Change Leaders
The Security and Sustainability GuideThe brief profiles highlight individuals who have made or are making important contributions to security and/or sustainability thinking and policies, through their research, outreach, and writing and/or by creating or leading important organizations.
While there are many older men from Europe or North America, there are a number of emerging new leaders who are women and/or are from countries outside of Europe and North America.
We welcome suggestions to consider for inclusion in this list.
She a Pakistani activist for female education and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second Pakistani to ever receive a Nobel...
He is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation. Thunberg participated in the organization of the school climate...
He is a Canadian academic, science broadcaster, environmental activist, and co-founder in 1990 of the David Suzuki Foundation in Vancouver. He is best-known for a popular documentary series, “The Nature...
She has over 10 years of experience in the NGO sector within East Africa, dealing with both local and international stakeholders. She led an organization, based in Mwanza Tanzania, which...
He is a British ecological economist, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey, and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity. He was founding director...
He is a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University Climate Change Institute, where he was also the inaugural director (2008-2012). His other positions have included; Commissioner...
He is the executive director of the Global Youth Action Network, a leading alliance of youth organizations in over 180 countries. He is also associate director for Youth in Action,...
She has represented and motivated global youth development on an international level since the age of 21, notably during high-level United Nations initiatives including the declaration of World Youth Skills...
She is a scientist and environmental activist on food and agriculture, intellectual property rights, biodiversity, etc.. She defends the wisdom of many traditional practices and critiques genetic engineering, pesticides, and...
She is a Costa Rican diplomat and international leader on climate change, and daughter of a former Costa Rican president. In 1995, she founded and directed for eight years the...
He is a futurist and co-founder with futurist Theodore J. Gordon of The Millennium Project in 1996, to “provide a context for global thinking.” The MP is best-known for its...
He was an ecological economist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. His other positions include; Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University, Research Associate...
She is s a futurist and evolutionary economist, and founder/president of Ethical Markets Media in St. Augustine, Florida, as well as creator/co-executive producer of its TV Series - Ethical Markets...
He is Professor of Ocean Physics and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge. He is also the President of the Ocean Commission on Sea...
He is a German environmentalist who founded the international tree-planting and environmental advocacy organization Plant-for-the-Planet. He spoke in the European Parliament when we was 10 years of age then at...
She is Head of the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies and Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a board member of...
He is the founder of Generation Waking Up. He holds speeches and organizes workshops and leadership trainings. He self-designed a major titled 'Global Youth and Social Change' at George Mason...
He is well-known as the founder of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington in 1974, where he served as president until 2000. Worldwatch is known for its annual State of the...
He is a world-renowned economist. He is currently director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia and the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He also co-founded...
He is a Spanish scientist and politician, best-known as Director-General of UNESCO (1987-1999), the UN educational, scientific, and cultural organization. Before that, he served as Professor of Biochemistry and later...
Since 2018, he has been the joint director at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Professor in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam. As founder and...
He is a nuclear physicist and former US Secretary of Energy (2013-2017), as well as Undersecretary of Energy for Energy and the Environment (1997-2001). He is currently the Co-Chair and...
He founded the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth, where he is currently a Partnerships Manager in charge of financing for Sustainable Development. In 2020, Loni was enlisted 30...
He is Director, Program on Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions, at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He served as head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a unit of the...
He is a Swedish cancer scientist and founder of The Natural Step in 1989. TNS led to creating the Natural Step Framework, also known as the Framework for Strategic Sustainable...
She is an oceanographer, marine biologist, explorer, and well-known author. She founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research (1992), an ocean engineering firm, and is President and Chair of Mission Blue:...
He is founder and CEO of the Global Footprint Network, and he has sponsored Earth Overshoot Day since 2006. He is a co-author of Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact...
He is a transdisciplinary environmental scientist. His positions include; the the Co-Founder and Science Director of the Stockholm Resilience Center, the Director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of...
She is best known as the first female president of Ireland (1990-1997) and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002). She founded Realizing Rights—The Ethical Global Initiative (2002-2010) and...
He was a Dutch atmospheric chemist known for research on the ozone layer, introducing the concept of nuclear winter, coining the term “Anthropocene,” and joining with 27 other scientists to...
He is a billionaire philanthropist (net worth est. at $48b in 2017—10th richest in the world), founder of Bloomberg L.P. (financial services, mass media, and software) and Bloomberg Philanthropies, and...
He is a German physicist, who has been the Founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in 1991, Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change...
He was a Ghanaian diplomat and served as the 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations (1997-2006), where he promoted the UN Millennium Development Goals, launched the UN Global Compact in...
He is a journalist, environmentalist, and activist as well as a Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont. He founded, and works as senior Advisor at, 350.org.He has also organized...
Paul Ekins (b.1950) is a British leader in sustainable economics. He is Deputy Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy and Director of the...
He is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and widely-traveled speaker based in Sausalito CA. He founded the Natural Capital Institute in 2002, re-named as WiserEarth in 2011. As an entrepreneur, Hawkin founded...
He was an Indian geneticist, renowned for leading India’s Green Revolution developing higher-yielding varieties of wheat. He's the founding Chairman of the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. He also served...
He is a physicist, environmental scientist, and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute in 1982, where he serves as Chairman and Chief Scientist. He is widely known for the following...
She is an English primatologist and anthropologist, who founded the Jane Goodall Institute. She is a member of the World Future Council and was named a UN Messenger of Peace...
She is the co-founder with daughter Anna Lappé of the Small Planet Institute (2002, Cambridge MA) and the Small Planet Fund. She is also co-founder with Joseph Collins of Food...
He is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and Chief Councillor of Australia’s independent Climate Council, which was launched in 2013 after the Australian government...
He joined Junior Chamber International Osaka (JCO) in 2012 and became it's President in 2019. In 2017 he served as Chairperson of the Promoting Sincerity to the General Affairs Commission...
He is a youth activist and social entrepreneur who co-founded the Agents of Change Foundation. At the age of 14, as a radio broadcaster, Kaoma started informing people about the...
She is physician who trained in Norway who became interested in public health and environmental issues, as well as women’s rights. She served as Norwegian Minister for Environmental Affairs (1974-1979),...
Sophia Kianni is an American climate activist specializing in media and strategy who helped organize the 2019 Black Friday climate strike. She is the founder and executive director of Climate CardinalsBefore...
He is an ecological economist, Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and Professor of Public Policy at the Australian National University Crawford School of Public Policy. He founded...
The Lord Stern of Brentford is Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, where he is also Professor of...
As a teenager, he gave TED talks and was invited to speak before the United Nations on environmental policy. At the age of 15 he spoke in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl before...
He is an environmental lawyer, co-founder and senior attorney of the Natural Resources Defense Council (1970-1977) and founding president of the World Resources Institute (1982-1993). He is currently a professor...
He is a former US Senator from Tennessee, where he lives, former US Vice President (1993-2001), and, as Democratic nominee for President in 2000, he lost a highly contested election...
He was an economist and environmental scientist. He was the former chair of the UN’s authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2002-2015) and the former Director General of The Energy...
She is the Head of Climate, Impact & Policy of LOLIWARE Inc.and is the Co-Founder of SYAH.She has served as the Coordinator of the Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network and...
She is an Australian physician and anti-nuclear advocate. Her various positions include; Founding President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute (now Beyond Nuclear) President of the Helen Caldicott Foundation (2008)...
He is a German scientist and politician, co-president of The Club of Rome since 2012, and former co-chair of UNEP’s International Resource Panel. He served as director of the UN...
He is an American politician and diplomat. Kerry drew public attention as a decorated Vietnam veteran who became an anti-war activist as spokesperson for the Vietnam Vets Against the War....
The most noteworthy aspect of this compilation is likely to be the wide variety of contributions that have been made in promoting peace, security, climate concern, sustainability, and/or the energy transition. For individuals whose work was only dimly perceived, if at all, it has been illuminating for us to find out more about what they have done and are doing. We hope that readers will similarly find their horizons to be widened and deepened.
Most of the 40 Profiles in this section suggest little or no collaboration or influence among these individuals, with one large and one small exception. The large exception involves the 29 scientists that came together to introduce the important concept of “planetary boundaries” in 2009; seven of them are profiled below: in addition to lead author Johan Rockstrom, they include Costanza, Crutzen, Folke, Schellnhuber, and Steffen. The small instance of collaboration is between Lovins and von Weizsaeker on radical “Factor 5” resource efficiency. Many of the authors described below do collaborate, however, but not with others chosen for this list.