Leominster high guest speaker talks climate change and environmental career paths

LEOMINSTER — The most recent Celebrating the Success of Women of Color speaker series program featured a woman who has dedicated her career and life to climate education and environmental sustainability.

Brandeis University graduate Sonali Anderson spoke to Leominster High School (LHS) students on Oct. 23 about the path she took that led her to where she is today and “what it means to be youth and empowered.” The 25-year-old regularly travels to Uganda, where she is spreading the word about climate issues and as an E2 fellow — an environmental advocacy organization headquartered in Washington D.C. that is a partner of the Natural Resources Defense Council — is launching an environmental club for youth.

Growing up in Georgia, Anderson said she was “surrounded by cows, chickens, goats, and farms…immersed in nature.” Her Girl Scouts Gold Award project was a rainwater harvesting system and she disclosed that she “wanted to be the female Steve Irwin.”

Studying environmental studies and business at Brandeis, where she was a track star, led her to discover her her passion – helping companies become more environmentally sustainable.

“I was interested in corporate sustainability even before I knew what it meant,” Anderson said.

She also knew she was passionate “about exploring the black diaspora” and shared with the young adults that she was raised in a place where the names of streets, towns, and landmarks often had “racist” roots. She showed them slides of a number of visuals featuring people outdoors things like hiking, biking, climbing, and other activities, pointing out the “strong depiction of white people.”

“That’s been the consistent narrative of the environment and who belongs, for so long,” Anderson said. “It shapes our beliefs, truths, and reality.”

She had an easy, warm manner about her as she spoke about “grounding ourselves” in relation to connecting to the environment and that there is a huge “disconnection” to the natural world due to technology.

She went on to talk about the many job opportunities available “in the climate space, in particular clean energy” and that oftentimes, people of color “don’t get to see ourselves represented dominantly” in those fields or when it comes to being out in the world actively enjoying the environment. Anderson conveyed that while diversity, equity, and inclusion – known as DEI – has helped shift that culture some, “the lack of representation goes deep” and mentioned “the irony within the pervasiveness of whiteness in environmental representation.”

“How can we talk about the environment but not talk about the people?” she asked.

Anderson said that historically, “people of color have always been in the environment” as “natural caretakers” – slaves for example – and relayed that the “separation has been intentional” when it comes to people of color and how they are less likely to engage in nature-based outdoor recreation activities due to historic discrimination.

She spoke about “who controls the environment…controls wealth, to this day” and urged the students to travel the world and explore other societies and lifestyles as a way to broaden their horizons and learn about the different ways people live.

“Not everywhere is America,” Anderson said to the students before giving them another sound piece of advice – “remembering ourselves and reclaiming our role.”

LHS senior Princess Sasu, who now spearheads the meaningful and inspirational speaker series her older sister launched in 2022, connected with Anderson through one of the past guest speakers and noted this was the first program of the school year. Sasu introduced Anderson as “a very hard-working woman” with a lot of “strength.”

Anderson, who is multilingual, speaking Creole among other languages, thanked Sasu for inviting her to be a guest speaker and told everyone gathered that she had just returned to the U.S. from Uganda via San Francisco just days earlier and was happy to be there.

During the next segment of her talk she focused on climate change, what she said is a “biproduct of global warming” and shared that the “ongoing increases of temperature” and greenhouse gases from all different types of emissions, from vehicles to refrigerators, are “what’s driving global warming.”

Anderson shared that all the “extreme weather” that has now become the norm is an effect of global warming and noted that more people have asthma these days than ever before as well as “less access to cleaner and greener foods,” which leads to can lead to health issues such as diabetes and high blood pressure, life threatening ailments “more common in communities of color.”

She offered some tangible ways people can help to “combat and solve” environmental issues, including renewable energy, conservation, policy, even fashion such as sneakers made from plant waste.

“There is a place for you in sustainability and figuring out how to make what you want to do sustainable,” Anderson said of tailoring jobs and careers to be environmentally friendly.

She noted that for a long time Massachusetts has been committed renewable energy, conservation, and policy, and reported through the state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plan gas emissions will be drastically reduced by 2030. Anderson also told the students that there are “a lot of jobs being created” in the clean energy space — and a lot of money to be made in them.

“They need people and they are paying quite a bit of money. There are a lot of options” she said, listing HVAC and other vocational trades, engineering fields, and setting up solar panels as just some of the options of “careers in the climate critical sector.”

Anderson shared about her experience in Uganda teaching climate education through different initiatives and how that has helped her learn more about herself and her “alignment.”

“I had no idea that I could create a life serving others,” she said. “Everyone can be lucky but not everyone can be special. It’s a choice.”

She told the students about going through a tough time and finding herself in a challenging place when she had to move back home with her parents. Anderson said that while it was a painful time as she recovered from a heartbreak, it gave her the opportunity to do some self-reflection and figure out what she wanted to experience with her career and life.

“There’s creation in chaos,” she said, adding that when she was taking a long walk one day, “something said to me, ‘Choose yourself.’” Anderson began building out a climate focused business and when a fellow Black entrepreneur offered her a job, “that was the ticket” that granted her to work in Uganda.

Before taking questions from them, she told the students that she was recently in Ethiopia for a climate summit and urged them to get involved with environmental issues themselves on a local level.

“To be youth empowered means that you are capable of creating things…a belief and understanding and knowing who you are,” Anderson said. “You must first believe, which is then to do, which is then to have. You need to see yourself as the creator of your own reality.

“What is the idea that you have? You start the action but that all comes from your interest, what draws your attention and why you are doing what you are doing,” she continued. “It’s about realizing we are the future. The decisions you make…will shape your life.”

Anderson said that when it comes to creating a path for yourself, whether it be a career or personal, “changing your mind set is one of the biggest challenges” – and that “oftentimes, creation happens in darkness.”