US Youth Advisory Council for the UN Ocean Decade Pod

Chloe McKenna

Chloe McKenna is a rising senior at Eckerd College double majoring in Environmental Studies and Animal Studies and minoring in Political Science. She has been involved with Heirs To Our Oceans since she was 15 years old and founded the Orange County, CA Chapter. Chloe has served as the First Cohort Co-Chair for the US Youth Advisory Council (YAC) for the UNOD and stayed on as the Co-Chair for the Second Cohort, as well, to apply what she learned to further the YAC’s mission and continue to develop the structure of the YAC. Within the YAC, she is a member of the Movement Committee, which is working to reach more and more youth to ensure all are involved in the decade. She is also the Chapter Chair of FL PIRG Students at Eckerd, an education intern with the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries with the National Education Team, intern for the Eckerd Reduce Single Use Project, and is a Co-Director for the Eckerd College Organization of Students’ Environmental Responsibility Committee. She enjoys going to the beach, scuba diving, and viewing marine life and is passionate about corporate responsibility, greenwashing, environmental justice, and fisheries governance.

Eni Owoeye

Eni Owoeye is a Nigerian-American first generation student studying International Relations and Environmental Science with a minor in Spanish at New York University in New York City. She was the co-chair of the first cohort of the US Youth Advisory Council to the UN Ocean Committee. As a lifelong urban dweller, Eni's connection to oceans and waterways lies within the fight to access clean and drinkable water for all communities. With work experience at the United Nations Foundation, NOAA, and the US Department of State, Eni enjoys working on issues related to the ocean-climate nexus. As graduation approaches, Eni looks forward to continuing to work on environmental issues through policy and capacity building.

Sierra Garcia

Sierra is from Monterey County on California's central coast. Growing up, she was obsessed with the ocean and the Monterey Bay, where she spent thousands of hours volunteering and working with beach cleanups, youth ocean education programs, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. She was the youngest site captain for International Coastal Cleanup Day at the age of 10. She studied ocean science through Stanford's Earth Systems program, and later returned to the program for her master's degree in environmental communication. From October 2020 through December 2021, she served on the first cohort of the U.S. Youth Advisory Council for the UN Ocean Decade.

Sierra juggles several professional roles, all of which she sees as directly connected to healthy oceans. She consults for STEMTaught and the STEMTaught Foundation to craft educational curricula for elementary schoolers about oceans, climate, and related topics. She also serves on the editorial staff for Estuary News magazine and the KneeDeep times, two regionally-focused publications based out of California’s San Francisco Bay Area. She has written about oceans, climate, and complex environmental stories for local, national, and international audiences in publications such as Grist, JSTOR Daily, the Oxford Climate Review, and ECO magazine, among others. She is also a scuba dive master, and when not taking on too many writing projects, spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to craft coral reef restoration messaging to catalyze climate action.

Andrea Celeste Contreras Balbuena

Andrea (she/her) is a community-based science enthusiast and oceanographer from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She completed her B.S. and M.S. degree from Stanford University in the Earth Systems Program, where she focused on developing and designing tools and methods to help facilitate the collection of place based data on coastal communities. A lot of research also focused on interactive maps, and data visualization. She is passionate about increasing access to ocean education and ocean research, and making sure coastal communities have the tools to support decision making and risk management. She is also a NAUI Dive Instructor, and loves to get as many people as possible underwater. She is currently learning more about the links between human health and the waters we love to use recreationally, and thinking about applying to another degree.