Diandra Marizet Esparza is a high-profile environmental and sustainability campaigner currently serving as the Executive Director of the increasingly popular and influential Intersectional Environmentalist collective, a radical group she helped to found in California in 2020. With a background in the upper echelons of the fashion industry, she is perfectly placed to offer great insight into the way culture consumes single-use goods, and her vital work is focused both on sustainability and ensuring that change is equitable for both the planet and its people.
Mexican-born and Texas-raised, Esparza is also a respected writer and keynote speaker who has delivered talks to the likes of Google, SXSW, Clorox, Method, and more. She has also been featured by the likes of Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and MindBodyGreen. She received a 2021 Renaissance Award for her work in “initiating the rebirth of a better system”.
Intersectional Environmentalist was formed in 2020 in response to environmental racism — the fact that exploitation of the planet and its resources is most harmful to marginalised communities. Along with Leah Thomas and Sabs Katz, she initially formed the platform as a resource space for people wondering what they could do to ally and help. As its success and reputation grew, so Esparza and her colleagues realised that they wanted to create a certification programme for businesses, helping to ensure that people couldn’t be taken in by green- or BLM-washing. Intersectionalist Environmentalist currently has more than 430,000 followers on Instagram alone, and that number is growing all the time.