In Conversation with Kiana Kazemi

The Intersectional Data Science Engineer on the connection between technology and environmental justice and combatting eco-anxiety through community

To prepare for my 3 p.m. interview with environmental justice activist and engineer, Kiana Kazemi, I listened to a podcast episode she was featured in as I speed-walked home from school. Tripping over my boots and panting under my mask, I frantically typed into my notes app, trying to mark every epiphany that came my way, which happened to be every other sentence. Before listening, I had never understood there to be a connection between technology and environmental justice that Kazemi was articulating so clearly.

Kazemi lives in California now (she’s a senior at UC Berkeley), but was born in Iran and spent the first eight years of her life raised by her grandparents — whom she describes as “huge outdoorsy-people” — between the bustling city of Tehran and nature-filled Shiraz. Shiraz is known for being a restful and art-focused city, where many great Persian poets like Rumi and Hafez are from. There was where her love for nature was first instilled.

“When I was growing up, [my grandparents and I] would go on these road trips where they would take me away for two weeks and drive me all around the country, showing me all sorts of beautiful Iranian scenes, from deserts to mountains. My grandpa would take me on a hike and we would forage for herbs, then cook and start a little fire next to a creek, and I would find all the wood. That was my initial relationship with nature. I didn’t really realize how unique and beautiful it was until more recently. Thinking about it now, [I can see how big] of a privilege my upbringing was. It isn’t a childhood many people can afford to have.”

At the same time, Iran is an extremely polluted country. Tehran, Iran’s capital city, has some of the worst air qualities in the world. Both of Kazemi’s grandparents struggle with breathing and heart difficulties as a result. Growing up surrounded by the duality of Tehran and Shiraz — seeing that contrast firsthand — can be pinpointed as an undeniably influential aspect of Kazemi’s journey into environmentalism.

Kazemi recalls building yet another relationship to nature upon moving to New Zealand at the age of eight. It was living in this gorgeous Southern Hemispheric country, where she fostered a different relationship with nature. I regularly stalk (what I think is) the country’s official Instagram page (?) to be transported into lush sceneries of crystal blue lakes, serene coves, and cute sheep! — New Zealand is beautiful. I’ve never been and I can even attest to this fact, so of course, Kazemi can too. 

“[Upon moving], because I already felt so comfortable in natural environments, I took shelter in an environmental organization at my first New Zealand primary school. And because I didn’t speak any English, everything was so foreign to me except for that relationship to nature. The culture, the language, what people wore — everything was so extremely different to me. The one thing that I could still go back to was my love for butterflies and trees and plants, and so I stayed really connected to that natural relationship.”

At the age of sixteen, Kazemi moved to San Diego, California. She recalls that in New Zealand, she had already developed a view of what she wanted to do in the future, which was a vision that separated environmentalism as a sort-of “side passion,” but not something that she really wanted to dedicate herself to.

“What I really cared about was human rights. Coming from Iran, human rights are something I’ve cared about my whole life, alongside the relationship of the Middle East with the rest of the world. I wanted to be like a human rights lawyer or a journalist. I really wanted to do something for people.

But when I moved to San Diego, I started to put more of the puzzle pieces together regarding the interconnection of people and the environment. I started to learn about environmental justice and how the health and human rights of people are so interconnected with their relationship to the state that their environment is in, whether it's their fault or the fault of a corporation or other systems. And I realized that this is what I want to do, this is what I really cared about — looking at the connections of [people and the environment] and how we can start looking closer at the root causes of all of these issues that I’m really passionate about.”

As she experienced all of these revelations, Kazemi remained convinced that she desired a career in law or as a journalist. She knew that she loved to write and to this day, still holds the philosophy that storytelling is the most powerful way to foster change. Yet when she got to UC Berkeley and began taking all those in-depth college courses — variations of English, political science, and humanities in-betweens — she realized that she was not learning anything new.

“I was in these classes writing essays and I felt that I was just doing the same type of thing that I had always been doing versus putting new tools in my toolbox that I could use to tell stories. And so I took a data science class and it was so hard. I hadn’t even taken Calculus in high school. It was so foreign to me, but I felt so rewarded when I would understand things and when I was able to connect data to all the things that I cared about.”

Data science and engineering is a relatively new field that merges computer science and statistics. When applied to climate change, this means taking a set of data, whether that be about weather or people, and using it to project models about the future.

“When we talk about climate change; when we talk about environmental injustices, we have to somehow quantify some of those things in order to tell a really strong story and we can’t do that without data. And so I was collecting all of this data I was sorting it and I was creating these really impactful visualizations, really impactful models in algorithms that were changing the minds of politicians all across the world and so that seemed like a new tool that I could learn while I was in college in order to make my storytelling and all of the other things that I was passionate about, stronger.”

Part of the reason why Kazemi began to pursue data science was also due to the fact that there aren’t many women of color in STEM. According to the United States Census Bureau, there has been progress regarding gender equity in STEM: women went from only making up only about 8% of STEM workers in 1970 to about 27% in 2019. But this proportion still pales to the fact that women are about half of the workforce. Men, on the other hand, account for about 73% of STEM jobs. The numbers are even smaller when it comes to women of color in STEM. 

“One thing that we need to do is make STEM education more accessible. Unfortunately, we go into college thinking that we’re starting with a clean slate and you can study anything you want, that you don’t have to have any previous experience. But that is so far from reality. There are people that are bred their entire lives to go into STEM, because they have that privilege, and there are so many people that don’t have that privilege. When it comes to education, we need to reconsider how we are setting people up for a STEM education, whether that’s in college having resources for people that haven’t had those introductory classes or setting up resources for people that are really interested in a field but also have to work a full-time job while also being in school. We need to just stop thinking about STEM as a field that you have to study in high school for, and instead, create it into a more accessible and welcoming field of study that is accessible to everyone, no matter what their background is. 

Making STEM more accessible and thus more diverse and inclusive — Kazemi stresses — is important not only for reasons of representation, but also in pushing technology towards equitable human progress.

“When we think about things that have been created for our world, like algorithms, Facebook, Instagram — all of these tools that we’re constantly using everyday — if only a certain group of people are developing them, they can only ever create them for themselves. If it’s just a white man creating all these tools, who has never experienced being queer or being a woman of color, they’re never going to be able to build something for us. That’s why it’s important for [marginalized people to be] in those roles, that we’re not just intro-level developers but actually creating these technologies, because then we can create them for us and we can make sure that they’re serving us the way that they should be, instead of doing harm to our mental health, environment, and more.”

It can be difficult to interrogate the implications of systemic oppression when it comes to the field of technology. There is often a skill and language barrier one must overcome in order to address technology, in addition to the widespread misconception that technology can only be moving towards an upwards trajectory. But futuristic developments can certainly be regressive to society, when done with malintent or ignorance.

For example, in African countries, U.S. based researchers will come up with an idea because they see a problem, and go on to spend millions in order to implement their proposed solution. And then two years later or so, these same researchers will conduct a follow-up study only to find that either nothing has changed or something worse has taken place.

“That’s why community-based research is so important. We need to empower community members to be the solution makers and provide them with the resources they need to create those solutions. [We can’t put] these scientists and engineers on a pedestal and say “you’re going to figure out all of the problems and their solutions but you’re never going to speak to a single person in those communities.” It’s not just collaboration. For me, it’s even asking yourself, “Do I even need to be doing this work?” and sometimes the answer is truly “no,” because it's not up to me to go into another community and create something.”

Misuse regarding the implementation of technology has upheld systems of oppression in the past. In the United States, bridges and highways have historically been used to literally segregate communities like in Oakland, where highways were built over Black communities in order to create an actual divide between Black and white communities or otherwise, entire Black owned businesses that happened to be in the way of highway construction. Technology’s role in maintaining oppressive systems even extends to creating exclusive natural park spaces. Bridges were built so low that only single-owned cars could get through, and as a result, communities of color — many of which relied on public transportation to travel — could not access green spaces.

Beyond physical structures, artificial intelligence — like facial recognition software — is often racist and sexist, which can lead to wrongful imprisonment. And on social media, the algorithms that are written in order to moderate comments and stop harassment often cannot distinguish between someone speaking the slang of their people versus someone actually engaging in harassment.

Social media has also been built as an addicting tool — the infinite scroll. And as internal Facebook documents revealed the already suspected, social media is responsible for the mental health issues so many currently face, especially young girls who are constantly fed images of the “perfect” body. When we talk about representing marginalized communities in STEM and the fact that people can only ever create technology for themselves, perhaps there is no more picture perfect example of when a narrow experience is given a boatload of power than Mark Zuckerberg: It isn’t surprising that the same person who created the misogyny-drenched FaceMash, in which women’s appearances were voted on (the alternative was comparing them to farm animals), would be the same person to create a platform destroying democracy, from directing a genocide in Myanmar to extreme alt-right political polarization. And, of course, Facebook — or rather, Meta, these days — is hiding internal investigations that confirm its responsibility.

Kazemi notes that this fact of secrecy is comparable to that of old cigarette companies and fossil fuel companies that would likewise do their own research, identify problems, and then actively hide their information from the public, or even privately fund “research” in order to deceive the public and keep their profits high. Of course, a major difference between ‘Big Tech’ and ‘Big Oil’ is that activists against smoking did not have to use cigarettes. But activists now, many of whom are fighting against the structures of oppression that social media is built upon, have had to grapple with using the same platforms that they are trying to dismantle, due to their universality.

“It’s hard because we have to understand all of the benefits that social media has brought us, but also all of the harm that it's doing. I can only speak to this on a personal level, but I have a lot of guidelines for myself about how much time I spend on social media, who I follow, why I follow them, and why I engage with the things that I see. Being very intentional about the people that I’m viewing everyday and my relationship to them is important. Limiting the amount of time I spend on social media is also really important. Community is core to everything that I do and it's really beautiful to have the virtual community, but I’m trying as much as I can to bring that virtual community into an IRL situation, whether that’s through events or gatherings — I'm trying to foster those relationships outside of social media as much as I can.”

Kazemi currently works with Intersectional Environmentalist (IE), an organization that began on social media. IE was birthed by the uniquely 21st century phenomenon of “internet virality.” It began in 2020, after Leah Thomas uploaded a graphic with the words “Environmentalists For Black Lives Matter” to her Instagram, along with a definition for intersectional environmentalism and a pledge to bring social justice to the forefront of the climate conversation. The post reached over one million people. To this day, IE primarily operates in a digital space, and boasts an Instagram following of 409,000 and counting.

When Kazemi began at IE —  only a few weeks after the organization was founded — she mostly worked on the website and community centric work, such as making sure that everything was organized and that subjects were clarified. Slowly, her role grew into being Head of Community Programming, a job that encompasses the IE community outside of social media, like in-person events and workshops and IE school, a new program Kazemi is spearheading dedicated to environmental education.

Another aspect of Kazemi’s environmental advocacy is her organization, Circularity Community, self-described as “a multimedia platform tackling eco-anxiety through education, challenges, daily reminders, and other everyday tools.”

“Circularity is a project that I started out of just a lot of the eco-anxiety that I have faced over my entire life. I have a really strong relationship with nature and sometimes that leads to some really overwhelming and just terrifying feelings about our future and the future of the people that I care about, and so I wanted to create an organization that is dedicated to combating that exact feeling, and having the agency to really be able to take care of our mental health and well-being in the climate movement.”

Through IE and Circularity, Kazemi is working to foster an environmental community of support, and of course with support comes the need for there to be an understanding of the interconnectedness of the systems we all live in. Kazemi stresses that our educational system must be restructured to acknowledge this intersectionality, that engineers should also be taking social science classes, political science classes, gender and women’s studies classes, because their work is inevitably going to impact these areas of our world. 

Ultimately, Kazemi asserts that “we need to make sure that everyone is learning about environmental justice and the frameworks of intersectionality.” It is imperative that we equitably ensure that all people have the tools to take action and rebel, in order to foster the diverse and inclusive communities that in turn create truly progressive climate justice solutions.