Richard Graves

Richard Graves is an award-winning social entrepreneur, environmental journalist, and new media strategist. He has worked for national and global campaigns as a new media campaigner, helped launch a number of civil society organizations, and has trained hundreds of young people in how to use new media for social change.

Richard founded Fired Up Media to incubate youth media projects on climate and energy issues, which led him to produce TV segments as an Associate Producer for LinkTV, support the launch of websites like YouthClimate.org and WhatsWithTheClimate.org, and fund photographers and videographers worldwide for ProjectSurvivalMedia.org.

Richard received two of the most prestigious social entrepreneurship awards, the International Youth Foundation’s Global Fellowship and the Project Slingshot award. He also serves on the advisory board of the Institute for Technology and Social Change and several other nonprofits. Richard also regularly speaks on the subject of technology and youth and has spoken at the World Bank, the UN, and on CNN.

He served as the Online Campaigner and blogger for the TckTckTck campaign, the largest collaborative campaign on climate change in history, which represented 15 million people calling for action at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. His team organized three days of action that engaged millions of people in 181 countries to get out from behind their monitors and into the streets and was nominated for a Webby and received the 2009 GameChanger Award for their work. Richard also served as the civil society liaison to Blog Action Day in 2009, reaching 18 million people through 13, 605 blogs in 156 countries.

Richard was the editor of ItsGettingHotInHere.org, the largest youth issue blog in the world, collaborating with over 300 youth writers in eight countries to cover the international youth climate movement. In 2008, he organized nonpartisan, issue-based events in swing states all across the United States as the Youth Vote Program Director for Americans for Informed Democracy.

A graduate of Macalester College, Richard received a B.A. in Asian and Environmental History. He also spent a semester each in Mexico and Japan, studying the language and environmental law and policy. When not figuring out new ways to use online technology to give young people the tools to make change, he is usually cooking. You can usually find out what he is cooking at foodwithfervor.com