Team

Lauren Ritchie

Lauren Ritchie is a 20-year-old climate activist, writer, podcast host, and fourth-year undergraduate student from The Bahamas studying Sustainable Development at Columbia University. She is the creator of The Eco Justice Project, a digital platform that educates on global climate justice, promotes intersectional climate action, and seeks to make sustainable living more accessible and inclusive by amplifying the voices of marginalized communities. She is a writer and content strategist for Brown Girl Green, a Youth Ambassador for Plastic Pollution Coalition, an Ambassador for the Global Wildlife Conservation (now ReWild), and the co-host of the podcast Black Girl Blueprint, a platform to center the voices and celebrate the accomplishments of young Black women in a vast array of fields. She is also the creator of Columbia Climate Conversations, a panel series in partnership with Columbia University’s Earth Institute that invites well-known activists to speak on topics ranging from intersectional environmentalism to disability awareness.  

Benjamin Keisling

Benjamin Keisling is a glaciologist and activist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. His research uses computer models to recreate the past behavior of ice sheets in order to predict how they will change with the warming climate. The newest project he’s involved with, GreenDrill, will drill into the bedrock underneath Greenland’s ice sheet to reveal the past distribution of the ice. He is also studying leadership models that promote diversity in geoscience with a project called Alliance-Building Offshore to Achieve Resilience and Diversity (All-ABOARD). He also serves on Lamont’s newly created Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force, and is an outspoken figure dedicated to broadening participation of historically underrepresented groups in the geosciences. Along with Kailani Acosta, he helps to organize and supervise Columbia Climate Conversations created by Lauren Ritchie. 

Kailani Acosta

Kailani Acosta is a fourth-year Ph.D. student at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in the department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, interested in biological oceanography. Her research is primarily on the transformation of Phosphorus and Nitrogen in the upper ocean in the Gulf of Mexico and how nutrients change over time and space. Her research interests include nutrient cycling, microbial ecology, and ecosystem modeling. She is passionate about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM. At Columbia, she created the Seminar Diversity Initiative, an initiative focused on increasing diversity and inclusion in research seminars, co-founded the Race Talk Book Club, and co-chaired the Lamont Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force. Along with Benjamin Keisling, she helps to organize and supervise Columbia Climate Conversations created by Lauren Ritchie.