Kirk nominated for UCLA Pritzker Genius award
Chelsea Kirk is one of thirteen 2025 UCLA Pritzker Genius award nominees. As Clare Griffith writes for UCLA, “The 2025 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award nominees are less a list than a signal — a cross-section of where environmental progress is headed, and who is leading it. All under the age of 40, this year’s cohort spans five continents and a constellation of fields: AI ethics, regenerative agriculture, marine carbon storage. If there’s a unifying thread, it’s that climate leadership is no longer confined to a single discipline or job title.”
“Now in its ninth year, the Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award was created to identify and support the most promising young minds working at the forefront of environmental progress… The 2025 nominees were selected through a competitive global nomination process.”
Chelsea is Director of Policy and Advocacy of Climate and the Built Environment at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and a 2024 Switzer Fellow focused on empowering tenants in residential building decarbonization efforts throughout Los Angeles and California, ensuring that tenants are the beneficiaries of climate initiatives.
“In California, the buildings people live in are among the state’s largest sources of climate pollution. Retrofitting them is a core part of the state’s climate plan — but until recently, there were few safeguards in place to protect the people inside. Chelsea Kirk, a policy strategist and housing advocate based in Los Angeles, is helping to change that,” her Pritzker award nomination profile reads.
“I’m humbled to be included among these nominees. I am not an inventor or a scientist. I’m just someone who has seen how deeply landlords and private property regimes can harm people, and how those same systems are barriers to real climate progress,” Chelsea shared on LinkedIn. “My work is about taking power from private landlords and fossil fuel companies and putting it into the hands of people, because if we don't, our planet won't have a fighting chance and neither will we.”
