20 Years of Women’s Earth Alliance
This year, Women's Earth Alliance (WEA) celebrates 20 years of empowering and investing in women environmental leaders around the world. Last month, the organization—our current VB Gives Back partner—marked the milestone at its Spring Gathering, bringing together founders Amira Diamond and Melinda Kramer alongside Co-Executive Director Kahea Pacheco for a special opportunity to reflect on WEA's beginnings, growth, and vision for the future.
Since its founding, WEA has remained rooted in a simple belief: women are already leading powerful environmental solutions in their communities. By providing training, funding, mentorship, and global networks, the organization has spent the last two decades helping those leaders strengthen and scale their impact.
The Beginning
When Diamond and Kramer founded WEA in 2006, they recognized a disconnect in the environmental movement. Women were often the ones protecting natural resources, strengthening local economies, and leading community-based solutions, yet they were under-resourced, under-recognized, and left out of broader conversations around funding and decision-making. “We wanted to help change the way the environmental movement understood leadership and built an alliance that placed women’s knowledge, courage, and solutions at the center,” says Diamond.
Central to that vision was ensuring women leaders had the support they needed to grow their impact. “From the beginning, our hope was to create a model that moved resources directly to grassroots women leaders and helped their work grow from local action into lasting systems change,” adds Kramer.
20 Years Later
What began as a gathering of 30 women leaders from 26 countries has since grown into a global alliance. Along the way, WEA has supported women advancing food security, clean energy, regenerative agriculture, conservation, water access, and economic opportunity in communities around the world. For many, that support has also served as a catalyst for leadership and growth. “We’ve witnessed women who began as participants become mentors, organizers, entrepreneurs, and movement leaders in their regions,” says Kramer.
Today, WEA's work extends far beyond its original model, encompassing accelerators, Resilience Centers, and seed funding. “Our work has become deeper, more strategic, and more interconnected,” says Diamond. While the organization has evolved significantly over the past 20 years, its core approach remains unchanged: trust women leaders, invest in their solutions, and help create the conditions for lasting change.
Looking Ahead
As environmental and economic challenges continue to intensify, WEA's mission feels more urgent than ever. For Co-Executive Director Kahea Pacheco, supporting women environmental leaders remains one of the most effective ways to build resilience within communities and ecosystems alike. “When women leaders are resourced, the impact extends across entire communities,” she says. “Families gain more stable livelihoods, local economies become stronger, and ecosystems are cared for.”
What gives her hope, however, is the strength of the women across the WEA alliance and the proven impact of WEA's model over the past two decades. “Even in the face of enormous environmental and economic pressures, they are building solutions that are grounded in community knowledge, technical skills, and a deep commitment to future generations,” she says. “As WEA enters this next chapter, there is a powerful opportunity to bring more people into this alliance and to expand solutions that are already changing lives.”