User:Fdelaos/Isaias Hernandez

Isaias Hernandez
Isaias Hernandez (born 1996) is an environmental educator and the creator of QueerBrownVegan, where he creates introductory forms of environmentalism through colorful graphics, illustrations, and videos. Through social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, the young Mexican-American climate educator and influencer tackles issues from how to adopt a climate-friendly diet to exploring the links between climate change and the border industrial surveillance industry.

Early Life and Education
Isaias Hernandez was born in Los Angeles, California. From living off food stamps to struggling with the city’s air quality, Hernandez was raised with an acute understanding of how poverty, migration, gender discrimination, and environmental destruction intersect and feed off each other. Being in poverty deprived him of having access to clean spaces which led him to have a deep interest as an environmental educator. This led him to follow a vegan lifestyle. Hernandez struggled with asserting his identity as the only queer person growing up in a Mexican household where “sexuality and mental health wasn’t really addressed or normalized.” Homophobia, machismo and environmental injustices cast a haunting shadow. During his time in college, Hernandez learned more about his identity and solidified his journey.

Isaias' mother had a major influence on his path to become a climate educator. His mother preached that education should be free regardless of income, race, status, or gender everyone should receive equitable education. Hernandez's mother became his educator, especially his Spanish teacher where he was taught "how to use his cultural experiences through an educational lens and that education can be made fun and engaging and accessible for people as long as you can connect it to people’s cultural experience."

Activism
Isaias Hernandez created QueerBrownVegan (QBV) in 2019 to accelerate the discourse around the climate crisis. QueerBrownVegan has a massive audience with over 100,000 Instagram followers. Hernandez even recently spoke with Kamala Harris, asking the vice president how the federal government plans to ensure that climate education is made available to youth from kindergarten to grade 12.

In late 2021, Hernandez attended COP26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, where he gave a talk on “Eco-anxiety”.

In October 2022, Teen Vogue called Isaias Hernandez to talk about QueerBrownVegan, the need to make the climate movement more inclusive, and what young people can do to fight climate injustice. According to Hernandez, "I started Queer Brown Vegan back in 2019 after realizing that there was a lack of climate education on social media. As someone who graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in environmental science, I realized the career I was pursuing at the time wouldn’t necessarily educate or inspire people. Academia is a very insular space. And I saw social media as an independent outlet where I could actually express both research and personal experience."

As of 2022, Hernandez is a full-time content creator for QueerBrownVegan, a public speaker, and a consultant for social impact organizations. He has done interviews and guest spoken at HuffPost, Teen Vogue, The Humane League, The New York Times Climate Hub, Shout Out LA, Pulitzer Center, and the United Nations Climate Change conference. With his Instagram account, Hernandez hopes to center queer people of color, especially when it comes to education about the environment. Centering his own experience is paramount to the process.