Climate Activism and Optimism

Kwolanne Felix is a writer, gender and climate scholar, and is the Fellowship and Community Manager at Black Girl Environmentalist. She is a recent graduate of Columbia University, where she studied history, with a focus on the African Diaspora, international development, and environmental policies. Kwolanne writes opinion pieces and articles addressing politics, gender, climate, race, and various other intersecting experiences. Her writing has been published in Truthout, Ms. Magazine, Womanly Magazine and The Eco-Justice Project. Kwolanne has worked at the United Nations, the Reproductive Rights and Climate Justice Coalition, and Columbia Climate School. She is a Gender Equality Public Voices Fellow and was a 2021 UN Human Rights Fellow.

Adrian Huq is a 2024 graduate of Tufts University, an incoming graduate student at the Yale School of the Environment, and a proud alum of New Haven Public Schools. A climate activist and organizer, they serve as the co-founder of the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team (est. 2019) which pushes for bold, local policy change. Adrian also coordinates the Climate Justice Schools Initiative, a joint program between New Haven Climate Movement and New Haven Public Schools that fosters greater climate awareness in multiple schools. Additionally, as Youth Coordinator of the Climate Health Education Project, they have facilitated an internship program that supports New Haven high school students in advancing climate education in their school communities since 2018. Adrian has worked at various environmental organizations over the last six years and also is engaged in work surrounding media, journalism, communications, and art. This summer, Adrian is a returning Sustainable CT Fellow stationed at the Capitol Region Council of Governments.

Lucy Nalpathanchil is Vice President of Community Engagement at Connecticut Public where she leads strategies to deeply connect and grow collaborations with community- focused organizations across the state.

Before becoming a member of the company’s senior leadership team, Nalpathanchil was the Executive Producer and Host of Connecticut Public’s morning talk show and podcast, Where We Live, for nearly seven years. Under her leadership, WWL went beyond news headlines and interviews with policymakers to feature more conversations about Connecticut and the stories of its residents.

Nalpathanchil has been a public radio journalist for more than 20 years covering everything from education to immigration, juvenile justice, and child welfare issues to veterans’ affairs and the military. Her reporting has taken her to all sorts of places, including a ride aboard a Coast Guard boat in Florida and to Tambacounda, Senegal, to talk with women journalists and farmers.

She’s contributed to National Public Radio and her stories have aired on several national NPR shows including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Weekend All Things Considered, Here and Now, and Latino USA.

In 2021, Nalpathanchil and the Where We Live team received a first- place award among large stations from Public Media Journalists Association or PMJA for this interview with a Norwich woman. In 2020, Nalpathanchil received a national Gracies Award from the Alliance for Women in Media in 2020 for her conversation with a Connecticut mother and her trans-son.