Sophia Kianni

Founder & Exec Director, Climate Cardinals

"People who are being disproportionately affected by climate change deserve to have access to the resources they need to make sense of the disasters that are destroying their communities and what they can do about it. The more people are informed about the climate crisis, the greater chance we have to work together to protect the future of this planet. English cannot be the barrier to entry."

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 on 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, Johns Hopkins, 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 one of Teen Vogue's 21 under 21.