Learn more about our speakers.

Left to right: Laurene von Klan, Emma Finn, Claire Kovac, Samantha Mota

Laurene von Klan spent most of her professional life working on environment in
Chicago, IL, where she led a couple different non profit organizations including
Friends of the Chicago River. She uses those skills these days a in her role as a
volunteer climate activist, serving as Co-chair of Climate Action Santa Monica. She
is working to grow that organization and its impact and develop strategies for local
community climate engagement. She is also a certified dog trainer, and helps
people and their dogs enjoy good lives together.

Emma Finn currently serves as Friends of the Earth’s Climate-Friendly School Food Program Associate, where she works to transform K-12 food service into a more healthy, climate-friendly and equitable school food system across communities. She provides key research support to the program and engages in public outreach, education and policy advocacy in California.

Prior to her role at Friends of the Earth, Emma worked to shift local food systems in the East Bay – as a line cook at a small local restaurant in Oakland, an after-school chef educator to elementary school students, and a steering committee member with Slow Food East Bay. She also holds a background in institutional sustainability policy, environmental justice advocacy and student engagement, working UC-wide as a Climate Corps Fellow and previously serving as one of UCLA’s student engagement fellows for the UC’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative. During her time at UC, Emma used her position and resources to challenge the white-dominated conventions of the contemporary environmental justice movement and amplify the voices of environmentalists of color, hosting UCLA’s first Climate Justice Forum and co-founding the university’s first Environmentalists of Color Collective, among other similar projects.

Claire Kovac is currently a junior at Santa Monica High School. She joined Climate Corps as a volunteer in the fall of 2020 where she advocated for sustainability in City programs such as the Bike Plan Amendment, meeting with the Mayor and various City Council members. This past summer, she became an intern with Climate Corps, working with her team on implementing community solar in Santa Monica via a Clean Power Alliance program. Claire is passionate about the environment, which is closely tied with her love of the outdoors; she leads backpacking trips for Girl Scouts as a co-director of the GS Outdoor Leadership Council. At Santa Monica High School, Claire is also active in JSA, a political activism and debate organization, and the Samohi literary magazine, which she founded two years ago.

Samantha Mota is 22, a guerrilla gardener and an advocate for regenerative solutions within the City of Santa Monica. she believes you can do whatever you want in life, so long as you put your heart and mind into it and never give up.