Meet Leah Thomas: The Trailblazing Activist Redefining Green Movement with Intersectionality

Leah Thomas, also known as “Green Girl Leah,” is an American environmental activist, author, and founder of the Intersectional Environmentalist movement. Born and raised in Florissant, Missouri a suburb of St. Louis she grew up in a middle-class family where she developed a love for nature, animals, and being outdoors, though she didn’t initially identify as an environmentalist. Her formative years were shaped by her grandmother, who normalized thrift-shopping and deal-finding, instilling values that would later influence her sustainable lifestyle advocacy. Leah Thomas attended Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) before pursuing higher education at Chapman University in Orange, California. Initially a biology major, she quickly switched to Environmental Science and Policy with a cluster in Comparative World Religions, graduating in 2017. Her academic journey was profoundly influenced by her identity as a Black woman in environmental spaces, where she often found herself the only person of color in her classes, struggling to find discussions that connected environmental issues to racial justice.

The catalyst for Thomas’s activism came in summer 2014, when Leah Thomas was home in Florissant during the shooting of Michael Brown an unarmed Black teenager killed by police just ten minutes from where she grew up. Many of her friends and family members were tear-gassed during the subsequent protests. Returning to Chapman that fall, she found herself unable to focus on standard environmental coursework while her community faced crisis.

“I was thinking about how my identity and my Blackness were so enmeshed in my studies even though it wasn’t often discussed,” she later reflected. “I feel like in a lot of my classes we would learn that a lot of environmental injustices have more harmful effects on Black and Brown communities, but then they do brush over it and go back to talking about saving the salmon”.

This disconnect between her studies and her reality led her to recognize that the same systems of oppression were at play in both environmental and racial justice spheres a realization that would define her career.

Early Career of Leah Thomas

Following her graduation in 2017, Leah Thomas took an unconventional path by “signing up for random things” that would shape her environmental journey. She became a park ranger at Nicodemus National Historic Site in rural Kansas the oldest and only remaining Black settlement west of the Mississippi River, founded by formerly enslaved African Americans after the Civil War. “That experience completely changed my life,” she recalled. “There I was, the summer after the Ferguson uprisings, in this beautiful town that I had never heard about, that had a beautiful piece of American history, that I didn’t know anything about”.

The following summer, she served as an interpretive park ranger at The White House and President’s Park in Washington, D.C., which sparked her love for storytelling. She also interned with the National Park Service and worked for eco-friendly soap company ECOS, where she first considered sustainability in pet care and home products.

Patagonia and Corporate Environmentalism

Leah Thomas in 2017,  landed her “dream job” at Patagonia, working as an assistant for Rick Ridgeway (who oversaw environmental affairs and public engagement) and Vincent Stanley (the company’s chief storyteller), while also serving on the communications team. Despite Patagonia’s reputation as a progressive environmental leader, Thomas observed significant gaps in their approach to diversity and inclusion.

She recalls challenging campaigns that featured no people of color: “I would hear things along the lines of, ‘Well we just don’t know any black surfers,’ or ‘There’s no black climbers in the campaign because we don’t know any black climbers.’ And I was like, guys, we have to think a little bit deeper here”. This experience, combined with her ongoing observations about how Black and Brown communities disproportionately suffered from climate change and pollution, solidified her understanding that racial justice and environmental justice were inextricably linked.

Coining “Intersectional Environmentalism” and Going Viral

In April 2020, Leah Thomas was furloughed from Patagonia due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While many turned to baking bread, she worked on her manifesto. On May 28, 2020, she posted a graphic to Instagram with the words “Environmentalists for Black Lives Matter” and a definition of “intersectional environmentalism” a term she coined based on legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality. The post went viral. “I didn’t think that was a revolutionary thing to say,” Thomas later admitted. “I just decided to define intersectional environmentalism in that post because I wanted people to see the type of environmentalism that I practice and extend an olive branch towards the environmental community to join the environmentalism a lot of BIPOC are practicing”. Her father, anticipating the movement’s potential, had already registered intersectionalenvironmentalist.com a domain she initially dismissed but would soon embrace.

Three weeks later, she officially launched Intersectional Environmentalist (IE) as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization an “eco-media company inspiring climate action through the power of art, education, and storytelling.” The platform quickly grew to over 400,000 followers and became a leading resource for diverse and accessible climate education. The organization defines intersectional environmentalism as an inclusive version of environmentalism that advocates for both the protection of people and the planet”, acknowledging that “social justice cannot wait. It is not an optional ‘add-on’ to environmentalism”.

The Impact of ‘The Intersectional Environmentalist’ in Literature and Scholarship

In March 2022, Leah Thomas published her debut book, https://www.leahthomas.com/ with Little, Brown and Company’s Voracious imprint. The book serves as a primer on the intersections between identity and climate, exploring how environmentalism, racism, and privilege interconnect. It has been adopted as a Common Experience Read for incoming freshmen at UCLA and Elon University, and is taught in classrooms worldwide.

The book won the Creative Force Foundation Award in 2023 and has been praised for its accessible approach to complex topics. Thomas wrote it specifically thinking about “what I wanted when I was a young, Black environmental science student,” aiming to provide representation and validation for students of color in environmental programs. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, The Washington Post, Highsnobiety, The Good Trade, and Atmos.

Eco-Communicator and Brand Partnerships

Leah Thomas describes herself as an “eco-communicator” someone who combines her background in environmental science with writing and creative communication to make environmental issues accessible. Through her social media platform @greengirlleah, she has built an engaged audience of 266,000+ followers posting content about sustainability, eco-friendly living, environmental justice, and culture.She has worked with major brands to apply an intersectional perspective to sustainability efforts, including Apple, Futerra, Starbucks, Target, Meta, KEEN, and TEVA. Her partnership with Patagonia resulted in a 150% increase in engagement on their sustainability-centric posts. She has also developed philanthropic strategies to support grassroots environmental activism and has been a vocal advocate for brands to “ditch the corporate comparison” in their sustainability messaging.

Major Awards and Recognition

Leah Thomas has received numerous prestigious accolades for her work:

• Forbes 30 Under 30 (2024) — Named to the 2024 list of notable young professionals
• TIME100 Next (2022) — Recognized as one of the next generation of influential leaders
• INSIDER’s Climate Action 30 — Honored for climate action leadership
• Marie Claire’s Creators to Watch
• EBONY Power 100
• InStyle’s The Badass 50
• Creative Force Foundation Award (2023) — For The Intersectional Environmentalist book

She has delivered keynotes and spoken at Google, The New York Times Climate Hub, Aspen Ideas, Salesforce Dreamforce, 1% For The Planet Global Summit, UCLA, Elon University, and COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland . She also appeared in a 2021 Super Bowl ad with Lil Nas X.

Green Girl Productions and the Pivot to Joy

Leah Thomas in 2023, stepped down as co-director of Intersectional Environmentalist (remaining on the board of directors) due to burnout a common experience among activists. “A lot of people are burnt out,” she explained. “That’s why I started crafting”. This led to the founding of Green Girl Productions in 2024, a company producing cultural and community events across the country. A key initiative is Green Girl Crafts, which focuses on crafting skills from pottery to kombucha making to tea blending and sound bathing. “I realized how much we needed mental health and well-being,” Thomas said. “I started ceramics about a year ago and just learned how healing it was for me, so I wanted to offer that to other people” . She describes these spaces as “activism-adjacent,” showing that sustainability and activism can coexist with community-building and self-care. She has also launched “Active-ism” trips with Intrepid Travel, guiding people through national parks while educating them on conservation efforts. Her first trip in June 2025 will lead a 6-day journey through Yellowstone and Grand Teton. “People aren’t just signing up to visit a national park they’re showing up to protect them,” she notes.

Advocacy Philosophy and Key Messages

Thomas’s work centers on several core principles:

The Triple Meaning of “I Can’t Breathe”: She has articulated how this phrase resonates across three crises for Black and Brown communities: the COVID-19 pandemic attacking respiratory systems, environmental racism causing higher rates of asthma and respiratory illness due to poor air quality, and police brutality exemplified by the last words of George Floyd and others.

Avoiding Saviorism: Thomas consistently advocates for amplifying existing voices rather than positioning oneself as a savior. “The best way to use privilege is to amplify their message and if people aren’t listening to those leaders, find a way to amplify their message and avoid saviorism,” she advises.

Climate Justice Requires Racial Justice: “You can’t have climate justice without racial justice, and if you’re ignoring it then you’re complicit,” she has stated emphatically. She argues that the environmentalism we have today “has only been progressive for one group of people”.

Joy as Resistance: Her recent work emphasizes the importance of maintaining joy and community in activism. “Taking care of yourself is also a radical and revolutionary act,” she tells audiences. “We are living on a burning planet, but being joyful in the world is a way to say, ‘No matter what systems are at play, my smile is something you can’t take away from me'”.

Current and Future Work

Leah Thomas is currently working on her second book, which explores the relationship between women and the planet an ecofeminist approach building on her previous work. She continues to serve on the board of Intersectional Environmentalist, which remains a resource hub advocating for environmental justice and inclusivity. She is also a member of the Daughters For Earth Advisory Circle, a campaign mobilizing women worldwide to support women-led efforts to protect and restore the Earth. Based in Carpinteria, California (near Santa Barbara), Thomas continues to balance her environmental advocacy with her creative pursuits, demonstrating that sustainability and joy are not mutually exclusive. Her journey from a frustrated environmental science student to a leading voice in intersectional environmentalism illustrates the power of authentic, identity-centered activism in transforming both movements and minds.