Earth Island Institute to Celebrate the 2025 Brower Youth Award Winners

BERKELEY, Calif., Oct. 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Earth Island Institute's New Leaders Initiative will celebrate this year's recipients of the prestigious Brower Youth Awards today at the David Brower Center. Every year, the Brower Youth Awards selects winners after a competitive application process, in recognition for their efforts to build a more sustainable and just world. Now in its 26th year, the Brower Youth Awards is the leading environmental youth award in the country.

The 2025 Brower Youth Award winners represent accomplishments across the environmental movement, including policy advocacy, wildfire management, climate education, and water security.

"Youth activism is a leading force in the creation of a liveable planet," said Sumona Majumdar, chief executive officer of Earth Island Institute. "All around the world, young people are reimagining solutions to critical environmental issues and working tirelessly to innovate, educate, and organize in their communities. We are proud to recognize the outstanding achievements of the five recipients of this year's Brower Youth Awards: the dreamers and doers of the next generation."

The five recipients are:

Inaam Chattha, 22
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Addressing the rising mental health impacts of climate change.

As a teenager living in rural Alberta, Inaam Chattha watched wildfires inch closer to his home each year, listened to evacuees share their grief at his family's dinner table, and silently carried eco-anxiety without realizing that's what it was. Over the years, Chattha found ways to translate his anxiety into action. In 2023, he launched Green Mind: a national, youth-led initiative that supports young people, especially those from rural or underrepresented communities, to understand and regulate their climate anxiety while empowering them to take action. Chattha, now a medical student, has also authored two children's books to help children navigate eco-emotions through storytelling. He was named one of Canada's Top 25 Under 25 Environmentalists by Starfish Canada last year.

Sophie Tipper, 18
Centennial, Colorado
Advocating for youth involvement in policy-making.

Sophie Tipper fell in love with environmental policy in middle school, when she and a friend ran a campaign to reduce waste and ramp up energy efficiency in their school district. After joining the Colorado Youth Advisory Council (COYAC) and noticing that youth were not represented on any of the state's "green" task forces or committees, Tipper conducted research, met with stakeholders, and wrote a policy memo that recommended adding youth advisors to the Colorado Department of Public Health's (CDPHE) Environmental Justice Board. She drafted a bill (SB23-055) that would require adding one voting and one non-voting youth member to the board, which was signed into law by Governor Jared Polis in May. She is now drafting a new bill to regulate plastic pollution, and hopes to encourage youth in other states to become involved in affecting environmental policy change.

Kyle Trefny, 23
Eugene, Oregon 
Empowering youth and Indigenous leadership for a fire-resilient future.

After wildfire smoke turned the San Francisco Bay Area sky an apocalyptic orange in 2020, Kyle Trefny decided to become a firefighter. He moved north to study at the University of Oregon and began wildland firefighting in the summers. In 2022, Trefny helped organize a meeting between youth fire workers and the Chief of the US Forest Service to discuss young people's stake in wildfire workforce and management policies. This led to the founding of FireGeneration Collaborative, a youth-led organization that aims to transform our relationship with fire from short-term disaster response and unstable jobs, toward long-term resilience efforts, healthy livelihoods, and recentering Indigenous leadership. Trefny co-led FireGen's national campaign calling for formal roles for youth in wildfire policy and has played a key role in shaping FireGen's work to advance Indigenous leadership and opportunities for frontline workers and youth to have a voice in their future.

Joey Wu, 22
Woodbury, Minnesota
Using storytelling to shed light on climate insecurities and solutions.

Joey Wu personally experienced how terrifying limited access to drinking water can be when, during a trip to his family's village in Taiwan, a typhoon damaged local water-supply lines and rendered the tap water undrinkable. Wu helped villagers build makeshift filters until the pipes were fixed. A few years later, as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, he designed a filter that removes PFAS, or forever chemicals, from tap water and presented it to the Philadelphia Water Department as a potential solution to PFAS contamination in low-income neighborhoods. When adoption proved to be a problem, Wu realized that technical solutions to environmental problems can't work in isolation, so he launched Waterroots: a climate literacy initiative that empowers youth in water-stressed regions to share their lived experiences, bridge the gap between technical solutions and community needs, and inspire locally-driven solutions. Today, Waterroots has over 50 members across 25 countries.

Lily YangLiu, 16
White Rock, British Columbia, Canada
Pushing for youth participation in political and environmental decision-making.

Lily YangLiu began canvassing for local candidates in Vancouver, Canada at age 10. By 13, she had 100+ volunteer hours under her belt and was committed to increasing youth voices in political and environmental decision-making. Today, YangLiu leads two interconnected initiatives: the K–12 Climate Literacy initiative, through which she co-develops curriculum for Grades 4 through 8 and advocates for early climate education, and the Katija Hyoungjoo Neuber Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding youth participation in decision-making spaces including the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. YangLiu is also an active member of YOUNGO, the official youth constituency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She serves as a youth advisor for Children First Canada and a board member of Youth Climate Corps BC. Earlier this year, YangLiu was named one of the Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada by the Women of Influence organization.

The 2025 Brower Youth Awards ceremony will take place on October 9 at 5:30pm at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California. Learn more about the current and past Brower Youth Award winners at broweryouthawards.org.

About the Brower Youth Awards

Every year, the Brower Youth Awards recognizes bold, young environmentalists for their efforts to build a more sustainable and just world. Since 2000, 150+ awardees have received this prestigious award for their work, representing accomplishments across the environmental movement. In order to cultivate the next generation of environmental activists, the Brower Youth Awards program provides award-winners with leadership training, networking opportunities, and a platform to amplify their outstanding achievements. The Brower Youth Awards is a signature component of Earth Island Institute's New Leaders Initiative.

About Earth Island Institute

Earth Island Institute is an international environmental organization and fiscal sponsor to more than 70 projects working in the areas of climate change solutions, conservation, environmental justice, Indigenous communities, wildlife protection, women's environmental leadership, sustainable agriculture and food systems, community resilience, and more. The organization also includes a legal division, Earth Island Advocates; New Leaders Initiative; and an award-winning magazine, Earth Island Journal. Founded in 1982, Earth Island Institute is a home for people who protect Earth and life on it.

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