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Biddeford

UNE senior named Brookie Award winner for her environmental leadership

Kiara Frischkorn
Kiara Frischkorn is the recipient of a Brookie Award for her environmental leadership

Kiara Frischkorn (Marine Affairs, '22) is the recipient of a 2022 Brookie Award for her environmental leadership on and off campus.

The Brookie Awards is organized by NRCM Rising, the young member arm of the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM), the state’s leading environmental organization.

Frischkorn was nominated for the award by Alethea Cariddi, M.S., Ed., UNE’s assistant director of sustainability. In her nomination letter, Cariddi wrote, “Kiara traveled across the United States to join the UNE community with gusto and has made a lasting impact at our institution, the local community, and in the state with her dogged enthusiasm for environmental protection.”

Frischkorn grew up in Los Angeles and has experienced the impacts of climate-fueled natural disasters firsthand. She and her family had to flee their home in California because of the threat of wildfires, and her family’s native country of the Philippines has been ravaged by typhoons in recent years.

The events motivated Frischkorn to become a climate advocate. She is deeply passionate about reducing plastic waste in our oceans and has organized several successful beach cleanups during her four years on campus. She is empowering other youth in Maine to use their voices and tell their personal stories by speaking at climate rallies and trainings.

Frischkorn has been the president of Earth’s E.C.O., the student environmental club at UNE, since her sophomore year. During the summer of 2021, she interned with the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future.

Frischkorn leverages her lived experiences, her empathy for others, and her passion for storytelling as a young environmental leader.

The Brookie Award winners will be honored and celebrated at an awards ceremony and reception on Thursday, July 14, at O’Maine Studios in Portland.

For more information about the 2022 Brookie Award recipients and the awards ceremony please visit www.brookieawards.org

Kiara at beach
Kiara with beach trash

About the University of New England

The University of New England is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible, accredited online degrees. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.