Anna Rose

Anna Rose's Biography

Anna Rose is a sought-after speaker and passionate presenter on climate change, leadership, youth engagement and sustainability. She has delivered hundreds of speeches to a wide range of audiences – from a 16,000 person stadium in Perth alongside the Dalai Lama, to schools, community groups and companies.

Anna is an Australian author, community organiser and campaigner who works on a number of strategic initiatives to help Australia make progress tackling the climate crisis. She works with a small team of people to help ordinary people use their time, talent and treasure in the most strategic way possible as part of the grassroots climate movement. She is also co-founder with her friends Clare and Arielle of Australia’s first climate advocacy-focused giving circle, Groundswell.

Anna comes from a long line of farmers from the Hunter Valley, Liverpool Plains and North West Slopes of NSW, and is currently a board Director with Farmers for Climate Action. Farmers for Climate Action is building a movement of farmers to take climate action behind and beyond the farm gate – putting those on the front lines of the climate crisis at the front and centre of the solutions. You can support their work here.

Previously Anna was National Manager for Earth Hour with WWF-Australia, where she developed public-facing climate change campaigns including ‘Lights Out for the Reef’ and ‘Appetite for Change’ in the lead up to the 2015 U.N. climate talks in Paris. Anna remains involved with WWF as a Governor.

Anna’s climate change journey began in high school and continued at University, where she co-founded the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and was National Co-Director for five years. After ‘retiring’ from AYCC, Anna co-starred in the ABC documentary ‘I Can Change Your Mind on Climate Change’ and authored the book ‘Madlands: A Journey to Change the Mind of a Climate Sceptic’ (MUP, 2012).

Anna previously convened the Vice-Chancellor’s course in Leadership & Influence at the Australian National University. She is a former Churchill Fellow and a recipient of the Sierra Club’s Earthcare award for her services to international environmental protection. She was the Australian Geographic Society’s Conservationist of the Year 2015 and was a finalist in the Australian of the Year Awards (A.C.T.) the same year. She was a Myer Foundation Innovation Fellow in 2016-17. She was named one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 ‘Women of Influence’ for 2019.

As the daughter of an English teacher, Anna is passionate about the power of writing to change hearts and minds. She has written for all major Australian newspapers and covered the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in 2012 as a journalist for online news outlet Crikey . More recently she has been a contributor to the book ‘The Motherhood’ (Penguin, 2018) and the magazine Dumbo Feather.

Anna is an advisory board member of the Australian Geographic Society and the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute. She is a former Director of Solar Citizens, the Aussie Farmers Foundation and Green Music Australia. Anna is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU Climate Change Centre and an Associate of Melbourne University Sustainable Society Institute

Speaking Topics Include

• Connecting with a Younger Generation: How to inspire a generation

• How to Become an Eco-Friendly Business

• The Corporate Talk: Turning ideas into reality, start-up/activation, being a visionary, and leadership

• Understanding the Environment and the Climate Crisis