Natasha Maki Jessen-Petersen is a 32-year-old graduate student with over five years of experience working at the United Nations, as well as past experiences teaching and working with various NGOs. She grew up moving back and forth across the Atlantic, with family in Japan and Denmark. She is mixed-race Japanese-Danish and speaks four and a half languages. 

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Megan Belongia is a Master’s student at Stanford University, where she previously completed a Bachelor’s of Science. She is 23 and currently resides in Palo Alto, California but grew up in Omaha, Nebraska in a middle-class household. Her parents, twin brother, and grandmother still reside in Nebraska and Kansas, and she has not been personally displaced by natural hazards. 

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Patrick Kim is a 19-year-old undergraduate student at Stanford University. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California in a low-income household of four. His parents are first-generation immigrants from Korea. He grew up aware of climate change and stayed home on wildfire days instead of snow days.

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While none of us have been forcibly displaced due to climate-related issues, we either know people or have worked with people who have. We have also experienced, albeit at a much milder level, the very real impacts of climate disasters.