AERA & The Shatter Foundation: Women’s Empowerment and Climate Change with Amy Trask

CHIEF EXECUTIVE, ANALYST, AND AUTHOR

Did you know that empowering and educating women is key to reducing climate change? In fact, empowering women and girls in developing countries ranked 2nd amongst 76 solutions for curbing global warming. Today, gender equality is still not at the forefront of public attention as a climate solution. 

This is why this Earth Month we chose to partner with The Shatter Foundation, a non-profit that provides girls in underserved communities access to education, mentorship, capital and networks needed to foster an inclusive economy and equitable entrepreneurship. Throughout the month we will be featuring influential women and advisors/mentors to the Foundation as they share their insight on this important topic with us.

"When I learned that The Shatter Foundation and AERA are collaborating in an effort to educate girls and young women with respect to environmental issues and to empower them to look for solutions to environmental problems, my first thought was of my mom. 

My mom graduated college with a degree in chemistry at a time when that was not the norm for young women.  During her final semester of college, a pharmaceutical company conducting on campus interviews told her that no pharmaceutical company would hire her as she was “a woman with a diamond ring on her left hand” and that no business would expend the resources necessary to train her just to see her “leave to have babies.” 

My mom went onto earn a master’s degree and a doctoral degree and she devoted her career both to teaching science to children and to teaching teachers the best way to teach science to children.  Nothing thrilled her more than seeing children fall in love with science and I can’t wait to tell her that The Shatter Foundation and AERA are working together to inspire girls and young women to learn about solve environmental issues and to work to solve environmental problems.   

Here’s to children making the world better and here’s to all who help to educate and empower them to do so. Thank you Shelly Kapoor Collins and Tina Bhojwani for your leadership and your vision and for your efforts to inspire and to assist girls and young women."

– Amy Trask