Naolo Charles

Naolo Charles’ journey into environmental justice began after the 2005 Probo Koala toxic waste disaster in Côte d’Ivoire, his country of origin. The tragedy sparked a deep determination to understand the political, economic, and environmental forces driving global injustice.

This search led him from an early career in banking to a 75 days internship in 2010 in the Bolivian salt desert of Uyuni, where he was sent to work on local environmental programming alongside Indigenous communities through the Quebec Without Borders International Relations program.

He later completed a Master’s degree in Environment in 2012, specializing in life-cycle thinking and examining the social and environmental impacts of everyday consumer products, from extraction to disposal.

In 2013, he carried out an environmental mandate for the Quebec Ministry of International Relations in Chicago with the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. He then relocated to Toronto and began working inside Canada’s philanthropic and institutional funding systems.

From 2015 to 2016, Naolo worked at the Ontario Trillium Foundation, contributing to the development and launch of the Foundation’s Collective Impact funding program.

He later completed international development mandates in Rwanda and Senegal, supporting an organization mentoring some of Africa’s most promising young mathematicians.

Upon returning to Canada in 2017, he served as a Knowledge Broker at York University (2017–2019), bridging academic research, community expertise, and policy practice. His work focused on migrant integration and settlement, strengthening his commitment to evidence-informed, community-led systems change.

In 2019, Naolo founded the Black Environmental Initiative (BEI) to center Black leadership in environmental action and climate solutions. He later co-founded the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice (CCECJ), helping devise strategies that mobilized civil society behind a national campaign contributing to the passage of Canada’s first environmental justice legislation.

From 2022 to 2023, he worked at the RBC Foundation, managing a granting portfolio focused on equity-denied communities. His work contributed to the creation of RBC’s first Indigenous Education Legacy Space, embedding Indigenous knowledge, history, and learning within the bank’s workplace.

From early 2023 to late 2025, Naolo served as Program Director at the McConnell Foundation, where he acted as a change agent within one of Canada’s most influential philanthropic institutions.

During this period, he led a comprehensive refinement of the Communities program strategy, recruiting a consulting firm and establishing a Community Advisory Board to ensure the strategy refinements were shaped by lived experience. He designed and introduced a new funding pillar titled Regeneration and developed eight key considerations to guide grantmaking with a stronger emphasis on racialized and intersectional leadership.

Under his leadership, the program redirected significant funding toward grassroots and historically underfunded organizations, channeling millions of dollars to movement builders across the country.

This work included catalytic support for organizations such as Akoma Holdings and East Coast Prison Justice in Halifax; Hogan’s Alley and the Hua Foundation in Vancouver; Little Jamaica Community Land Trust in Toronto; and the Jia Foundation and the Refugee Centre in Montreal.

He also played a key role in the emergence of the African Canadian Collective, which addresses housing insecurity among African asylum seekers in Toronto. He convened its founding members and initiated a cross-foundation collaboration with the Northpine Foundation, mobilizing an additional $1 million to support a promising transitional housing solution for asylum seekers.

He also conceived and spearheaded a landmark $2 million investment in Black-led community land trusts in Nova Scotia, originating the idea, building internal and external alignment, convening the four organizations, supporting their proposal development, structuring a five-year CLT strategy within the Foundation, securing management approval, and bringing the initiative to the stage of board approval.

In addition, he contributed to the coordination of a national learning tour to Halifax that brought foundation board members into direct engagement with local community leaders, and independently conducted national learning tours in British Columbia and Alberta to deepen institutional understanding of grassroots realities and regional differences.

Beyond his institutional roles, Naolo has advanced Black leadership in global climate spaces, including organizing the first Black Canadian youth delegation to the United Nations Climate Conference (COP).

Through BEI, he continues to develop models of environmental action that center community ownership, regeneration, and systems transformation.

Naolo is a recipient of the Clean50 Award, recognizing leaders advancing sustainability and climate solutions in Canada. For over a decade, he has built and refined pathways for Black youth in the environmental sector, creating meaningful employment and leadership development opportunities and helping shape the next generation of Black climate leaders.