Activist, speaker, author, filmaker

Xiye Bastida is a 23-year-old climate justice activist, storyteller, and Executive Director of Re-Earth Initiative, a global youth-led organization making the climate movement more accessible and intersectional. Of Otomi-Toltec heritage, Xiye integrates Indigenous worldviews of reciprocity, interdependence, and intergenerational responsibility into global climate advocacy. She began her activism after her hometown of San Pedro Tultepec, Mexico, experienced flooding and water contamination. Since then, she has become a leading voice in the climate movement, organizing climate strikes, speaking at global stages like the United Nations, and redefining storytelling through her upcoming film, The Way of the Whale. Through Re-Earth Initiative, she supports youth-led, nature-based projects across the Global South and works to shift climate narratives toward solutions and equity. Xiye has been recognized as a TIME 100 Next honoree, recipient of the UN Spirit Award, a Forbes Changemaker, and is currently a 776 Fellow, continuing to scale youth-led climate leadership globally.

The biggest strike Xiye was involved in organizing brought together 300,000 people to the streets of NYC.

In April 2020, Xiye co-founded Re-Earth Initiative— an international youth-led organization that focuses on highlighting the intersectionality of the climate crisis.

Her notable participations include COP25, COP26, COP27, and COP28. Xiye was invited as the only youth speaker at the Biden Climate Summit in 2021, where she spoke to 40 heads of state.

She is the opening essayist in the anthology All We Can Save, and has written numerous op-eds. She has spoken alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Fonda, Al Gore, Christiana Figueres, Greta Thunberg, Mary Robinson, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Malala, Jane Goodall, Bill McKibben, and others.

She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Policy.