Women and Girls: Catalyzing Change in the Climate Crisis

Speaker(s):

• 
  Wanjira Mathai

  Senior Partnership Advisor, Advocacy & Strategy, wPOWER Project

  Wanjira Mathai is the Senior Advisor for the Partnerships for Women Entrepreneurs in Renewables (wPOWER) where she leads global advocacy and strategy. The wPOWER Hub promotes the prominence of women’s leadership in addressing energy poverty and climate change by bringing renewable energy to 3.5 million women in East Africa, Nigeria and India. wPOWER is the secretariat for the larger partnership. wPOWER focuses on consolidating and building evidence that supports the strategic involvement of women in clean energy entrepreneurship, spotlighting and scaling of best practices in clean energy entrepreneurship, advocating for women’s leadership in clean energy entrepreneurship & in addressing climate change, and building a global partnership of stakeholders involved in the sector. As the lead global advocate for the wPOWER partnership, Wanjira represents the issue of women’s economic empowerment through clean energy access in local and international forums, particularly making the linkages to the urgency of climate action and the sustainable development goals (particularly goal 7) Wanjira chairs the board of the legacy-focused Wangari Maathai Foundation. Mathai also sits on the boards of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai Institute, and the World Resources Institute. She is an advisory council member of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, co-chair of the Global Restoration Council, and a member of the Earth Charter International Council.

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• 
  Agnes Leina

  Founder and Executive Director, Il’laramatak Community Concerns

  Agnes Leina comes from Northern part of Kenya, Samburu who are also mainly pastoralists and very traditional in their way of life. She holds a Masters Degree in Rural Sociology and Community Development, from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and a Bachelors, degree in Communications and Community Development from Daystar University, as well as a Post-Graduate Certificate in International Development from the University of Birmingham - United Kingdom. Agnes is the Founder and Executive Director of Il’laramatak Community Concerns: - whose name denotes care givers, or pastoralists, an Indigenous People’s Organization whose main objective is to restore dignity among Indigenous people, with special emphasis to Girls and Women, and which envisions a society of Indigenous Peoples of Kenya that is free from all forms of discrimination. She is also the Gender Coordinator of IPACC, Indigenous People of Africa Coordinating Committee, and she sits in the Advisory Committee of FIMI, a global Indigenous Women’s network among others. She has over 15 years of experience in working for Indigenous Pastoralist Communities, especially women and girls, in defending their human rights concerns in Education, Climate Change, Land and Natural Resource rights, Violence against women, Early Marriages and FGM, as well as access to alternative livelihoods among others, at the Community level, National, Regional and International levels As an indigenous girls’ and women’s rights defender and a social scientist, Agnes has presented various papers concerning indigenous girls and women in various fields, at the UNFCCC, UNPFII, FOKO Conference in Finland,, Indigenous Women s’ Conferences in Lima and Manila, Presented papers at the EGM at UN HQs, attended preparatory meetings for World conference on Indigenous Peoples -WCIP, in Alta, and in New work at the PGA meetings among

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• 
  Katharine Wilkinson

  Senior Writer, Project Drawdown

  Dr. Katharine Wilkinson is Senior Writer at Project Drawdown, where she collaborated with Paul Hawken on the New York Times best-seller Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Katharine’s interdisciplinary background cuts across research, strategy, and thought leadership, with a focus on exploring, amplifying, and invigorating action to address climate change. Previously, she was Director of Strategy at the purpose consultancy BrightHouse and worked for the Boston Consulting Group and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Based on her doctoral research at the University of Oxford, Katharine published Between God & Green: How Evangelicals Are Cultivating a Middle Ground on Climate Change, called “a vitally important, even subversive, story” by The Boston Globe. Her recent fellowships include Aspen Ideas and Summit LA, and her voice has been featured by The Weather Channel, Talks @ Google, and on campuses including Columbia, Princeton, and Yale. Katharine holds a doctorate in Geography & Environment from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a B.A. in Religion from Sewanee—The University of the South.

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• 
  Willy Foote

  Founder and CEO, Root Capital

  Willy Foote is founder and CEO of Root Capital, a nonprofit impact investor that offers farmers around the world a path to prosperity by investing in the agricultural businesses that serve as engines of impact in their communities. Root Capital provides these businesses with the capital, training, and access to markets they need in order to grow, thrive, and create opportunities for thousands of farmers at a time. Since its founding in 1999, Root Capital has provided more than $1 billion in loans to 630 agricultural businesses in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Together, these businesses have generated more than $6 billion in revenue, 80 percent of which has been paid directly to the 1.2 million smallholder farmers whose crops they collect and market. Foote is a Skoll Entrepreneur and an Ashoka Global Fellow. He was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2008, one of Forbes’ “Impact 30” in 2011, and was a 2012 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. He served for nearly a decade on the Executive Committee of the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). Foote holds an MS in development economics from the London School of Economics and a BA from Yale University.

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