Lauren Castelino - BIPOC Leader Award
Green Career Centre - Executive Director
Lauren Castelino is a youth environmental activist and entrepreneur in the sustainability industry. She is committed to supporting young people, particularly BIPOC, women, and newcomers, in their search for green jobs. As part of her activism she founded the Green Career Centre (GCC), a nonprofit organization run by and for underrepresented youth searching for equitable employment. She developed the idea for the GCC while conducting research through focus group discussions with international students experiencing hardships in building a career. Since then, the GCC has been successful in hosting numerous in-person events over the past year with over 370 participants. The GCC has cultivated a community of over 1600 members through the Youth Green Jobs Network, a youth focused green jobs board for equity seeking groups. The GCC has also managed to connect over 60,000 youth interested in sustainability with wage subsidies to fund their work placements.