
Yassamin Ansari
Candidate, Phoenix City Council;
Former Climate Advisor to the UN Secretary-General
Yassamin Ansari is running for City Council in Phoenix, Arizona, the 5th largest and fastest growing city in the country. Her mission is to transform Phoenix into one of the most progressive, sustainable, and inclusive cities in the country.
In 2019, Yassamin served as an advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, where she led the youth engagement and public mobilization efforts for the UN Climate Action Summit. In this capacity, Yassamin brought together more than 1,000 young climate leaders from 140+ countries for the first-ever UN Youth Climate Summit.
Yassamin began her career as a John Gardner Fellow in the Executive Office of former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2014, where she served as the youngest member of the climate team that advised the Secretary-General and helped to deliver the historic Paris Agreement. Later, she served as the Director of the Climate Action 2016 Summit in Washington D.C., and as the Deputy Director of Policy for Governor Jerry Brown's Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco.
For her extensive work on climate action, Yassamin was recognized by Forbes as “30 Under 30” in the Law & Policy category in 2020, and as a Grist 50 “Fixer”— “the people cooking up the boldest, most innovative solutions to fix the biggest challenges that face our globe. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations with honors from Stanford University, and a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge.