Inaugural Youth Advisory Board

The Inaugural Youth Advisory Board of the Lab guided the launch and first phase of the Lab between mid-2023 and 2024. These experienced youth advocates and leaders were critical to defining the big-picture vision, setting strategic priorities, and engaging in joint projects to move forward the ecosystem in its first phase. Many Youth Advisors remain active in the Lab ecosystem, engaging in collaborative research, storytelling, and policy projects with Penn State faculty and students.

Pramisha Thapaliya

Nepal & U.S.

Pramisha Thapaliya is an international climate change and sustainable food systems advocate from Nepal. She has advanced university degrees in agricultural science and economics. She has extensive research experience in the fields of economics, climate change and agriculture. She believes in the need and power of science communication to public, for creating systemic change.

Pramisha has a demonstrated history of working on youth issues and the climate-agriculture nexus. She had served in various leadership roles in many youth-led constituencies and groups like YOUNGO (official children and youth constituency of UNFCCC), Major Group for Children and Youth, and Real Food Systems. She also worked actively to foster meaningful youth engagement in various processes including UN Food Systems Summit and World Food Forum. In the past, Pramisha had served in various crucial roles like Administrative Council Member of CliMates, Advocacy Coordinator of CliMates Nepal, Bottom Lining Team (BLT) member of YOUNGO, to name a few. Her current work and interests focus on climate-agriculture-food nexus and empowering youth to drive change for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.

Neeshad Shafi

Qatar

Neeshad is an Environmentalist, and policy-oriented social change advocate, best known for his work on youth climate movement, environmental and climate policies in the Middle East. An active civil society member and has been a prominent presence at international climate summits especially UN Climate
Summit (COP’s) since 2015 on various capacities, including role of youth and civil societies for climate action.

He holds a master’s degree in Environmental Engineering and based in Doha, Qatar. He was was named in the Apolitical’s List of the 100 Most Influential People in Climate Policy in 2019 and 2022 respectively. Neeshad is currently the Co-founder & Executive Director at the Arab Youth Climate Movement Qatar, a first registered youth lead non-profit association in the State of Qatar.

Angeline Eugenia Ariestantya

Indonesia

Angeline Eugenia Ariestantya (she/her/hers) (b.1999) is researcher, youth leader and consultant in the field of Women’s Economic Empowerment and Gender Equality, graduating from Gadjah Mada University with an International Relations major. Her experience spans from being the Regional Deputy for Girl Up Indonesia, National Youth Gender Activist for UN Women Indonesia, Fellow for Women Leaders for Planetary Health (WLPH), an organiser for a different range of grassroots movements and a mutual aid organiser. She has always been compelled by the space where education, community development and gender justice work intersect.

Through her work in Girl Up, she has successfully positioned Girl Up in Indonesia, with over 3,000 girls benefited from Girl Up’s leadership building and education programs. She has continuously promoted girls and youth’s right to participation in decision making processes in diverse United Nations forums such as, Commission on the Status of Women, Generation Equality Forum, ECOSOC and Regional Consultations. Her interest leads and expands within the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals, humanitarian assistance and intersectionality lens of practice.

She is passionate about FemTech, education, public health, community development, and empowerment. Thus, she is now embarking on a mission to use entrepreneurial action to transform lives and shape a better, more sustainable future for all women, regardless of their backgrounds with Lune Pads.

Iris Zhan

U.S.

​​Iris Zhan (they/them) has been a climate activist since 14. Iris has started both local and international initiatives such as the Sunrise Movement Howard County hub (Sunrise HoCo) and Fridays For Future Digital (FFF Digital). They led structural foundations and outreach of the Howard County Youth Activist Coalition (HoCo YAC). Now they are a youth advisory board member and researcher at the Global Youth Storytelling and Research Lab (GYSRL) and a student at Wellesley College.

Their focus is promoting capacity building, empowerment, and creating a more intersectional and accessible global climate justice movement. Through their leadership locally and globally they have mentored and empowered hundreds of activists across the world, leading to successions of local and global youth climate activists following in their footsteps. Through their network building they have emerged as a climate movement problem solver, community builder, global climate justice advocate.

Iris has led multi-faceted teams locally and globally pushing the charge on impactful campaigns like Green New Deal for schools and Escazu Ya. Their work has been highlighted in American Girls’ HERStory campaign, In The Know Climate Changemakers, and one of 100 young leaders in the book Stone Soup for a Sustainable World.


Keshoe Isaiah

Kenya

Keshoe lsaiah is a youth climate and environmental champion, and indigenous advocate from the Maasai community in Kenya. He is the co-founder of MAIN Network which amplifies the voices of indigenous and local communities in regards to climate crisis. Moreover he is among the Focal activists at Fridays For Future Kenya and the current Mock COP Country Focal Point. Furthermore, he is the member at SpiceWarriors.org Kenya and the head of Environment and climate change at the National Youth Caucus Kenya.

He studies Economics and Finance at The Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Kenya. His knowledge in Finance is centered on climate finance and climate education among the young people and local communities towards creating a solution to the climate crisis.

Charles Mankhwazi

Uganda

 

 Charles Mankhwazi is an International Research Consultant and Youth Engagement Expert working at the intersection of research and advocacy, with a focus on strengthening youth leadership in policy and decision-making spaces. Charles has over seven years of experience in coordinating, managing, and consulting on diverse research programs for NGOs within Africa and globally. 

He is currently based in Kampala, Uganda where he managed several research projects for Restless Development, including the “Living in the Climate Crisis: Young People in Uganda” research, which was launched and disseminated at COP 26 in Glasgow, in collaboration with The University of Cambridge and Makerere University. As a follow-up to this research, he also managed a research initiative aimed at introducing climate education in primary and secondary schools in Eastern Uganda. 

Charles is currently a Dalberg Climate and Health Public Engagement Fellow and a Researcher at ClimaTalk where he is working towards making data more accessible and actionable for development practitioners who desire to translate research evidence into policy action and impactful programs. He is passionate about amplifying youth voices to shape transformative agendas for sustainable development. 

Joice Mendez

Colombia & Paraguay

Joice Mendez is a migrant and social entrepreneur working on transboundary cooperation in the water-energy-food nexus with an emphasis on energy justice. Joice is a major voice of Latin America within leading youth and climate mechanisms, including the United Nations Secretary General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, the UNMGCY’s SDG7 Youth Constituency, the IRENA’s Director- General’s Global Council on Enabling Youth Action for SDG7 and the initiative Youth4Climate. Currently she works as a climate change consultant in UNICEF Paraguay, fostering youth advocacy in national climate policies.
Working with youth on her daily basis, Joice has co-founded several organizations like the Foz do Iguaçu- Moema Viezzer Educative & Environmental Observatory , the Latin American Observatory of Geopolitics of Energy (Infrastructure, Technology, Security and Energy Integration), the observatory is part of the Nucleus of Strategic Studies, Geopolitics and Regional Integration (NEEGI) of the Federal University of Latin American Integration (UNILA) and the binational Youth Collective of the Parana Basin 3, from the Cultivating Good Water Initiative (UN-Water Best Practice Award 2015). In Paraguay she co-founded the National Youth Network for Water and the Youth Network for Climate Action Paraguay, organizing since 2016 the National LCOYs (Conference of Youth).
Joice is also member of the following organizations: YOUNGO, the World Youth Parliament for Water WYPW (also part of the Blue Peace Initiative, promoting water transboundary cooperation), Student Energy, the Climate Reality Project America Latina, the Youth Adaptation Network of the Global Center on Adaptation , Climate Illustrated, the Ocarete Collective. the Latin American Observatory for Climate Action. and Climate Education.
Joice was one of the 30 Young people selected by the United Nations Youth Envoy office to be part of the Abu Dhabi Climate Action Meeting, supporting the organization of the first ever United Nations Youth Climate Summit in 2019. She has also been invited to join the group of leaders ‘Women Rise for All’ – a global effort to save lives and protect livelihoods, urging leaders worldwide to address the human crisis of the pandemic, to support the UN Deputy Secretary-General‘s call for solidarity and action in response to the impacts of covid-19.

Pooja Tilvawala

U.S. 

Pooja is an Indian-American climate justice advocate, opportunity curator, and youth engagement expert with 5 years of experience in the global climate movement. She has degrees in Economics and International Studies with a focus on Justice, Ethics, and Human Rights from American University/ London School of Economics. Since 2020, she has served as the Founder and Executive Director of Youth Climate Collaborative (YCC) which focuses on intergenerational power-sharing, narrative-based storytelling, climate mental health, opportunity curation, trust-based philanthropy, and youth engagement within the US government and the UN. She also serves as an advisor to Rivet, which is creating the world’s largest microgrant fund for youth-led action by harnessing youth purchasing power through brand/company partnerships, and a strategist with Project 17 on a climate media and entertainment initiative for COP28. She is an active member of YOUNGO, the children and youth constituency of the UNFCCC and most recently, was double-nominated to serve as the North America youth advisor to the UN Secretary General for climate change.

She endeavors to create a more just and inclusive climate movement for all, especially frontline communities, by diminishing barriers to access and retention in the movement so that we are all empowered to do our best.

Jefferson Estela

The Philippines

Jefferson Estela is a queer Filipino intersectional environmentalist, climate justice and youth activist, community organizer, and freelance architectural designer.
Born on the islands of the Philippines, he is passionate about visual storytelling, architectural design, and ecology, which he skillfully combines through organizing and activism. His work revolves around the climate crisis, loss and damage, and sustainable urban mobility. He also explores the relationship between the environment and the built environment to promote climate justice. His work is aimed at engaging government leaders, providing educational programs, and consulting with organizations
Jefferson has presented stories in Rappler, Manila Bulletin, Philippine Star, National Climate Change Conference of the Department of Education, Youth Climate Dialogue of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), official events of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and other local and global platforms.
He is the co-founder of Youth Strike 4 Climate Philippines (YS4C PH), one of the pioneer youth-led climate movements and campaigns in the Philippines, focused on humanizing climate action through activism and storytelling, and the Pacific Region Coordinator for the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, an international coalition of youth from the global North and South, to demand action on addressing the Loss and Damage caused by the climate crisis. He is currently the founding Convenor of Ilog Pasiglahin-Filipino Youth Against PAREX, a youth-led organization, and a campaign to revitalize Ilog Pasig as a green living space, cultural heritage, and alternative transport mode.

Puneet Singh Singhal

India

Puneet Singh Singhal is a disability justice activist from from New Delhi, India. His unique background, shaped by poverty, domestic violence, stammering, and an undiagnosed learning disability, fuels his desire to champion marginalized individuals’ rights and create balanced representation. He is a disability activist working for a more inclusive and accessible society for people with different, distinct, visible, and non-visible disabilities. Puneet founded a non-profit called ssstart, working towards normalizing speech and communication disabilities. He also works with organizations including NASA, Diversability, IUCN CEC, HundreED.org and NeuroGifted.