In 2019, Wawa Gatheru became the first Black person in history to receive the prestigious Rhodes, Truman, and Udall scholarships for her environmental scholarship and activism. She is the founder and Executive Director of Black Girl Environmentalist (BGE), a national organization dedicated to empowering Black girls, women, and gender-expansive people across the climate sector. With over 2,500 members, BGE has been recognized by Forbes as one of the largest Black youth-led organizations in the country.

Wawa’s work centers at the intersection of climate action, racial equity, and narrative change. Through BGE, she has built a transformative national network offering mentorship, green workforce access, and community infrastructure in over a dozen U.S. cities. She is an inaugural member of the National Environmental Youth Advisory Council of the U.S. EPA—the first federal youth-led environmental advisory board in U.S. history.

Wawa serves on boards and advisory councils for Greenpeace USA, EarthJustice, Climate Power, the National Parks Conservation Association, Good Energy, and Sound Future. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Essence, and NBC. She is a Glamour College Woman of the Year, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, a L’Oréal Woman of Worth, a Grist 50 fixer, a Climate 100 leader by The Independent, and an AfroTech Future 50. In 2023, she was a Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with Yale and featured on the January digital cover of Vogue alongside Billie Eilish and other youth climate leaders.