Learning to Listen: Conversations for Change returns with three new conversations featuring inspiring leaders working on the frontlines of current and emerging issues for children and families. These conversations are for everyone who cares for and about babies and children, and the families, professionals, and communities that protect, nurture, and enjoy them.
All Learning to Listen conversations are one hour long on Wednesdays from 3–4 PM ET / 12–1 PM PT, and feature live Spanish translation, closed captioning, and a Q & A. Certificates of attendance available.
Episode 2– Securing Children’s Constitutional Right to a Safe, Healthy Climate
Wednesday, October 23, 2024, 3 PM ET / 12 PM PT
Julia will explain this innovative legal strategy, how Our Children’s Trust partners with health professionals, and why the climate crisis is the single greatest driver of health for children today.
Julia Olson
Co-Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel of Our Children’s Trust
Julia Olson, JD is the Co-Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel of Our Children’s Trust, a non-profit public interest law firm she founded in 2010 on the idea that courts are vital to democracy and are empowered to protect our children and the planet. Without a stable climate system, every natural resource we rely upon to exercise our basic human rights—life, liberty, home, happiness—is under threat.
Julia and Our Children’s Trust are recipients of the Rose-Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism. She received the Kerry Rydberg Award for Environmental Activism in 2017 and the Katharine & George Alexander Law Prize in 2022. Julia is a member of Rachel’s Network Circle of Advisors and was named one of Bloomberg’s “Green 30 for 2020” and “Time100 Climate 2023”. Julia has been an invited speaker before the Conference of Chief Justices, the National Association of Women Judges, and numerous universities and law schools.
Julia graduated from UC Law San Francisco, formerly Hastings, in 1997, and founded Our Children’s Trust in 2010, initiating a global movement of rights-based climate litigation. She and her team at Our Children’s Trust have since pioneered a globally replicated model for youth-led legal action that draws from and integrates children’s rights, constitutional rights, climate science, and the public trust doctrine to protect the planet’s most vulnerable citizens: children.