ABOUT THE EXPERT:

Niria Alicia (she/they/we) is a Xicana Indígena human rights advocate, climate justice organizer, philanthropic advisor and social impact strategist dedicated to protecting the sacredness of Mother Earth and the dignity of historically oppressed peoples. She is a proud daughter of farmworker and forestry workers from Michoacán and Chihuahua, Mexico who have planted millions of trees and harvested thousands of pounds of food to feed the world. As a first-generation student she graduated Cum Laude honors from the University of Oregon with degrees in Environmental Studies, Latin American Studies, Nonprofit Administration and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She was accepted as an outstanding masters candidate to pursue her studies at the world’s leading Institute for the Studies of Human Rights at Columbia University. In 2019 her climate justice and environmental education work earned her the national ‘Emerging Leader Award’ from GreenLatinos’ and the internationally recognized ‘EE 30 under 30’ award from the North American Association for Environmental Education. In 2020 the United Nations named her the Young Champion of the Earth for North America for her work with Run4Salmon giving her the highest honor the UN gives to young people under the age of 30. In 2021 after the Almeda Fire destroyed nearly 2,800 structures in her community she co-founded Coalicion Fortaleza, a culturally-empowered women-led organization that is advancing the Just Recovery efforts for the Latinx, Indigenous and working-class community of Southern Oregon.

Niria has traveled, studied and worked in Brazil, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Spain and Morocco participating in social justice delegations, teaching, translating, conducting participatory action research, contributing to reforestation efforts and running youth programs. As a writer, she has contributed to environmental blogs, local newspapers and magazines in both English and Spanish writing about the effects that pesticides, pipelines and climate change have on frontline communities and the importance that cultural work and ancestral healing has in the liberation of historically oppressed communities. Her work has been featured in Grist and the New York Times. Niria lives to make her ancestors and descendants proud. Her greatest honors have been learning from her abuelita how to make tortillas in the traditional way, growing her first milpa from her family’s heirloom seeds and inheriting her great-great grandmother’s metate, a culturally significant ancestral tool made from lava rock.

CONTACT:

Contact Niria Alicia Garcia at Experts@diversegreen.org.