🌎Our Planet's "Fairy Godmothers"
FemWealth Issue #5 | Earth Day
“Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician
To make it your mission to conserve, to protect,
To preserve that one and only home
That is ours,
To use your unique power
To give next generations the planet they deserve. [..]
Floating like a silver raft
in space, and we see the face of our planet anew.
We relish the view;
We witness its round green and brilliant blue,
Which inspires us to ask deeply, wholly:
What can we do? “
Earthrise by Amanda Gorman
The 2020s are the make-or-break decade in protecting our planet. Climate action is required at all levels, from individual to global level.
On April 22nd, we celebrate Earth Day. This year's theme, Restore Our Earth, focuses on natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking to restore the world's ecosystems. But as Xiye Bastida reminds us, "the environmental movement didn't start 60 years ago with [Rachel Carson's] Silent Spring, or when Earth Day started […]. Indigenous people have been taking care of the Earth for thousands of years because that is their culture, that is their way of life."
Women worldwide are at the forefront of climate action. FemWealth issues #5 and #6 spotlight the visionaries and leaders in Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Policy-Making, Activism, and Arts:
Sylvia Earle, Oceanographer, Explorer, Marine biologist, Aquanaut, Founder and President of Mission Blue
"We are all sea creatures. We all depend on the ocean."
Sylvia Earle is a woman of many firsts. Named "Her Deepness," "first hero of the Planet," and a "living legend," Dr. Earle has dived in all five of the world's oceans. She led over 100 expeditions, logging in more than 7,000 hours underwater.
A pioneer in the use of modern SCUBA gear and the development of deep-sea submersibles, Dr. Earle, led the first all-female team of women aquanauts as part of the Tektite II experiment, a project designed to explore the marine realm and test the viability of deepwater habitats and the health effects of prolonged living in underwater structures.
She broke the world record for the deepest untethered dive (381 m) and walk on the seafloor. Earle also founded Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technology with British engineer Graham Hawkes (her then-husband). They designed the submersible Deep Rover, a vehicle capable of reaching depths of 914 meters (3,000 feet) beneath the ocean's surface.
In 1990 Dr. Earle was appointed chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the first woman to serve in that position. She left after eighteen months feeling she could accomplish more working independently of the government. She became the National Geographic Society's first female explorer-in-residence in 1998.
Her most recent work focuses on protecting the oceans. Mission Blue, the organization she founded, plays a leading role in establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) as "hope spots" worldwide. It aims to safeguard 30 percent of the globe's oceans by 2030.
Dr. Earle is also a prolific scientist and science communicator. She authored 100 publications on marine science and technology and participated in numerous television productions.
📚 Blue Hope: Exploring and Caring for Earth's Magnificent Ocean, by Sylvia Earle
🎥 Perpetual Planet: Heroes of the Oceans
Jessica O. Matthews, Inventor, Founder, and CEO of Uncharted Power
First-generation Nigerian-American entrepreneur Jessica Matthews is a powerhouse. At 19, she attended an Art & Science class at Harvard University, where she met her future co-founder Julia Silverman. Together, they invented SOCCKET, an energy-generating soccer ball that leveraged the joy of playing to create clean energy for reading, charging the phone, and lighting, in underserved communities.
On a trip to Nigeria for her aunt's wedding, Matthews became aware of the health hazards caused by diesel generators used during power shortages. Determined to do something to change this, she took inspiration from the community's passion for playing soccer.
Without having an engineering background, Matthews and Silverman taught themselves how to build prototypes using Google and Wikipedia. After several iterations, they developed a product that was fun to play with and provided reliable, safe, and cost-effective access to electrical power for communities not connected to the electrical grid.
Uncharted Power (previously Uncharted Play), the startup they founded (Silverman left in 2015), partnered up with organizations, governments, and Fortune500 companies, to rethink energy generation, transmission, and storage in Africa and South America.
Matthews chose Harlem, NY over Silicon Valley to leverage the multicultural community's diversity of thought. In 2016, she raised a $7 million Series A round, the highest amount raised by a woman of color to that date.
Uncharted Power is currently developing a platform to help cities streamline and manage renewable infrastructure development. Their pilot city is the historic City of Poughkeepsie in New York, where Matthews grew up.
📰 She Always Looked Up to Beyoncé, Oprah, Even Michelle Obama. But in 2020, She Needed Something More
🎥 Grace Hopper Celebration 2018 | Jessica O. Matthews | Uncharted Power.
🎥 Jessica O. Matthews on Owning Who You Are | Impact Theory
Christiana Figueres, Costa-Rican Diplomat, International Negotiator, former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Co-Founder of Global Optimism
"Impossible is not a fact; it is an attitude."
An accomplished Costa-Rican diplomat, international negotiator, and global climate change leader, Christiana Figueres gained international recognition for leading to the historical Paris Agreement of 2015 she architected.
During her two mandates as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), between 2010-2016, Ms. Figueres forged a new brand of collaborative diplomacy by bringing together national and sub-national stakeholders.
She continues to be a global voice for climate action. Global Optimism, the organization Ms. Figueres co-founded, creates a platform that aims to "change the story about climate change, from one of doom to one of opportunity, building understanding that in tackling the climate crisis, we can build a bustling, more equal, and healthier future.”
📚 The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis (2020), by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac
🎥 The inside story of the Paris climate agreement
Xiye Bastida, Mexican-Chilean Indigenous Climate Justice Activist, Co-founder of Re-Earth Initiative, and Fridays For Future organizer
“We are Gen Z, and who chose that name for us? Z is the last letter of the alphabet. It represents the end of something. I know my generation didn’t pick that name. The adults did. And so we are reframing what Gen Z means and saying it’s going to be the start of something new. And we’re not going to stop until we ourselves are in these halls of power.”
Born and raised in a small town in Mexico, Xiye Bastida grew up as part of the Otomi-Toltec indigenous community. Her family and community instilled in her the importance of respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth.
Bastida experienced the effects of climate change first hand. In 2015, following severe droughts, her hometown was affected by flooding and water contamination. After moving to New York City, she saw the devastation of Superstorm Sandy (which struck in 2012) on the seashore. She became increasingly aware of environmental racism, greenwashing, and green gentrification, and the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation on frontline communities of color.
Re-Earth Initiative, the international youth-led organization she co-founded, focuses on highlighting the intersectionality of the climate crisis.
📰 My name is not Greta Thunberg: Why diverse voices matter in the climate movement
🎥 IMAGINE THE FUTURE with Xiye Bastida
🎥 Why I Fight for Climate Justice
Zaria Forman, Artist
The daughter of photographer Rena Bass Forman, Zaria traveled the world and discovered the wonders of nature from a young age. Zaria Forman travels to remote areas at the forefront of climate change, such as Greenland and the Maldives, to collect images and inspiration for her work. On-site, she takes thousands of photographs of the surrounding nature. In her studio, she works from both her memory of the experience and the photographs to create very large-scale compositions using soft pastel that she applies by hand.
In 2012, Forman led a group of artists and scholars on a four-week expedition on the North West coast of Greenland. Named "Chasing the Light," this was the second expedition to create art inspired by Arctic geography. The trip Zaria had initially planned with her mother (who unfortunately died of cancer) intended to mirror American painter William Bradford's journey in 1869. For Zaria, the work inspired by this expedition “addresses the concept of saying goodbye on scales both global and personal.”
Zaria Forman was part of several interdisciplinary Nasa Operation IceBridge missions over Antarctica, Greenland, and Arctic Canada to document climate change.
In her art, Zaria Forman recreates "the wonder of witnessing an iceberg or a glacier up close." An optimist, Forman celebrates and depicts the beauty of "what is still here" and "gives viewers the sense that it is still possible to do something to protect this Earth that sustains us.”
🎥 Drawing the Vanishing Ice | With artist Zaria Forman
🎥 See How NASA Helped An Artist Create Stunning Drawings of Glaciers
🎥 Artistic Climate Change | Zaria Forman | Talks at Google
FemWealth Curated Content:
📰 Large-scale CO2 removal startup Carbo Culture raises $6.2M Seed led by True Ventures
📰 What does a ‘head of sustainability’ actually do?
📰 NFTs Are Shaking Up the Art World. They May Be Warming the Planet, Too.
📰 Female Investors Shine on 2021 Midas List Despite Difficult Year
📰 When She Stopped Hiding Her Heritage, She Channeled Its Strength--And Built a $1 Billion Business - Payal Kadakia, the founder and chairman of ClassPass, reflects on her experience as an Indian-American
🎥 Meet The 37-Year-Old CEO Who Turned Vimeo Into A Billion-Dollar Company | Forbes
FemWealth Recommended Events:
🗓 Earth Day Events [April 20 - 22]
🗓 Vienna UP’21 [April 27 - May 12]
🗓 “Our Planet, Our Future” Nobel Prize Summit [April 26 - 28]
A big thank you to Alissa, Denise, and Teo for their insights and recommendations!
Stay tuned for FemWealth Issue #6 to get to know the stories of other remarkable women leading climate action! In the meantime, also check https://gobeyond.so/FemWealth for hand-picked resources about climate action, environmental protection, and women-focused topics.
Wish you a great week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder and Writer @FemWealth