September 15 - October 15 marks Hispanic Heritage Month. Join Broadway Stages in honoring Hispanic and Latino Americans’ values, culture, and contributions during this observance! Today, we introduce you to a young leader in the environmental field, Alexandria Villaseñor!

On September 23, 2019, Alexandria Villaseñor, along with 15 other youth activists, including Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and Brazil’s Catarina Lorenzo, filed a legal complaint with the United Nations, accusing five countries, namely France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey of failing to uphold the reduction targets they committed to in their Paris Agreement pledges. Villaseñor was only 14 years old at the time.

A year earlier, on a visit to California, Villaseñor witnessed the effects of climate change in a very real and frightening way. While visiting in November 2018, she was exposed to the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history. As an asthma sufferer, she became physically ill when caught in a smoke cloud. Soon afterward, she joined New York’s chapter of Zero Hour, a group of American youth climate activists.

Villaseñor soon co-founded the U.S. Youth Climate Strike movement, part of the youth-led international Fridays for Future campaign at the age of 13, and has gone on to found the climate education-focused non-profit Earth Uprising International.

Alexandria has become an internationally recognized environmental activist. She spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, alongside Greta Thunberg on January 24, 2020, and addressed the 2020 Democratic National Convention as part of their segment on climate change.

Villaseñor also serves on the advisory board for the national climate policy platform Evergreen Action. She received a scholarship from The Common Good public advocacy organization and is the youngest Junior Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences.

With all of these achievements, it is no surprise that her work has not gone unnoticed. She has received the Earth Day Network Youth Leadership Award, The Rachel Carson Environmental Justice Award, the Common Good American Spirit Changemaker Award, and the Disruptor Award from the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards. Politico named her one of the top 100 influential people on the climate change policy list. Seventeen magazine also named her as one of their 2020 Voices of the Year.

With a cause as noble and grand as the very world that we live in, it is good that we have champions like Alexandria Villaseñor. It is much more remarkable that she has done so much in such little time. Broadways Stages is proud to have allies like Villaseñor as we work toward  a safer, more balanced future for us all.