Portrait of Ashley Hermann with pink, green and blue hair

  • Ashley Herrmann (she/her)

    Associate Director of Education, Action for the Climate Emergency
  • CEE-Change Fellow
  • 2023
United States

Ashley Herrmann is an experienced climate educator empowering high school students in Tampa, Florida, to understand and act on climate solutions.

About Ashley

As a lifelong Floridian, Ashley (she/her) has a strong affinity for the outdoors and preservation. She has been a vocal environmental advocate for over 14 years. She founded Students for the Environment in 2011 at Hillsborough Community College. She earned a Bachelor Degree in Economics at the University of South Florida in 2015 and returned to complete a Master’s in Global Sustainability with concentrations in Sustainable Business and Renewable Energy. Ashley feels called to this work because she sees Florida on the front lines of climate change, and while most Floridians seem to notice climate weirding they’re also reconciling a lot of misinformation. As the Associate Director of Education, Ashley works with Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE) to provide resources and in-person assemblies that empower teachers and students nationwide to learn about climate science and climate justice. In her free time, Ashley enjoys swing dancing, playing with her dog and backyard chickens, and being a mother to her daughter born near the end of 2020.

About Ashley’s Community Action Project (CAP)

Florida’s high school students are overwhelmed with misinformation about climate change. Despite being the biggest challenge of their generation, students are often left confused about natural climate change vs. human-driven climate change and if sometimes faraway subjects, like the climate impacts on polar bears, matter to them. 

Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE) was founded in 2008. Early on, ACE adopted a strategy to send presenters to high schools to share climate education that helped students confidently understand the science of climate change and feel motivated to take action. As ACE’s Associate Director of Education, Ashley’s project will focus on presenting at high schools in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Polk, Pasco, and Manatee counties across Tampa Bay, Florida, to deliver an award-winning civic and climate education program, “Our Climate Our Future Live.” She'll look to the cohort to assist in making improvements to the presentation, which engages students and encourages them to consider impactful civic career paths, such as with the U.S. EPA, Department of Energy, and more. She also plans to share her findings from the field and the fellowship to improve the program with presenters in North Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.