Sophia Kianni

Sophia Kianni is an Iranian-American activist studying Science, Technology, & Society at Stanford University. She is the founder and executive director of Climate Cardinals, an international nonprofit with 9,000 volunteers in 40+ countries working to translate climate information into over 100 languages. She is the youngest person to ever serve as a United Nations advisor. She has sat on boards and advisory councils for The New York Times, World Economic Forum, Web Summit, Environmental Media Association, Inkey List, Ashoka American Lung Association and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation.

Sophia has amassed a following of over 200,000 across social media platforms and her work has been featured in news outlets including 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 was previously a fellow with PBS NewsHour and has written for news outlets such as TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, MTV News, Cosmopolitan, and Teen Vogue. She is a prolific public speaker and has spoken at universities across the world including Columbia University, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge University, and Harvard University. She won the TED global idea competition and her debut TED Talk has 1.5+ million views.

She has been named VICE Media’s youngest Human of the Year, a National Geographic Young Explorer, among Business Insider’s Climate Action 30, one of Teen Vogue’s 21 under 21, and a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree.