Heinz Family Foundation Names Founders of Women’s Earth Alliance Recipients of the 29th Heinz Awards

As of 2024, WEA has catalyzed the efforts of over 52,000 women leading environmental initiatives and enterprises in 31 countries, reaching millions with clean water, energy access, regenerative farming practices and climate initiatives. WEA recently launched its 20-year anniversary campaign — Rising Tides, Rising Women — to advance and vastly expand WEA’s global work supporting thousands of frontline, women-led climate justice leaders, enable the acquisition of land crucial to climate protection and resilience efforts, and resource WEA’s work for years to come.

WEA impacts are being realized worldwide, with its leaders working to protect forests and rivers, save threatened indigenous seeds, launch sustainable farms, conserve coral reefs, and protect land rights. In the heart of Indonesia’s Leuser ecosystem, Indigenous women are taking action to defend and conserve their ancestral lands and lifeways. WEA Accelerator leaders at the Seeds of Carver Urban Farm Collective in Los Angeles are piloting bioremediation methods such as planting sunflowers to naturally detoxify the soil and air. In Kenya, WEA-trained women’s groups grew 123,000 trees in Kakamega — the country’s last tropical rainforest — and trained communities to plant saplings for agroforestry, erosion control and climate adaptation. They are growing climate-resilient seeds and establishing community seed banks as an alternative to agrochemical seed systems. And in Narok, Kenya, WEA leaders are ensuring local Maasai communities are climate resilient with tree nurseries, community gardens, clean cooking technology, handmade soap micro-businesses and more. This, in turn, is reducing deforestation, improving financial and family well-being, garnering respect from male community members, and inspiring younger generations.

“For millennia, women have been the bedrock of the ‘care economy’ — nurturing our families, laboring to better our societies, and stewarding the Earth and its precious resources,” says Ms. Kramer. “As the climate emergency intensifies, so does the burden on our world’s women. WEA provides a powerbase for women leaders around the world who are leading critical local environmental fights and who are too often facing marginalization, persecution and deep inequity. Many leaders don’t own the land they work to protect, don’t have a say in the policies that profoundly impact their lives and don’t have access to resources, training or networks of allies. WEA supports and unites these leaders so they are never alone in their efforts to protect our environment for the next generation.”

WEA’s Accelerator-training programs, through which they form partnerships with organizations that share their vision, help to advance and scale the organizations’ work. WEA’s programming began in Africa, Asia and North America, addressing the most pressing environmental issues identified by women in those regions: in Africa, water access; in India, sustainable agriculture; and in North America, legal support for Indigenous women protecting their land and lifeways.

“What we have seen to be true through the almost two decades of WEA’s work is that networks of women community leaders are the lifeblood of this time,” says Ms. Diamond. “And when we are being pummeled by compounding crises — wars, floods, fires, earthquakes and pandemics — these women’s networks kick into gear with brilliance and foresight. It’s these moments when it becomes clear that these leaders aren’t just saving each other, they’re saving all of us. These grassroots networks have been proven throughout history to be one of our most effective and efficient ways to provide relief, distribute resources, administer care, and create lasting and just solutions.”

WEA Accelerators have expanded to Mexico, Indonesia and Brazil, with respective partnerships including their Women and Rivers Accelerator with International Rivers; Women and Forests Accelerators with local nongovernmental organizations in Indonesia, Kenya and Uganda; COVID and Climate Relief, Recovery and Resilience programming with local NGOs in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Congo, Nigeria, India, Mexico and Nicaragua; and U.S. and Mexico Climate Justice Accelerators with partners and collaborators such as the Sierra Club, Soul Fire Farm and Fondo Semillas.

“We honor Amira and Melinda for creating a global network of women who are leading effective, impactful environmental work in their communities and across whole nations,” says Teresa Heinz, Chairman of the Heinz Family Foundation. “Amira and Melinda are listening to the wisdom and insight of women living on the front lines of climate crisis. They are empowering them with the resources they need to create meaningful solutions that respond to their most urgent needs, and as a result, Women’s Earth Alliance is achieving life- and planet-saving systems change. From championing new land, water and agricultural practices to advancing eco-enterprises, Amira and Melinda are showing that together we can turn from centuries of exploitation to embrace new methods of cultivating and living on our land. Together with the women leaders they support around the globe, they are demonstrating what is possible despite tremendous obstacles. Their accomplishments leave us with no excuse and call us all to do better in protecting the beautiful world that we share.”

Created to honor the memory of the late U.S. Senator John Heinz, the Heinz Awards honors excellence and achievement in areas of great importance to him. The 29th Awards brings the total number of recipients to 180 and reflects more than $37 million in monetary awards since the program was launched in 1993.

Additional recipients by category are: 

Arts: Jennie C. Jones, Sonic and Visual Artist, Hudson, New York, creates works of painting, collage, sculpture and sound that engage with the history of American modernism and minimalism while investigating the era’s avant-garde music.

Arts: Gala Porras-Kim, Visual Artist, Los Angeles, California, creates work spanning drawings, sculptures and installations that challenges institutions to reassess their role as stewards of history and culture. Through artworks that are often informed by direct engagement with museums and their staff, she aims to shift policies regarding the ownership of objects.

Economy: Aisha Nyandoro, Ph.D., Founding CEO, Springboard to Opportunities and Founder, Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT), Jackson, Mississippi, is a national leader in the guaranteed income movement. Her work leading Springboard to Opportunities and MMT — the first guaranteed income program for single Black mothers in the U.S. — is not only helping to alleviate economic injustices but also reframing the narrative around poverty.

Economy: Jessica Sager and Janna Wagner, Co-Founders, All Our Kin, New Haven, Connecticut, train, support and sustain family child care educators, arming these home-based providers with the resources and community connections they need to create quality early childhood environments and run successful small businesses. Their program, All Our Kin, not only raises the earning power of providers but also raises the quality, availability and sustainability of child care.

Environment: Scott Loarie, Ph.D., and Ken-ichi Ueda, Co-Organizers, iNaturalist, San Rafael, California, have galvanized millions of nature enthusiasts, researchers and conservation biologists to record and map nature observations across the planet through open-source technological platforms designed to maximize broad participation and data quality. Together, observers crowdsource one of the world’s largest biodiversity databases, logging more than 200 million verified observations that have contributed to thousands of publications on subjects including the discovery of new species, range shifts, the rediscovery of species, distributions of invasive species and species’ responses to climate change. In addition, photo submissions provide valuable insights into species traits and interactions, enabling the collection of extensive data that would be impossible to gather independently.

Recipients of the 29th Heinz Awards will be honored in Pittsburgh in October. For more information on the awardees, visit www.heinzawards.org.

EDITORS/REPORTERS: To obtain photos of the recipients, please contact Abby Manishor at amanishor@burness.com or 917-539-3308.

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About the Heinz Awards

Established by Teresa Heinz in 1993 to honor the memory of her late husband, U.S. Senator John Heinz, the Heinz Awards celebrates the accomplishments and spirit of the Senator by recognizing the extraordinary achievements of individuals in the areas of greatest importance to him. The Awards, administered by the Heinz Family Foundation, currently recognize individuals for their contributions in the areas of the Arts, the Environment and the Economy. Nominations are submitted by invited experts, who serve anonymously, and are reviewed by jurors appointed by the Heinz Family Foundation. The jurors make recommendations to the Board of Directors, which subsequently selects the Award recipients. For more information on the Heinz Awards, visit www.heinzawards.org.

Contacts: Abby Manishor

917-539-3308

amanishor@burness.com

Kim O’Dell

412-497-5786

kodell@heinzoffice.org