Elsa Mengistu

Operations Coordinator, Zero Hour

Elsa Mengistu is the former director of operations and logistics and currently is an operations coordinator at Zero Hour, a grassroots climate organization intent on gaining support for the Youth Climate Movement. She is a freshman at Howard University and native of North Carolina by passage of Ethiopia. Mengistu is an avid organizer and activist who started her work in middle school and high school. She has advocated for changes on various issues, including electoral politics, racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, and women’s rights, through local organizations and school clubs. She has also worked on gun violence prevention and was one of the lead youth organizers for her local March For Our Lives chapter. In her role with Zero Hour, she advocates for climate justice through the organization of the Global Youth Climate March. Mengistu also serves on the Youth Advisory Board for Young Voices for the Planet, an organization that highlights youth from across the world through documentaries. Currently, Elsa is serving on the Steering Committee for Power Shift 2020, a 4,000 person convening to mobilize for climate action. She is also a youth ambassador for Youth Mundous, a four-day social justice festival. In 2019, she was named as one of Grist’s 50 Fixers, a group of up-and-coming individuals working on innovative solutions to fix the biggest challenges that face our globe.