Announcing the GCoM Youth Policy Innovation Team

The GCoM Youth Policy Innovation Team brings together a team of global youth that, in this first iteration, will be supported to work on synthesizing the data collected from Student Energy’s Global Youth Energy Outlook and extracting youth policy insights that will inform city-level climate action. The team is excited to share their findings at the Innovate4Cities Conference happening between October 11-15 to an audience of local governments, decision makers, academics, and other actors in the energy sector. The final report of their work will be delivered by the end of the year to inform GCOM’s Research and Innovation technical working group’s 2022 workplan.

 

Let’s meet the Team Members!

 

Alison Fong

Alison is a budding young urbanist passionate about connecting people, communities, knowledge/stories, natural ecosystems, and the built environment through an inclusive and sustainable creative focus. A diligent character with multifaceted leadership skills, she has experience across diverse portfolios ranging from architecture, placemaking, urban planning, community engagement, graphic design and visual communications.

Currently completing her Master of Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Alison has been exploring adaptable housing and inclusive placemaking. She has also been actively seeking innovative ways to advocate for climate action, urban resilience action, and voices of young urban planning and design students and graduates of the University as part of her involvement with student society, The Urban Collective.

Jarret Fisher

Jarret Fisher is a North American Regional Coordinator for the Global Youth Energy Outlook, and has now joined the GCOM Youth Policy Innovation Team. She represented the United States at the 10th Clean Energy Ministerial and 4th Mission Innovation Youth Leaders Forum in Vancouver, Canada in May 2019. In addition, Jarret hosts a podcast called “Sustainable Cities” which details how cities around the world are contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Kayla Choi

Kayla Choi currently majors in Civil Engineering with specific interest in transportation, green buildings and renewable energy. Her past projects include spearheading fundraisers such as ‘Run for Life’, a 5-km mini-marathon to raise awareness for sustainable living, and ‘Plogging’, a street clean-up challenge event. With specific focus on energy and climate, she co-organized a renewable energy tour in Seoul for both locals and foreigners sponsored by KEEC, planned a curriculum for educating elementary students on climate change in partnership with the Climate Scouts program, arranged environmental campaigns on her university campus, co-planned and spoke at ‘Docking Talking’, a youth networking event to discuss environmental issues and solutions, and worked in the planning committee for ‘Energy Transition Frontier’, a nation-wide program to address wind energy barriers. Currently, she is serving as the OECD Pacific Regional Coordinator for Student Energy’s Global Youth Energy Outlook initiative and is a committee member of South Korea’s Youth Climate Network, Bigwave. In her spare time, she throws punches in her kickboxing classes, goes hiking in nearby trails, and likes to read on her kindle.

Nabila Putri Salsabila

Nabila Putri Salsabila (Salsa) is a lifelong, versatile learner and high achiever who aspires to be a consultant and decision/policymaker in the energy transition, climate action, and sustainable development sector. She is an incoming MSc Environmental Sciences student at ETH Zürich, majoring in Environmental Systems and Policy. She performs her duties at Student Energy as the Southeast Asia Regional Coordinator for the Global Youth Energy Outlook. In this role, she is assigned to engage 5,000+ youth in the region by disseminating questionnaires and co-leading regional dialogues with partner institutions. The Outlook will convey youth’s energy transition aspirations and demand a course of action at political, technological, financial, and societal levels, with findings set to be presented at COP26. Furthermore, she partook in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative’s Youth Challenge Team as the Southeast Asia and the Pacific representative, where she proposed policy recommendations to enhance OGCI’s climate and decarbonization ambition as a major oil and gas consortium. Salsa is also a One Young World Ambassador who received the BP Advancing Energy scholarship in 2019 and is a McKinsey’s Next Generation Women Leaders Asia-Pacific 2021.

Nyashadzashe Kunaka

Nyashadzashe recently graduated with an MSc Degree in Energy Engineering (Including climate change) from the Pan African University Institute of Water and Energy Sciences. She got involved with Student Energy in 2018 when she became a member of the PAUWES Chapter and later served as the female Co-president from 2019-2020. Her main role focused on devising strategies to implement clean energy use and adopt energy efficiency measures to promote sustainable energy use in Algeria. In 2020, Nyashadzashe was selected as one of the Regional Coordinators representing the MENA Region for the Global Youth Energy Outlook, which is the first report of its kind focusing on engaging with 50 000+ youth to hear their views concerning the Sustainable Energy transition. Nyashadzashe is currently part of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM) Youth Policy Innovation Team that aims to synthesize Student Energy’s Global Youth Energy Outlook and develop insights that cities can use to take climate action. Her hobbies include traveling, reading and watching TV.

Paola Flores Carvajal

Paola studies Industrial Engineering at Universidad San Francisco Xavier (USFX) and is passionate about renewable energy, science, start-ups, and community projects. In 2015, Paola received a scholarship from the Embassy of the United States of America to participate in a Science and Innovation Summer Camp in La Jolla, California where Paola gained life-changing experience about renewable energy and its importance in our future. Since then, Paola has worked on many social projects in Bolivia and founded Magnífica Warmi with a group of friends, which is a project that works with Indigenous women on issues related to the environment and climate change. In 2020, she participated in the Student Energy Leaders Fellowship and in 2021 was selected to represent Bolivia in the Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition at Milan for Pre-COP where 400 young people from all over the world will meet to propose the construction of a more sustainable future.

Syed Faisal Shah

Syed Faisal Shah is an engineer and youth activist from Pakistan and recently graduated with a Masters in Energy Management and Sustainability from the U.S.-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Energy at the University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar. Faisal is the Co-Founder of the Student Energy Chapter at USPCAS-E, a Student Energy Leaders Fellow, and is the South Asia Regional Coordinator of Student Energy’s Global Youth Energy Outlook. Faisal is also working as Youth Minister for Energy at the Provincial Youth Assembly where he is involved in raising the voices of young people in energy and climate policy making to ensure inclusive decision making. He is working towards driving sustainable development across Pakistan and South Asia. Faisal has participated and presented his research work in many national and international sustainable energy conferences. He recently published about sustainable development of large dams in the 3rd International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies. As a global citizen, Faisal loves to network and collaborate with young people from diverse educational, social and cultural backgrounds, and is passionate about working with young people on impactful projects for a sustainable and secure future.

Tianna Philippot

Tianna Philippot is a researcher at the Global Convenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy and is the North American Regional Coordinator for the Global Youth Energy Outlook with Student Energy. She has a degree in Biosystems Engineering and Environmental Specialization from the University of Manitoba and currently works as an Engineer-in-Training. Previous to that, she has worked in environmental engineering consulting, hydro power, and renewable energy research laboratories.

Ye Zheng

Ye is a first-year Masters in Civil Engineering student at Stanford University and was the GYEO Regional Coordinator of the Greater China region. Ye has been actively involved in research projects and humanitarian programs in diverse fields of structure designs, hazards mitigation and sustainable energy transition. During her undergraduate study at McGill University, Ye founded the McGill chapter of Student Energy and co-founded a social enterprise called PDT Food Depot which aims to promote surplus food re-utilization. This year, Ye led the GYEO Country Ambassador team in China to gather youth voices on the energy transition through distributing surveys and holding regional dialogues. In the future, Ye aspires to continue to take concrete steps towards promoting sustainable infrastructure and cities.