As Ladies’s Historical past Month kicks off, meet a number of the RMI girls who’re working for a clear, sustainable future.

RMI is made up of greater than 600 passionate, dedicated, local weather change specialists — 57 % of whom determine as feminine. March is Ladies’s Historical past Month, after we have a good time girls’s contributions to society. Meet a number of the girls of RMI who’re working to vary our world for the higher and to create a clear, sustainable future.

Charlin Bodley

“Ladies (and kids) are on the entrance traces of this existential menace and should due to this fact be an integral a part of the answer. I’m a Caribbean girl, myself, and I’m on the entrance line of local weather change, dwelling the on a regular basis realities of it in a small island growing state. Ladies like me can symbolize the distinctive wants of different girls and kids via our work within the area.” — Charlin Bodley, Supervisor, World South Program

Charlin Bodley leads RMI’s Ladies in Renewable Power (WIRE) Community, advocating for elevated gender equality in management positions throughout the vitality sector in authorities businesses, utilities, regulators, and personal sector entities. She can also be supporting a venture to supply vitality coverage suggestions to the Turks and Caicos authorities, and co-leading on RMI’s Power Transition Academy’s Caribbean Fellowship Program. Bodley loves the people-centric nature of her work, and the potential that it has to positively impression lives.

Kaitlyn Bunker with photo voltaic panels

“Globally, girls are considerably impacted by local weather change. And we want all views included to deal with this international problem — however girls have typically been excluded and are underrepresented in fields like vitality. For me personally, I hope to make an impression on tackling local weather change in order that my daughters could have alternatives to pursue their passions, no matter they might be.” — Kaitlyn Bunker, Principal, World South Program

Kaitlyn Bunker helps Caribbean islands in accelerating their clear and resilient vitality transitions. Individuals within the Caribbean area are a number of the first to expertise direct impacts of local weather change, and Bunker is impressed by the actions they’re taking to remodel their vitality methods as a way to contribute as little emissions as doable, whereas assembly native priorities like reducing the prices of electrical energy, turning into extra resilient within the face of accelerating hurricanes, creating native jobs and native possession of the vitality system, and extra.

Allesandra Carreon

“It is necessary that ladies work in fields to unravel systemic issues like local weather change not solely as a result of it impacts them and their households firsthand, but additionally as a result of range within the workforce in any respect ranges is a essential prerequisite to make sure we obtain a local weather answer that’s quick, efficient, and globally related.” — Alessandra Carreon, Supervisor, Carbon-Free Transportation

Alessandra Carreon works on fostering inexpensive and accessible EV adoption and charging. Her work additionally informs the event of accountable and sustainable worth chains for EVs, which frequently supply uncooked supplies that come from economically weak areas or whose processing can pose environmental and human rights dangers to communities. Carreon says she is pushed to work towards a clear vitality transition “whereas making certain the advantages of the transition attain everybody — particularly traditionally marginalized communities which might be typically the final or least prone to get pleasure from these advantages.”

Molly Freed

“As a girls’s faculty graduate, I can confidently say that we want girls in each area — local weather change isn’t any totally different. Ladies’s views are essential in growing new, community-oriented options to this subject. Ladies shall be (and already are) on the entrance traces of devastating local weather impacts, which signifies that they’ve a vested curiosity in combating the basis causes.” — Molly Freed, Senior Affiliate, US Program

Molly Freed is at present pushing policymakers and stakeholders in numerous American states to undertake daring and equitable local weather coverage. As every state has its personal set of challenges and alternatives, she finds it fascinating to determine their distinctive decarbonization pathways. Freed is optimistic in regards to the historic alternatives offered by the Inflation Discount Act. “It’s actually a gamechanger for states, from environmental justice to financial growth,” Freed says.

Yihan Hao

“Our crew typically walks into convention rooms as the one girls talking as keynote audio system or panelists. I used to be actually impressed by how [our managing director] Ting dealt with this throughout a convention. She would use two minutes to start with of her speech to acknowledge that she is the one feminine speaker on the convention, and she or he would level out that almost all of RMI’s Beijing analysis crew are feminine and we ship main thought items that everybody ought to take note of.” — Yihan Hao, Principal, China Program

Since Yihan Hao started at RMI, she has labored to assist transfer China towards zero-carbon specializing in inexperienced buildings, inexperienced energy buying and selling, methane mitigation, rural/agriculture decarbonization, provide chain decarbonization, and transitional finance. For Hao, probably the most thrilling factor about her function is witnessing real-world modifications which might be pushed by her crew, particularly when the important thing policymakers and company leaders acknowledge their work in public settings.

Radhika Lalit

“Ladies have to guide the cost within the combat towards local weather change as a result of the way forward for our households in addition to our subsequent technology is at stake right here. We’re highly effective change brokers, and our distinctive contributions and views may be the important thing to unlocking the options to the vitality transition.” — Radhika Lalit, Principal, Local weather-Aligned Industries

Radhika Lalit is at present main RMI’s work on decarbonizing the cement and concrete sector. She additionally helped launch RMI’s Middle for Local weather-Aligned Finance and led the design, creation, and implementation of the World Cooling Prize, a world competitors to develop a climate-friendly residential cooling answer. “I get actually excited after I’m capable of see the direct local weather impression of my work,” she says.

Kaitlyn Ramirez mountaineering

“The actions for environmental justice have typically been led by girls, notably girls of shade, as a result of the harms of fossil fuels and of local weather change disproportionately fall on the communities least liable for the issue. Fairness and justice are indispensable components of the answer; the vitality transition and its advantages should middle on marginalized teams, together with girls and notably girls of shade.” — Kaitlyn Ramirez, Affiliate, Local weather-Aligned Industries

Kaitlyn Ramirez works to advance inexperienced hydrogen’s use to decarbonize key industrial sectors. She’s at present working to ascertain a inexperienced hydrogen hub in Mississippi and facilitate the transition away from coal-reliant blast furnace metal crops. She’s energized by the chance to work on first-of-their-kind, bright-spot tasks that can reveal to different gamers in these industries that the chance to transition is already right here.

Samhita Shiledar

“With the prevailing gender inequality in a lot of the world and the related lack of assets and data, girls are extra uncovered to the opposed impacts of local weather change. On the similar time, there are fewer girls in local weather change-related governance and decision-making. This disparity in illustration makes local weather change a gender subject.” — Samhita Shiledar, Supervisor, India Program

Samhita Shiledar is engaged on decarbonizing the transportation system in India, together with electrifying supply automobiles via the Shoonya marketing campaign, selling zero-emissions trucking, and extra. She is most excited in regards to the alternative to make an on-the-ground impression via her crew’s coverage and pilots-related work and the chance to scale RMI’s options in different growing nations.

Keep tuned for subsequent week’s article on March 8, Worldwide Ladies’s Day, which highlights the work RMI is doing to shut the gender hole within the local weather change area.

Laurie Stone, Managing Editor, Communications

By Laurie Stone © 2021 Rocky Mountain Institute. Printed with permission. Initially posted on RMI.

Featured picture courtesy of IRENA

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