Arushi Surve- Youth Advisory Council Member 2025-2026
About This Event
Arushi Surve (she/her) is an 18-year-old climate activist from the United States and an aspiring aerospace engineer studying at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has explored sustainable aerospace applications through work with NASA, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the University of Basque.
At 15, Arushi founded Mission Green Global, a nonprofit now active in 60+ chapters across 37 countries. The organization has partnered with groups such as Bow Seat, and she is also involved with SDSN Youth and the US Climate Action Network. Her journey into activism began during a trip to the mountains of India in 10th grade, when she saw hundreds of plastic bottles littering the valley. Rallying her family and passing tourists to help clean them up, she realized she did not need to wait until she was older to take action. But when she tried to get involved, she ran into the same barriers many young people face: programs were too far away, designed for older participants, or too rigid for full-time students. So, she built her own solution. Mission Green Global became a platform for youth everywhere to join climate action.
Arushi is deeply passionate about accessibility in climate advocacy. She has seen firsthand the power of young people to drive transformative change, and her work, from facilitating ocean sustainability workshops to collaborating on reforestation and equity initiatives, focuses on ensuring underrepresented youth have both a voice and a platform in shaping our future. She believes environmentalism should not be limited to those with resources, and she is dedicated to bringing sustainability education to communities that have never had access to it. For her, advocacy is not just about solving a crisis, it is about uniting people and giving them tangible ways to protect what they care about.
As a scientist, engineer, researcher, and artist, Arushi encourages interdisciplinary approaches that make space for everyone in climate action, whether designing tote bags, sharing stories, or building technology that cleans oil spills. She sees a role for every youth, and adult, in caring for the planet. As part of the World Ocean Day Council, she hopes to highlight how issues from agriculture to waste management connect back to the ocean, and how empowering people to recognize those links can expand conservation. She has spent years creating accessible, low-tech models of action for youth around the world and is excited to support efforts to make ocean advocacy more inclusive and scalable, especially for communities often disconnected from coastal work.
Arushi also serves on the United States Youth Advisory Council to the UN Ocean Decade, and she is the youngest speaker at both the annual US Climate Action Network Conference and the North American Association of Environmental Education.
When she is not working on climate action, she loves spending time with family and friends, writing, baking, painting, playing soccer, and dancing.
She is thrilled to serve on the World Ocean Day Council and looks forward to the year ahead!