Kala Menchetti Hunter

I’m Kala (Kay-luh), an environmental journalist in Chicago, IL. 

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I have been infatuated with nature, wildlife, and ecosystems as big as the Amazon and as small as my New Mexico desert backyard since I can remember. When I was 12, I learned about the real threat of climate change from watching documentaries like "An Inconvenient Truth" and reading articles about extreme weather. I was a stewed combination of obsessed, scared, and lost. 

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I studied the effects of climate change, environmental history, environmental economics, weather and climate, ecological medicine, Portuguese in Brazil, and Spanish in Costa Rica, while in college. Exploring other cultures and experiencing the effects of the Anthropocene in Latin America, was pivotal in my understanding of mitigating the climate crisis and biodiversity loss: telling the story.

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Roles in solar power permitting, sustainable building material coordination at Google, and communication management for resilient green infrastructure have given me the knowledge and further fueled my passion to incorporate climate change adaptation and eco-system service technologies into the social, political, and economic systems we have today. 

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When I'm not writing, I'm biking along lake shore drive, practicing yoga, swimming, horseback riding, and cooking up a storm of farmers market veggies.