-American Climate Activist Sophia Kianni's Fossil Fuel Fashion Campaign Is Starting a Social Media Revolution". Vogue Arabia. Retrieved May 6, 2024.
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  33. ^ Kianni, Sophia (April 30, 2020). "Earth Day Has Passed. Now What?". MTV News. Archived from the original on May 6, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
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  35. ^ Halliday, Ellen (June 14, 2023). "Sophia Kianni: Countries must put their money where their mouth is". Prospect. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
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  39. ^ Kianni on accountability and the individual carbon footprint, retrieved March 11, 2023
  40. ^ IC 2022 Teen Press Corps Interviews: Sophia Kianni, retrieved March 11, 2023
  41. ^ Keynote Speaker: Sophia Kianni, retrieved March 11, 2023
  42. ^ How Can Educators Encourage Positive Activism and Critical Thinking in Students?, retrieved March 11, 2023
  43. ^ Language Shouldn't Be a Barrier to Climate Action | Sophia Kianni | TED Countdown, retrieved March 11, 2023
  44. ^ a b c d Kart, Jeff (May 12, 2020). "Youth Activist Uses Quarantine To Start Nonprofit That Translates Climate Change Information From English To Other Languages". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
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  46. ^ Iannaccone, Stefano (August 5, 2020). "La storia di Sophia Kianni, la nuova Greta dei due Continenti". Impakter.it (in Italian). Archived from the original on September 25, 2020. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
  47. ^ Loiero, Alessandra (August 3, 2020). "La consapevolezza di Sophia Kianni: i giovani attivisti e l'aiuto all'ONU sul clima". La Voce di New York (in Italian). Retrieved August 6, 2020.
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  50. ^ "Climate Cardinals names Hikaru Wakeel Hayakawa as first full-time Executive Director". Climate Cardinals. Climate Cardinals.
  51. ^ Ferreira, Becky (December 4, 2020). "Motherboard Presents: Humans 2020". Vice. Archived from the original on December 7, 2020. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
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  56. ^ "Longfellow Science Olympiad team tops in Virginia". InsideNoVa. April 22, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  57. ^ "Two Hundred Thirty-Seven Students Named 2020 National Merit Semifinalists". Fairfax County Public Schools. September 17, 2019. Archived from the original on March 9, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  58. ^ Davis, Dominic-Madori (June 6, 2021). "This 19-year-old climate advisor who started her own nonprofit and worked on Greta Thunberg's youth strikes spends her days meeting UN officials and grabbing pizza with friends". Business Insider. Retrieved June 7, 2021.
  59. ^ "Sophia Kianni". Sophia Kianni. Retrieved March 11, 2023.
  60. ^ Willingham, AJ (April 19, 2020). "Stuck at home, families find a new way to bond: creating TikTok videos". CNN. Archived from the original on April 20, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  61. ^ McCluskey, Megan (March 19, 2020). "How High Schoolers Are Planning Online Prom Parties Amid Coronavirus". Time. Archived from the original on April 18, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
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