Alexandria Villaseñor


Alexandria Villaseñor is an American climate activist living in New York City. A follower of the Fridays for Future movement and of fellow climate activist Greta Thunberg, Villaseñor is a co-founder of US Youth Climate Strike and founder of Earth Uprising.

Biography

Villaseñor was born in 2005 in Davis, California, where she grew up. The family moved from northern California to New York City during 2018. Villaseñor is Latina. Her goal is to one day work for the United Nations.

Activism

Villaseñor's fight for climate action was sparked when she was caught in a smoke cloud from the November 2018 Camp Fire in California during a family visit. As an asthma sufferer, she became physically ill, during which time she researched the climate change and temperature rises which contributed to the fire's severity. Her mother was enrolled for climate change courses at Columbia University and she sat in on those, learning about the underlying science. Soon afterward, she joined New York's chapter of Zero Hour, a group of American youth climate activists.
Villaseñor has taken similar climate action to Thunberg, who inspired her with her 4 December 2018 talk at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland. Since 14 December 2018, she skips school every Friday in order to protest against lack of climate action in front of the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York. She is no longer involved with the US Youth Climate Strike group and founded the climate change education group Earth Uprising.
In May 2019, Villaseñor was the recipient of the Disruptor Award from the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, received a scholarship from The Common Good public advocacy organization, and was awarded a Youth Climate Leadership prize from Earth Day Network.
When Thunberg arrived to New York City from her transatlantic sailboat voyage in August 2019, Villaseñor, Xiye Bastida, and other climate activists greeted Thunberg upon arrival. By that time, they had already established contact with each other over social media.
On 23 September 2019, Villaseñor, along with 15 other youth activists including Greta Thunberg, Catarina Lorenzo, and Carl Smith, filed a legal complaint with the United Nations accusing five countries, namely France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey of failing to uphold their reduction targets to which they committed in their Paris Agreement pledges.
In mid-October 2019, she attended the C40 World Mayors Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.