Varshini Prakash

Varshini Prakash (born 1992/1993) is an American climate activist and executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a 501(c)(4) organization which she co-founded in 2017. She was named on the 2019 Time 100 Next list, and was a corecipient of the Sierra Club John Muir Award in 2019. Early life and education Prakash was born and raised in Massachusetts to parents from Southern India; her father was from Tamil Nadu. She first became aware of climate change when she was 11 while watching news coverage of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which impacted Chennai, where her grandparents lived. Growing up, she wanted to become a doctor. Prakash went to college at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she began organizing around climate issues. In late 2015, devastating floods in South India seized her attention, having caused flooding up to the level of her grandparents' apartment in Chennai. To help combat climate change, Prakash became a leader of the school's fossil fuel divestment campaign. Prakash also worked with a national organization, Fossil Fuel Divestment Student Network. In 2016, a year after she graduated, UMass Amherst became the first large, public university to divest. Career In 2017, Prakash launched the Sunrise Movement, an American youth-led political movement and 501(c)(4) that advocates political action on climate change, with seven other co-founders.