kier blake is a second-generation Jamaican, nonprofit co-founder, climate organizer and justice-oriented educator who is dedicated to disrupting the status quo in climate education. Based on unceded, occupied Munsee Lenape–Canarsee land (Brooklyn, New York), kier’s goal is to prove the critical need for education on climate change as we work to build just, regenerative futures.

At Next100, kier is working to expand access to interdisciplinary, justice-centered climate education in New York’s K–12 schools and beyond. While teaching students in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, where students bear the brunt of climate-related health issues such as high rates of asthma and limited access to nutritious food, kier realized their upbringing was shaped by those same forces. They now pay it forward through policy research, bill lobbying, and tracking national trends to drive change.

Prior to Next100, kier co-founded the education nonprofit Start:Empowerment, where they implement justice-oriented climate education in New York City schools: the program served almost 4,000 students in just five years. They previously served in their neighborhood, East Flatbush, as a core organizer in the No North Brooklyn Pipeline Alliance, helping to resist the racist pipeline forcibly placed there on behalf of nearly 153,000 people, and continue to support various Earth, Sky, and Water Protectors in order to advance of Indigenous sovereignty and anti-extraction projects. Currently, they serve on both the Climate Resilience and Education Task Force’s Steering and Policy Committees, as well as the national Coalition for Climate Education Policy.

kier counts themself indebted to the Kenyan, Palestinian, Lebanese, and rural and urban American communities that have embraced them and supported their educational leadership in becoming a graduate of The New School’s environmental policy and sustainability management program (MSc 2024). They have been recognized by the North American Association of Environmental Educators, Tishman Environment the Design Center, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, actress Regina Hall and the Solutions Project, the New York City Department of Education’s Office of Sustainability, EarthJustice, and NYU’s Office of Sustainability.

You can follow kier’s work both here and on Instagram and LinkedIn.