Our Founder

After years of learning about climate change in a classroom, Ella spent a summer researching how weather affects vulnerable communities and saw the value of local data collection and analysis. She realized that data could help identify real patterns and problems in the places people live, and she started to get interested in how data could make climate issues feel more concrete, especially for students learning about their own communities. Numbers tied to lived experiences made the science feel more relevant.

She saw that when students collect data themselves, they begin to feel more connected to the issues. Learning becomes active, and the information feels personal. Instead of reading about climate change from a distance, students start asking questions and making observations. That idea became the starting point for Citizen Climate.