Helen Watts

Ottawa, ON

Based in Ottawa and Vienna, Austria, Helen is the Student Energy’s Executive Director. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 lister, on the Corporate Knight’s 30 Under 30, and is a recognized young clean energy and intergenerational equity advocate. Since 2017, Ms Watts has worked with Student Energy to empower tens of thousands of young people around the world to work on solutions for a clean and equitable energy transition. She co-leads the Solutions Movement, a UN-Energy Compact designed to support 10,000 youth clean energy projects by 2030. She led the development of the first Global Youth Energy Outlook with twelve young energy leaders to gather 41,000 youth perspectives on the energy transition by 2030. Helen co-founded Greenpreneurs, a training and grantmaking mechanism that has mobilized over USD100,000 in funding to youth-led climate enterprises, and she is regularly engaged by the international community on the role of youth in the energy transition. Ms Watts approaches the urgent, complex nature of the climate crisis with the belief that equipping young people with the tools and pathways to act is one of our most effective strategies. Advocating for youth inclusion at every level of decision-making processes, she has built a network of 47 partners across the climate-energy-youth ecosystem committed to empowering young people.