Jerome Foster II

Jerome Foster II is an African-American environmental justice advocate, consultant, motivational speaker who strives to create transformative structural social and environmental change through art, technology, and policy for good. He is currently the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Waic Up, an organization mobilizing a campaign to get one million young to register to vote in the upcoming 2024 elections called OneMillionOfUs and using the power of journalism to spread awareness of critical social issues. He is also the youngest-ever White House Environmental Justice Advisory Councilmember, advising the Biden Presidency alongside a council of community organizers and scientific experts developing policy recommendations on environmental justice and issues affecting the health and well-being of people and the natural environment.

Jerome is driven by the promise of a world which lives by the ideals of economic, social, and environmental reciprocity and equity. With a background in software engineering and virtual reality development, He has also been recognized with multiple awards and honors, such as the Defender of Science Award, the Youth Environmental Champion Award, and the World Series of Entrepreneurship. His experience in climate activism extends further via his work with National Geographic, where we journeyed across Iceland as a Climatology Researcher and Virtual Reality Engineer.

He was one of the lead organizers of the Fridays For Future youth climate strike movement holding weekly climate strikes in front of the White House and Harvard University for over 80 weeks. For the first climate strike in February, 2019, he mobilized 400 students from his school and took a citywide leadership role in organizing climate strikes and speaking out about climate justice issues in rallies and town halls. Later on, he began working alongside Jane Fonda to kickstart Fire Drill Fridays outside the U.S. Capitol.