Speaker: Kate Wexell, San Francisco, California, United States
How (and why) are you taking action on climate change solutions in, for, and with your community?
Kate Wexell: Hello, my name is Kate Wexell and I am originally from ST Louis, but currently I live in San Francisco, California in the United States. So I have always felt like I wanted to make an impact on the world and I want to try to figure out what are the best ways to do that. So whenever I'm going through my work and trying to figure out what to do next, I'm always trying to think about where can I make that great impact and what matters the most. So with that being said, I am the founder and executive director of an online educational nonprofit called The Compass Online. So we are an elearning platform that teaches people about the sustainable Development goals and specifically wants to target people who are climate advocates to sort of teach them other skills and how to really get involved and develop meaningful projects in their community. On our platform, we also have an A I chatbot that helps to match people to relevant volunteering opportunities in their area that would actually fit their skill sets instead of having to dig through web pages to try to find something that's relevant that fits their age group and that is something that they could actually reasonably do. And then we want to help people share their actions that they're taking. So that's my contribution.
Who or what inspires/inspired you to care about climate change and climate solutions?
Kate Wexell: So I grew up right next to Saint Louis, Missouri, which is right along the Mississippi river, that is one of the largest longest rivers in the entire world. And so growing up, I was very involved in girl scouts and boy scouts, where we had a lot of community service projects, a lot of them would be cutting down trees that were invasive in the area or did projects to help install bee houses. So it was very conservation focused, but I didn't really know the impact that climate change had climate change wasn't really something that was taught in our schools. But thankfully, I had those good role models through scouting. And then also with my parents who always taught me how to recycle, how to conserve water, how to try to live a more sustainable life. And so whenever I started to actually learn about climate change around high school, and whenever I finally got to college, I realized that it was all around us. So in the ST Louis area, we have a huge problem with flooding. And as time goes on, you notice all of these little things that are happening to us because of climate change. So for example, the birds end up grading a lot later instead of in October or November. Whenever they usually do, the leaves aren't changing colors as much or they all change colors later. And then the flooding has gotten so much worse. I remember in 2019, that was my first time ever really flying internationally on my own. And whenever I got in the plane, it was my first time being in a plane in like many, many years. And I could see all of the flooding from the river overtaking these towns. And that's when I started to learn more about some of the other towns, like there was a town that was about 30 miles south of me, that the entire town had flooded in 1993 and they had to rebuild the town up on the bluffs. I realized that sometimes oil companies will take advantage of the towns that are in the floodplains because it's cheaper land to build their factories and refineries on. So that all really inspired me to want to make.
