Renata Koch Alvarenga

Renata Koch Alvarenga is a prominent youth advocate for gender and climate justice. At 22, she founded EmpoderaClima, a youth-led organization based in Brazil that promotes women's empowerment in climate decision-making and advocates for girls' education and climate action in the Global South, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. She recently earned a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she focused on climate finance and resilience, conducting research in partnership with Harvard and the UN in Puerto Rico and Barbados. For the past eight years, Koch Alvarenga has worked to ensure youth have access to high-level UN decision-making spaces.