Sophia Kianni is an Iranian-American social entrepreneur and activist studying at Stanford University. She is the founder and executive director of Climate Cardinals, the world’s largest youth-led climate nonprofit, with 9,000 volunteers in 40+ countries. She has sat on boards and advisory councils for The New York Times, World Economic Forum, Ashoka, American Lung Association, and Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation. She is the youngest United Nations board member and advisor in US history.
Sophia has amassed a following of over 200,000 across social media platforms and her work has been featured in news outlets including The New York Times, CNN, Vogue, Business Insider, BBC, NPR, ELLE, The Guardian, NBC, and even on the front page of The Washington Post. She was previously a fellow with PBS NewsHour and has been a freelance journalist for news outlets such as TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, MTV News, Cosmopolitan, and Teen Vogue.
Sophia is a prolific storyteller who has spoken at major events including FORTUNE Impact, Coachella, IBM Think, Arch Summit, Bermuda Climate Summit, Web Summit, Washington Post Climate Summit, WIRED Green, and New York Times Climate Forward. She has spoken at universities across the world including Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, and Princeton. Sophia’s debut TED Talk as the closing speaker at the inaugural TED Countdown Conference has 2.3+ million views.
She has been named VICE Media's youngest Human of the Year, a National Geographic Young Explorer, among Business Insider’s Climate Action 30, one of Teen Vogue's 21 under 21, and a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree.
