Serving on our board until her June 2021 appointment as Senior Advisor to the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, Maxine Burkett is a Professor of Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai‘i (on leave), and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is also a Co-Founder and Senior Advisor at the non-profit Institute for Climate and Peace. Burkett is an expert in the law and policy of climate change, with a specific focus on climate justice, climate-induced migration, and climate change, peace, and conflict. From 2009-2012, Burkett also served as the inaugural director of the Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy. Her scholarly work has been cited in numerous news and policy outlets, including BBC Radio, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Nature Climate Change. Professor Burkett is a Co-Rapporteur for the International Law Association’s Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise. She is also a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, the Lancet Commission for Reparations and Redistributive Justice, and the American Law Institute. In addition to serving on the board of Our Children’s Trust, Maxine also served on the boards of the Blue Planet Foundation, The Climate Museum, ELAW, Elemental Excelerator, and the Global Greengrants Fund. Prof. Burkett received her B.A. from Williams College and Exeter College, Oxford University, and received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Kelly Matheson is an attorney, filmmaker and human rights advocate with a specialty in environmental human rights and the use of video in criminal justice investigations and proceedings. As an attorney, she worked in East Africa researching citizens’ rights to bring suit against their governments when governments broke their own laws. She then practiced throughout the western United States working on issues where environmental and human rights converge. Her film career began in 2003. Her film projects focused on indigenous and environmental rights in Central America and the United States. This led to a year-long research project as a Fulbright Scholar in Congo-Brazzaville where she collaborated with a video-centered outreach project to determine the effectiveness of video to increase knowledge and, in turn, change behaviors to prevent the transmission of the Ebola virus. Currently, she is a Senior Attorney and Program Manager with WITNESS, an international human right organization that specializes in using video to support change in human rights practice, policy and law. At WITNESS, she launched the inaugural Video Advocacy Institute, began the North America program and now leads WITNESS’ Video as Evidence project which supports human rights lawyers and activists to enhance the evidentiary value of the video they collect in hopes that it can be used to hold perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable and free the wrongly accused. Having graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law and Montana State University’s MFA in Science and Natural History Filmmaking, Kelly’s passion is traveling to different corners of the world to support on-the-ground activists to use law and film to secure our basic human rights.

“The climate crisis continues to intensify in the face of delay and lack of meaningful recognition and action. OCT stands out as a unique presence, giving voice to young people who are most deeply affected, yet often are placated with only words and not action. OCT’s dedicated efforts over the past decade are changing the course of this demise, ensuring that younger generations are guaranteed their right to a livable climate, now and into the future. Empowering younger generations to secure their rights is fundamental to a just and equitable society. OCT is doing what needs to be done, with skill, expertise, tremendous strategic advocacy and the moral character our world requires.”

“I am deeply grateful to OCT and its ongoing commitment to empower young people to be recognized and heard as we face cataclysmic change from the human-caused climate crisis. We face irreversible harm if necessary action is not undertaken now. OCT’s expertise and legal strategy with younger generations is key, embracing core human rights principles, embedded in the United States Constitution, to secure a livable climate. Our courts, if they are to be accountable to these young people and future generations, must act to protect these rights. Our and their very survival depends on it.”