Women for a Healthy Environment 15th Anniversary Speaker Series

Isaias Hernandez is an environmentalist, educator, and creative devoted to improving environmental literacy through content creation, storytelling, and public engagements.

Isaias is more commonly known by his moniker, Queer Brown Vegan: the independent media platform he started to bring intersectional environmental education to all. His journey to deconstruct complex issues, while centering diversity and authenticity, has resonated with a worldwide audience. He also collaborates with other leaders from the private and public sectors to uplift and produce stories of change for his independent web series, Sustainable Jobs and Teaching Climate Together.

Isaias has been featured in several noteworthy publications, including Vogue, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Business Insider. His social media advocacy earned him recognition as a top climate creator by Harvard C-CHANGE. As a public speaker, he’s presented for New York Times, Nike, UC Berkeley, Billie Eilish’s Overheated Summit, Harvard University, and more. He recently co-founded the Symbiocene events company that operates worldwide

For Wanjiku “Wawa” Gatheru, caring about the environment started early. While gardening with her mother and grandmother as a child, the conversations would often turn to saving the earth. The first-generation American of Kenyan descent became even more invested when taking an environmental science class in high school when she learned that social justice and climate issues were deeply intertwined. Everything suddenly became personal. “It was in this call I learned that the environment had everything to do with me,” she says. Her passion soon turned into activism.

Today, Wawa is a climate justice storyteller motivated to uplift the voices of those most adversely impacted by climate crisis. She has become a prominent voice of her generation, using the power of social media to share how communities of color and women have been adversely affected by climate change and the racist roots of the environmental movement.

Harnessing her academic background as a Rhodes Scholar and her work as a youth climate activist, Wawa’s life goal is to help create a climate movement made in the image of all of us.