Young Grguras is the Director of School Programs at Communitopia in Pittsburgh. In this role, they lead Pittsburgh Youth for Climate Action, a high school age student group focused on developing solutions to climate change, and support youth leaders in planning and organizing climate initiatives. Grguras works at the intersection of youth climate leadership, campus sustainability, and environmental advocacy. Their career has focused on helping students and communities organize around climate action, plastics reduction, and sustainable systems change, building on the sustainability work that shaped their time at Pitt. Young earned their BS in Environmental Studies from Pitt in 2019.
In their own words:
I accepted a position at The Post-Landfill Action Network in April of my senior year at Pitt , started with them in July of 2019, and have been working with them since then. I get to advise schools all across the U.S. (and sometimes the world) on sustainable initiatives similar to the ones I worked on at Pitt.
Sustainability at Pitt, in all its forms of student activism, SOOS, Environmental Studies, basically defined my future. I still work in sustainability and always will.
Pitt was actually a member school of PLAN, and I used their advising while a student and now I'm on the other end of the calls, doing the advising to students! It's quite the glow-up.
Basically everything about my job is fun. I get to work with young adults that are changing the world, and make memes (like this one) as a part of my job, what else would I want?