Mission
The mission of Global Climate Media is to accelerate the world’s attention on climate change by reaching unreached communities with climate change awareness, research, and education—empowering them to do their part to protect their environments, and inspiring a movement of climate-friendly habits and policy changes, improved community health, and a safer planet for future generations.
About Us
Although climate change education initiatives exist in many areas, such programs are often lacking, or are inaccessible to certain communities. Communities that don’t have full access to climate change education and research are often the most vulnerable to the deleterious effects of pollution and climate change themselves. Additionally, overly narrow or inadequate climate change initiatives do nothing to mitigate the climate crisis and in fact, ensure it’s worsening in these areas. According to the World Health Organization, pollution leads to around 7 million premature deaths each year. China alone accounts for 1.6 million of these deaths.
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Global Climate Media is wholly owned by Belikewatr Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to reaching underserved as well as non-English speaking communities in the United States and abroad with expertly curated and translated data-driven climate change information that meets people where they are.
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We are a team of people who all have deep connections to communities worldwide, who are passionate about ensuring that these communities have broad, scientifically accurate climate change research and education that is accessible to them.
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Belikewatr Inc. believes that —for the benefit of communities who don’t have access to credible data and climate research— we must raise awareness and climate literacy, and subsequently, empower communities to effect change, both personally and through advocating for policy changes that address the climate crisis. Climate change is here, and we want to mitigate its effects to create a better world for ourselves, and our children.
Board Members
Tom Gaffey
Advisor
Thomas is the Senior Vice President for Technology and Innovation at Building 21, a nonprofit that partners with schools and districts to transform schools to more innovative models. Thomas joined Building 21 after seven years as a 9th grade math teacher at Philadelphia’s School of the Future (SOF) where he utilized problem-based and technology-driven learning approaches to support students in tackling real-world problems. Thomas was also the Director of Educational Technology at SOF managing their One Laptop Per Student program.
As a Microsoft Innovative Educator master trainer and founder of What If Partners, LLC., Thomas has led professional development for teachers and school districts nationally. As the SVP for Technology and Innovation at Building 21, Thomas co-created an innovative school approach using principles of the emerging field of Competency-based Education. He has also designed and managed the implementation of several student learning and tracking platforms. He is now leading an expansion effort to help districts across the country personalize education for students.
Johnny Chung
Executive Director & Founder
Johnny Chung is the founder of Belikewatr Inc. His background includes roles as a management consultant at Accenture for 8 years leading multi-million data science projects to optimize Fortune 20 media and marketing budgets. He also had executive roles at top media firms including WPP and Havas Media, helping clients maximize their digital budgets. More recently, he began a career in banking as a VP of Advanced Analytics for various data science applications within the enterprise including Risk, Fraud, and Retail. Johnny holds a Masters Degree in Mathematics from Georgetown University.
The birth of Belikewatr Inc. is the result of Johnny’s talents, interests, and desire to set a good example and provide a better world for his children. Aside from his professional career, Johnny actively participates in a number of nonprofits. He has traveled to places like Colombia, Puerto Rico, and New Orleans, as a visual story-teller for nonprofit organizations supporting refugees, homeless populations, substance abuse victims, and educators. He also volunteers locally in NYC, working with organizations dedicated to autism, activism, and other charity work.
Emilie Gong
Secretary & Treasurer
Emilie is the treasurer and secretary of Belikewatr. Inc. She is also a Manager at EY, with over 7 years of experience in banking and capital markets, which includes experience in investment management and credit risk management. She has provided advisory services to large banks, including Morgan Stanley, Citi, BNP Paribas, Barclays, and MUFG, and began her career working as a credit professional for AIG. She holds a master’s degree in Financial Engineering from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Washington.
Growing up in China, Emilie has seen firsthand how people’s lives are seriously affected by global warming and the destruction of ecosystems. She believes in the importance and urgency of helping people understand and address the impact of climate change, by increasing awareness and encouraging changes in attitudes and behaviors.
Joshua Moua
Director of Communications
Joshua is a Technical Account Manager at Vertex Inc. He has been with the company for almost 15 years in a consultant role as a functional implementation partner, and now manages high profile accounts that use Vertex software. He is the primary liaison for his clients and communicates their corporate goals and roadmaps to his internal teams for consideration.
Joshua is a father of four and assists with coaching wrestling at the kindergarten to sixth grade level. He also assists in coaching soccer and baseball for his son. He is passionate about serving in his community, and seeks to make an impact as a role model for kids who participate in athletics. He not only coaches the teams in the sport, but also coaches them in life making decisions, serving as a mentor to the kids, and letting them know, “I’ll never be upset if you can’t do anything, but all I ask is that you show up and try.” Joshua enjoys serving and mentoring at his local church. In his spare time, he has found a passion for restoring and building vintage steel frame race bicycles. He also uses his skills to repair bicycles for friends and neighbors, and organizes weekend bike rides for members of his local community.
Our Team
Ashley Ekmay
Grant Specialist
Ashley Ekmay recently completed a Master’s degree at Duke University. During her time in school, she has developed skills in research, grant writing, technical writing, communication, and community outreach. She is an advocate for education and climate change awareness and is using her passion for both and her abilities in research and community building in her role as a grants specialist for Belikewatr.
In addition to her academic and career experience, Ashley is also involved with a local non-profit organization, where she serves as the social media manager, web designer and website administrator.
Jyoti Thapa
Grant Specialist
Jyoti, a recent graduate of Hollins University with a double degree in Economics and Environmental Studies, spent a semester researching and studying environmental changes in Cambodia. She has a passion for sustainability research and development, and looks forward to contributing to the field.
Dan Metz
Grant Specialist
Dan Metz is a grant researcher, writer, and editor living in New York City. He also runs professional tabletop roleplaying games for players across the country.
Yoogeong Rho
Social Media Manager
Yoogyeong Rho is the social media marketing manager for Global Climate Media. With a degree in Media Study and Communications from the University of Buffalo, she conducts market analysis to distribute contents about climate change on both the company’s website and its social media sites. She is critical to optimizing the content, both written and translated. She currently manages the Chinese and Korean social media platforms alongside the English social media platform, thanks to her extensive knowledge of Asian countries and social media outreach.
She found that climate change attitudes were too different for each country, and that many people recognized the existence of climate change but felt that they lacked knowledge of how to change or to be empowered to change their communities. She decided to join Global Climate Media after she saw its potential to reach international communities and knew that she could contribute her own talents and skills to its aims.
Crystal Yang
Social Media Manager
Travel enthusiast and Social Media Specialist Crystal has experiences working for multicultural organizations and enterprises. She believes socially conscious audiences and the impact they have on brands, politics and society as a whole is expected to account for the single greatest impact to social media in the next decade.
Jeongsi Kwon
Social Media Manager
Jeongsi Kwon is a global public health expert and health communicator interested in various factors that affect public health, believeing that our beautiful Earth and its environment are essential for human beings to lead a healthy and well-being life. She wants to analyze climate change through big data, and educate the public about why they need to protect the earth and how they can do it with the motto “Let’s save the planet together!”
Wenqi Lou
Social Media Manager
MSc. recent graduate possessing strong consulting skills in international business development, global marketing analytics, project management, design thinking, and data analysis. Multilingual in Chinese , English, and French. Detail-oriented, result-oriented and be able to communicate across cultures through multiple channels.
June Li
Social Media Manager
With seven years of experience in the marketing industry under her belt working with the likes of Audi, Samsung, Canon, Tencent and more, June bring her knowledge in analyzing consumer data, leading projects and strategy planning. She hopes to use her professional experience to have an impact in climate change.
Seonwoo Bak
Translator
Seonwoo (Sunny) Bak is a global communicator whose work is focused on climate change. She has been given the opportunity to study marine biology at two separate universities, in Korea and the United States of America, respectively. Having gained unique experiences, her desire to expand her insight has grown. Her ultimatum is to become a functional part of international development, particularly within environmental sustainability.
Gee Jung
Translator
Gee loves people and Earth. As she strives to impact other people and the world happily and peacefully, she hopes everyone on this planet stays healthy by contributing to climate issues here on Earth. She was born in Korea, studying in the United States, and is open to donating her strengths. Having experienced many different Korean public organizations and global activities, she wants to keep researching and spreading the importance of protecting the environment with others.
Ji-Ae Kim
Translator
Ji-ae started building career in climate change since she wrote the master’s thesis on how climate change affects the socioeconomic outcomes of Indian women. She has about 5 years of experience related to agriculture, environment, and climate change, which includes the time at a multilateral development bank in Washington D.C. where she participated in various research projects such as the impact of climate change on food security, and financial risk arising from climate change and roles of Central banks and financial regulators, etc. Currently, she is working as a climate change specialist for UN Climate Change office for Latin America where she manages climate finance projects in the region.
Vicky Huang
Translator
Vicky Huang is an environmental enthusiast who is passionate about environmental issues. While pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering, she hopes to raise environmental awareness through social media and education. Growing up in Taiwan and studying in the United States of America have widened her cultural perspective on global climate issues. Her goal is to make a greater impact on sustainable development and environment preservation for future generations.
Yue Ying
Translator
Yue Ying is a healthcare professional employed by New York City Health and Hospital. She was born and raised in Mainland China, and now resides in the United States, where she strives to live a healthy, sustainable, and culturally appropriate lifestyle. She wants to use her language skills, as well as her passion for environmental issues, to bring awareness about Climate Change to others whose first language is Chinese.
Charlotte Meng
Graphic Designer
Eager to explore new ways to co-exist with nature in sustainable and non-harmful ways, Charlotte is passionate about tackling environmental issues and doing good in the world. A mostly self-taught graphic designer, she works on Belikewatr’s graphic design team to visualize the data analysis that they do. She received her B.A. in Mathematics from Vassar College.
Xuanao Zhang
Graphic Designer
Tenzin Kalden
Website Developer
After his newly discovered interest in computer science and programming turned into a lifetime passion, Tenzin decided to attend New York City College of Technology and studied Computer Systems. During his time there, he taught himself web development, and joined the team at Belikewatr, inc. in order to use his passions and talents to help spread awareness of global climate change.
Alfredo Alejo
Data Scientist
Alfredo is a self-taught data scientist with extensive experience n Python, Pandas, Data Cleaning and Data Visualization, and a background in research and data entry. Through his work at BeLikeWatr Inc, Alfredo hopes to utilize his skills to help raise awarness of global climate change through data.
Xuan Qiu
Data Scientist
Passionate about environmental sustainability, Xuan previously interned at the Nature, Climate, and Energy team at the United Nations as a data analyst, where she created data visualization to help economists understand climate mitigation effort. With a background in environmental policy and quantitative analysis, she hopes to bring her passion to the data journalist position at belikewatr, and use data and market solution to help solve climate change.
Wenyue Cheng
Data Scientist
Wenyue loves to use her passion for data, design, and exploration to find the meanings hidden in the data, and to be a digital storyteller. With experience workiing in both data and marketing analyst positons, Wenyue is proficient in data analysis, SQL, visualiztion, and building light web applications. She is excited about using these skills to bring timely and stylish data visualization services to Belikewatr, Inc.
Shrey Sharma
Data Scientist
Ever an explorer, Shrey Sharma loves to travel, experience new cultures, and interact with people from diverse backgrounds. Shrey is enthusiastic about data and about uncovering stories hidden in the statistical noise. He holds a Master’s degree in Data Science, and is a passionate advocate for the environment and for mitigating the hazards of climate change.
Tony Li
Data Scientist
Tony grew up in South Florida, where he became involved in environmental projects related to water resources. Pursuing a Bachelor’s in Math at Carnegie Mellon University, he has previous experience in using machine learning for predictive modeling in the environment.
Ankita Talwar
Data Scientist
Inquisitive by nature, Ankita loves to explore and is always up for a challenge, and holds a Masters Degree in Data Science. She enjoys uncovering data trends and is passionate about it. Her experiences include building Dashboards, Data Visualization, Machine and Graph Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and using Statistical Models.
Hannah Xu
Data Scientist
Graduating from UConn Business Analytics program with experience in Marketing and Administration, Hannah developed a strong interest in analyzing present and future trends for different business scenarios. After living and studying 3 different continents, she gained global experience and education in diverse cultural backgrounds. She wishes to explore more possibilities in the data science world by applying her knowledge in BeLikeWatr.
