Canada’s Top 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leaders List

From Corporate Knights

Today’s teenagers and young adults, a demographic cohort referred to as the Millennial Generation, make up roughly 25 per cent of the North American population and an estimated 2.5 billion global citizens. Arguably the largest living generation since the Baby Boomers, the economic and political influence of Millennials is growing as they enter or move through the workforce toward their peak spending years. Right behind them is Generation Z, the impact of which we’re just beginning to see.

For both, the Internet is an appendage, climate change is a nagging reality, mobility is just the way things are, and the weight of the future is on their shoulders. It’s for this reason the United Nations says youth from around the world must be an active part of all levels of decision-making related to sustainable development. “It affects their lives today and has implications for their futures,” the global agency says.

“Strengthen by social networking tools and an almost immediate access to information, if and when Canadian millennials are ignited to the impact will be huge.”

Corporate Knights, with sponsorship support from paper-products manufacturer Kruger Products, decided it was time to shine a light on Canadian youth who have already demonstrated themselves as leaders of sustainable development. The results, as you’ll see in the pages to come, is our Top 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leaders list – an impressive collection of young entrepreneurs, activists, corporate professionals and students eager to make our world a better place. We opened nominations in February and received more than 90 candidates, which an internal team whittled down to a list of 50. From this, a panel of four judges each submitted their Top 15 picks, which when combined shortened the list to 32. A fifth judge, Corporate Knights editor-in-chief Tyler Hamilton, had the difficult task of trimming two people off the list to reach our final Top 30.

Our other judges were:

An Abacus Data report on Millennials (http://canadianmillennials.ca ) released in 2010 called this all-digital demographic a “largely untapped political force” in Canada. “Strengthened by social networking tools and an almost immediate access to information, if and when Canadian millennials are ignited to act the impact will be huge.”

Article source: corporateknights.com