Sophia Kianni is an Iranian-American social entrepreneur and activist. She studied at Stanford University and is the founder of Climate Cardinals, the world’s largest youth-led climate nonprofit, with 10,000 volunteers in 80+ countries. She is the youngest United Nations advisor in US history. She was most recently appointed to serve on the EPA’s National Youth Advisory Council. 

Sophia has amassed a following of over 300,000 across social media platforms, and her work has been profiled by The New York Times, CNN, Vogue, Business Insider, BBC, NPR, ELLE, The Guardian, NBC, and even on the front page of The Washington Post. She has also authored opinion pieces for outlets such as TIME Magazine, MTV News, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, and Yale Climate Connections. Sophia is a prolific storyteller and has spoken at universities worldwide, including Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, and Princeton. 

Sophia won the TED Global Ideas Competition, and her debut TED Talk has 2+ million views. She has sat on boards and advisory councils for The New York Times, the World Economic Forum, Ashoka, the American Lung Association, the Reform Alliance, and Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation. 

Sophia has been named VICE Media's youngest Human of the Year, a National Geographic Young Explorer, on Business Insider’s Climate Action 30, among BBC’s 100 Women, and to Forbes 30 under 30.

The event is co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program, EcoPledge, and Climate Justice