March 4 – It’s been a tough year for anyone working on the climate agenda. The Trump Administration’s repeal of the endangerment finding, the legal underpinning of U.S. climate regulation, was a coup de grace, after a litany of regulatory cuts and other moves to remove any impediment to unfettered fossil fuel development in the world’s largest economy.
Where the U.S. has led, much of the world has followed, with action on the nature and climate crises losing steam as corporate and government leaders have been forced to respond to a new U.S. administration determined to up-end the collaborative, rules-based international order.
This seismic shift is happening at a time when the impacts of climate change on people and economies have never been so stark, nor action so urgently needed.
But the 12 women in this year’s Trailblazing Women in Climate list, which Reuters Events publishes to celebrate International Women’s Day, remain resolutely positive despite the headwinds.
We asked all the trailblazers, chosen from the fields of policy, finance, business and activism, to tell us some of the biggest challenges and opportunities they see in the climate space, particularly for women.
Jo da Silva, global sustainable development director at engineering consultancy Arup, is clear-eyed about the challenge. “Five years ago, the world was optimistic about the future, uniting around a commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. But it is now inevitable we will overshoot, requiring urgent and radical measures to remove, as well as reduce, carbon, and restore nature.”
She adds that buildings, water, energy, technology and transport systems need to be designed to be “safe, resilient and regenerative”.
Ana Toni, president of last year’s COP30 climate conference in Brazil, emphasises the need for swift action. “We have never had to transform our ways so quickly, but I am confident that the world is closer than ever to choosing a new growth model – one that supports positive tipping points, with technological, behavioral, economic and social changes.”
She points to rapid declines in renewable energy and battery costs, and unprecedented changes to how we produce food and manage the world’s forests. “We are at a crossroads where existential risks can be transformed into a cascade of positive opportunities.”
Anne Hidalgo will step down as mayor of the city of Paris this month, after 12 years of pioneering work seeking to align the French capital to the climate agreement that bears its name. She points out that cities are “laboratories of innovation, proving that local action can achieve measurable and rapid change”.
But she adds that civic leaders need to ensure that “citizens feel empowered rather than burdened”, and pay particular attention to “the vulnerable communities who contribute least to the problem but face the greatest risks”.
Barbara Buchner, CEO of Climate Policy Initiative, who directs the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance, accepts that “setbacks are real and frustrating. But momentum is also real. Every partnership formed, every barrier reduced and every successful model scaled brings us closer to the impact we need. While individual efforts can at times seem ineffective, the sum of our collective action is unstoppable.”
Jessica Smith, who heads the nature programme at the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, also sees green shoots.
“The High Seas Treaty became legally binding in January 2026, bringing governance to half the planet’s surface. The U.N.’s Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025–2034) is codifying risks to glaciers and permafrost, natural systems that underpin climate stability yet remain dangerously undervalued. Momentum grows to renew Antarctica’s protection for peace and science.”
Kara Hurst is chief sustainability officer of Amazon Inc, one of the biggest corporate emitters of GHG in the world, outside the oil and gas industry. Amazon has set a goal of reaching net zero by 2040, and it co-founded The Climate Pledge, a group of companies with the same goals, which has 600 signatories, from 46 countries.
Hurst points out that more than 100 companies signed in 2025 alone, 62% more than joined in 2024. She says: “We cannot afford to let disappointment stall us or undercut momentum. This work continues to be long-term, complicated work in uncharted territory, but the solutions exist and we know how to scale them. When we collaborate, build our resilience and remain optimistic, meaningful change really does happen.”
One of those optimists is Dr Laureen Meroueh, the founder and CEO of Hertha Metals in the U.S. At age 33, she is the first woman inventor in the steel industry to have built a company around her breakthrough – a single-step coal-free steelmaking process that is 25% cheaper, 35% less energy-intensive and produces 50% fewer emissions than conventional methods.
Meroueh says the withdrawal of tax breaks and other incentives for low-carbon innovation introduced through the Inflation Reduction Act have been a wake-up call for the clean-tech industry.
“The solutions emerging from this period will be better and more resilient,” she says. “We’re learning how to build models that work and make sense in the real world, not just the lab, and regardless of what policies might be in place.”
Many of the trailblazers emphasised how female leaders are better at tackling the three inter-related challenges of climate action, nature restoration and ensuring a just transition.
Frances Seymour, senior policy advisor at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, said: “What we need now are leaders who can navigate within and among communities, governments, corporations, civil society and international organizations to align all of these entities for effective climate action. My observation is that on average, male leaders tend to excel in marketing big ideas while female leaders are more effective in supporting the teams and the partnerships that can translate ideas into outcomes.”
Catherine McKenna, the former Canadian environment minister, and chair of the U.N. Secretary-General’s Expert Group on Net Zero Commitments, is founder of a new group of 500 top-level women working in the climate space, Women Leading on Climate.
She points out that women are two and a half times more likely to demand government action on climate, more likely to advocate publicly and more likely to engage civically. “In an era of ‘climate hushing’, when too many leaders avoid the topic of climate change, women are more likely to speak plainly, push back and persist, especially when it is uncomfortable,” she says.
Durreen Shahnaz is founder and CEO of Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange, which created the world’s first social stock exchange. She says women from the Global South are under-represented in climate finance, despite the fact that they have long managed water, food systems and livelihoods on the frontlines of climate stress.
“This disconnect is a catastrophic market failure. When women are positioned merely as beneficiaries rather than architects of investments, climate risk is mispriced and resilience is constrained. When women lead, adaptation scales and capital flows become more effective.”
Cecile Ndjebet is one of those women leaders, founder of the African Women’s Network for Community Management of Forests and Cameroon Ecology. “When women lead, forests are better-protected, community governance is stronger and climate solutions are more sustainable,” she says. “Excluding women from leadership is not only unjust; it weakens our collective ability to respond to the climate emergency.”
Leslie Johnston, founding CEO of the Laudes Foundation, says she is encouraged by the growing ecosystem of philanthropic funders who “continue to fund the hard stuff”, even where there is a market failure.
“As I think about the way forward, I come back to Mary Robinson’s words of wisdom at last year’s London Climate Action Week: ‘Forge alliances that are fast-moving and fierce. Speak the truths that are not easy to hear. Invest in what matters most.’
“What matters to me most … is knowing that the actions that we, collectively, take today will lead to a better world for the generations who follow.”