The Guardian reports: At an age when many of her peers are making money in banks or making coffee in Brooklyn, 31-year-old May Boeve has quietly risen to the top of one of the world’s most disruptive and innovative environment organisations, 350.org.

Boeve is one of the few women at the helm of a large green group in the US – a stratum called “as white and male as a Tea Party meet-up”.

“There’s a structural sexism problem, full stop. If you look at the numbers, they don’t lie. There’s just not as many women leading, in that sense – running the organisation, being the figurehead,” said Boeve.

It’s a failure, said Boeve, that excludes people from environmentalism at a time when its aims are necessarily universal.

“So many people feel connected to the climate change movement and it’s important for everyone who’s involved, whether they’re a school teacher in the UK or a farmer in Burundi, to see themselves in this movement. So the more leaders who reflect the diversity of the movement, the broader, the bigger, the stronger the movement will be.”

The public emergence of Boeve has been a deliberate attempt to diversify the 350.org message. She took over as executive director of 350.org when she was just 27. But the organisation has been publicly dominated by the talismanic figure of Bill McKibben, who stepped down as chair of the 350 board late last year, but remains involved in the movement. [Continue reading…]