Dr. Kimi Waite is an Asian American social justice educator and environmental education researcher with expertise in climate change and environmental justice curriculum and teaching. She has received national and state awards for her leadership in these areas, in addition to her work in social studies.

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With nearly a decade of experience teaching and leading in K-12 Title I public school districts, she is a former public school teacher in South Los Angeles, and a district central office STEM Specialist in Compton. She holds teaching credentials in Elementary Education, Educational Leadership, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and Early Childhood Education (PK-3), which gives her research diverse K-12 practitioner credibility and relevance. Using critical arts-based educational research and critical theories, she works across several environmental education contexts, including outdoor education, K-12 teaching & curriculum, and online K-12 teacher professional development.

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As a publicly engaged scholar, her work has reached millions through major news outlets, including PBS, The Boston Globe, Ms. Magazine, and The Progressive, with some "viral" pieces garnering up to 63 million readers. She is a co-author of the award-winning book, "What Teachers Want to Know About Teaching Climate Change: An Educator's Guide to Nurturing Hope (K-12)," published by Corwin Press in 2025, and her solo-authored book, "Teaching Environmental Justice in the Elementary Classroom: Entry Points for Equity Across the K-5 Curriculum," is forthcoming with Routledge in February 2026. Her first children's book is forthcoming with the National Science Teaching Association Press in Fall 2026. 

A recognized leader in her field, she has been an invited speaker for organizations such as Climate Generation, the National Education Association, Cornell University's Civic Ecology Lab, and the National Geographic Society. Since 2019, she has served as a steering committee member for California’s statewide climate change education initiative, the Environmental and Climate Change Literacy Projects (ECCLPs), helping to shape statewide policy recommendations and contributing to the statewide recommendations report.

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Dr. Waite became an Assistant Professor at California State University, Los Angeles in 2023. Previously, she worked as a pre-service teacher educator at California State University, Fullerton. Her commitment to global environmental education is shaped by her international teaching experiences in South Korea and Guyana, as well as her explorations and travels to over 85 countries and all seven continents. As a former curriculum trainer and blogger for National Geographic Education, she is an experienced facilitator for K-12 teacher workshops and training institutes on topics like STEAM Project-Based Learning, global/geographic inquiry, environmental literacy, and educational technology/21st-century learning.

Her goal is to create experiential and multidisciplinary pathways for K-12 teachers, students, and scientists to address the planet’s most pressing environmental challenges. To that end, she co-created and directs a community science program for K-12 teachers that utilizes Geographic Information System (GIS) app-based technologies, which has reached over 3,500 teachers and students across the country and has partnered with teachers, students, and scientists from Indigenous Nations and the Philippines.