The 2024 Climate Lab
Want to Follow along as we launch our Climate Lab in 2024?
The 2024 Climate Lab Cohort
With tremendous thanks to our exceptional selection committee and the One Earth science and tech team, we are elated to announce the 2024 Climate Fellows:
Alexa White is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Aya Research Institute, a think tank increasing the number of POC scientists and engineers engaged in environmental justice research. She is also an agroecologist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan.
As a prominent figure in sustainable agriculture and environmental justice, her work critically assesses the global food system and international climate governance. She is a United Nations delegate working to improve biophysical indicators under the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Alexa's achievements include receiving the 2023 Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Policy Entrepreneurship Award, the 2020 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Conservation Leadership Award, and developing environmental justice screening tools for the Mid-Atlantic U.S. governments as a Senior Harvard Climate Justice Design Fellow. Her collaborative projects with the White House Council for Environmental Quality and FAS led to the development of the first Justice40 tracker and report. Recognized for her leadership and scholarship in the food sovereignty space, Alexa also serves on the boards of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Renewable Thermal Collaborative (RTC), and the Edfu Foundation. Finally, she is a 2022 Columbia Mailman School Agents of Change in Environmental Justice Senior Fellow, using storytelling to amplify agroecology methodologies and small-scale farmer voices.
Genevieve Ennis is a founder, researcher and educator exploring climate risk and resilience within AI, space mining, botanical forensics, and Indigenous intellectual property rights. Genevieve leads Artificial Intelligence and Data Infrastructure in the Climate Justice Working Group based at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society where she brings together scientists, technologists, legal experts and activists to address the ecological impacts of AI and apply climate technology to alternative futures.
John Goedschalk is a regenerative entrepreneur working on developing and deploying a partnership model to reconfigure the wild oils cosmetics industry supply chain to empower indigenous and tribal communities to become bio-economy based entrepreneurs.
Lacey Reddix drives development for Olokun’s eco-friendly mineral extraction method. Their innovative approach extracts critical minerals like lithium and magnesium without harsh chemicals, aiding the transition to clean energy. Lacey is an Innovator Fellow at Breakthrough Energy, and she is passionate about solutions that improve human-environmental interactions and increase clean water access for vulnerable communities.
Within the Prime Minister's Office, Government of Barbados, Pepukaye leads the work of the Bridgetown Initiative to reform the global climate and development finance architecture. This focuses on catalyzing private investment into mitigation; scaling cheaper, longer term finance for adaptation imperatives; and reforming multilateral development institutions. Pepukaye is also leading the development of a 10-year investment plan for prosperity and resilience in Barbados, with a view to attracting public, private and philanthropic capital into priority projects across all sectors.
Sam Teicher is the Co-Founder and Chief Reef Officer of Coral Vita, a social enterprise that grows resilient corals up to 50x faster to restore dying reefs. Half of global coral reefs have died since the 1970s and over 90% are on track to die by 2050, threatening the one billion people, 25% of marine life, and $2.7 trillion in annual value sustained by these incredible ecosystems. Using a mission-based commercial model, Coral Vita works to catalyze a Restoration Economy to help preserve ocean health for future generations. In 2021, the company was recognized as the inaugural winner of Prince William's Revive Our Oceans Earthshot Prize. Sam previously worked on climate resiliency initiatives at the White House and the Global Island Partnership, is an Echoing Green Fellow, co-authored SDG14, still plays rugby, and launched Coral Vita out of the Yale School of the Environment.
CLIMATE LAB IN ACTION:
To address the global need for effective climate action, we are steadfast in our belief in network leadership as a cornerstone. This next phase of climate innovation demands changemakers equipped with novel skills — proficient in cultivating and leveraging relationships that drive their initiatives forward. Similarly, investors and funders require a networked approach to financing climate solutions, enabling them to concurrently support diverse elements of systemic change, propelling progress across the entire climate arena.
We achieve our Network Leadership approach through four core program elements:
On Stage at Summit at Sea 2024
Virtual Impact Symposiums
Monthly Cohort Calls
