ActNowFilm: youth climate leaders in conversation with climate experts is an international youth voices in climate change project, selected to showcase at COP28. The film is based on 1-2-1 conversations between 30 pairs of youth climate leaders and world leading climate experts.
Samantha Thia is the founder of Seastainable and Senior Manager for Sustainability (Asia-Pacific / Middle East & Africa) at Electrolux. In 2017, she founded Seastainable in Singapore to give back to marine conservation. She was also responsible for the development of Stridy, a tech-based solution to community cleanups.
Samantha graduated from the National University of Singapore with a master’s degree in Environmental Management, and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.
Her work has been recognised through various organisations. In 2022, she received the 15th NEA EcoFriends award from the National Environment Agency. She is a fellow at the Philip Yeo Initiative, as well as part of the Young South East Asian Leadership Institute. She had the privilege to represent Singapore at the first ever ASEAN Youth Eco-Champions award in Cambodia 2019, and is currently part of the Y20 Climate Change Delegation for G20 2023 in India.
As an individual that is passionate about making a change from within, she is a strong believer in driving sustainability within organisations. She is an Executive Member of the Climate Action Singapore Alliance, and Co-Chair of the Public Hygiene Council’s Youth Action Group.
Ilona Mettiäinen is an environmental social scientist, specialising in the Arctic region, with a particular interest in how people make sense of and co-design strategic solutions to climate change. Since 2010, she has been working at the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland.
Her recent research projects have focused on issues such as co-designing a climate service for the winter tourism industry in Northern Finland, co-producing knowledge with Arctic communities on solar geoengineering, adaptation of reindeer herders to climate change, and social sustainability of ice sheet conservation in Greenland.
In 2017, she traversed the North-West Passage onboard a Finnish icebreaker as a member of the Arctic 100 Expedition. She was a Visiting Arctic Fellow at Dartmouth College (2017) and an NSF Arctic-FROST Early Career Fellow (2018).