“We must move out of competition and into collaboration. Everyone, regardless of age, background, or passion, has something to bring to the table.”

About Marlow

You could say that Marlow’s work as a nature advocate and steward began when she was a small child. At 7 years old, she started a “nature club” where she would take her friends and her younger brother into the forest that surrounded her home to generate ideas for club activities and share what they wanted to learn. She spent many hours as a small child sitting quietly among the native plants around her Evergreen, CO home, listening to the stories she heard them tell, and relating those stories to her friends.

Marlow Baines is the great granddaughter of Scandinavian immigrants from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Born in Washington, she moved to Colorado with her parents when she was three. In 2016 she began organizing for environmental justice and in 2019 was named Youth Director for the nonprofit Earth Guardians, where she led local and international campaigns. In 2022, she directed Earth Guardians’ Choose Action Now campaign, with 95 actions in 25 countries. The campaign reached 40,000 people on the ground and through social media. Marlow uses strength and heart to lead with emotional intelligence.

In 2020, she self-published a book of poetry, “Little Black Book: A Young Activist’s Love Story.” She loves climbing, cuddling with her bobtail cat, reading, and spending time with family and friends. She will attend University College Maastricht in the Netherlands, and plans to pursue her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Cultural Studies.

More about Marlow:

Working closely with the founders and leadership, Marlow was an integral member of the Earth Guardians Youth Council, Rising Youth for a Sustainable Earth (RYSE), and was honored to serve as Earth Guardians Youth Director. She previously served as Earth Guardians Global Crew Director, a role in which she actively connected with youth leaders across the globe, while providing educational materials and support.

More than anything else, Marlow recognized the importance of Earth Guardians purpose to train and empower youth to become effective leaders at the intersection of environmental and climate action.

Educated in a Waldorf school in Boulder, CO, her connection to nature was fostered and strengthened. Her mother homeschooled her in her earliest elementary years, emphasizing the importance of learning in and from nature. She spent many weeks in the Southern Utah wilderness with family, camping, learning to ride single track behind her grandfather and naming the constellations with her grandmother.

Her freshman year in high school found her in a public school, where the contrast between how she was raised and educated came into stark contrast with the lockdown drills and high security environment of the public school system. A trip to Standing Rock in October 2016-to deliver supplies to the prayer camp started by Indigenous youth-changed the course of her life. She discovered the power of people working collaboratively to make positive changes in their community.

“When people power gets the attention of the people in power, the world will change.”

Returning to school she realized she needed to surround herself with people and peers who valued the role of community to impact positive change in the world. Later that month she joined Earth Guardians, an organization that trains diverse youth to be effective leaders in the environmental, climate, and social justice movements. and applied to the RYSE National Council. As she tells it, her experience at the Earth Guardians youth training during the summer of 2017 was so uplifting, energizing, and motivating, that she couldn’t imagine an environment of learning devoid of such life-giving energy.

She recalls the moment she decided to leave the public school system, the simple realization that all she needed was a breath of fresh air and the sun on her face, to calm her mind and spirit, before returning to class. Knowing she couldn’t leave the building between classes without being locked out, she opted instead to leave the public school system to pursue independent studies.

After two years of independent study, playing varsity and premier club basketball, and working around the clock with Earth Guardians, Marlow returned to complete her senior year at the Waldorf school and graduated with the class of 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Marlow continued to organize, connect youth, work intergenerationally with the adult staff at Earth Guardians, and speak to audiences virtually. During her senior year of high school, she self published her first book of poetry, Little Black Book, a Young Activist’s Love Story.

Marlow’s insatiable desire to learn, to deeply understand issues, and to elevate the voices of her peers gave her the energy and the motivation required to balance her school work with the work she continues to do, organizing at the local, state, national and international levels. As youth representative for Earth Guardians, she has participated on youth organizing committees for Alliance for Climate Education (Class of 0000 campaign), Future Coalition, US Youth Climate Strikes, Fridays for Future, and collaborated with Zero Hour, the International Indigenous Youth Council, Extinction Rebellion, 350.org, Our Children’s Trust, Colorado Rising, and others. Marlow has attended, presented, and helped plan youth programming at conferences across the US including Bioneers (San Rafael, CA), Earth’s Call (Aspen, CO), Planet Home (San Francisco, CA), VERGE 2019 (Oakland, CA), WAGIN the Washington State Global Issues Network (Seattle, WA), and the UVM Youth Climate Summit (Burlington, VT). Marlow has presented alongside Bernie Sanders and met with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as one of the diverse coalition of youth demanding climate action from Congress. As part of the effort to bring awareness to the Youth Climate Strikes, Marlow was featured alongside 18 youth climate activists in the Facing Extinction ad campaign by Patagonia.