As a climate organizer, emergency manager, nonprofit leader, and strategist, Gavi works to shift resources, attention, accountability, and solidarity to local and global grassroots solutions. Gavi’s first encounter advocating for justice and communal sustainability was when she was 10-years-old in New Haven, Connecticut, where the local utility company attempted to build a high voltage power-line (at the time thought to cause cancer in children) next to 3 institutions in her Jewish community. Since her community came together to pass legislation in Connecticut requiring a distance between all schools and power-line infrastructure, Gavi has continued the fight for just transitions, global climate justice, and community resilience in the climate movement.

As an active member of SustainUS and the greater youth climate movement, Gavi is currently coordinating SustainUS’ work around the Global Green New Deal to build US solidarity with Global South communities. Previously with SustainUS, Gavi attended the 52nd UN Commission on the Status of Women and 24th UN Climate Negotiations as a US Youth Delegate, and created and led a delegation of young New Yorkers impacted by the climate crisis to the UN Secretary General’s 2019 Climate Action Summit. In addition, Gavi has coordinated local elections to beat fossil fuel infrastructure with Lead Locally, organized on a coalition of disaster prone communities in New York and New Jersey around resilience policy, and worked on climate resilience and disaster preparedness at New York City Emergency Management, as an NYC Urban Fellow, Consultant to the Office of Strategic Operations, and Emergency Manager in the 2020 COVID-19 emergency activation.

While in school in Philadelphia, Gavi was a co founder and student coordinator of Fossil Free Penn, organized with allied groups around an end to the Philadelphia Energy Hub proposal, and co-founded Sunrise Philly. Internationally, Gavi has interned at EcoPeace Middle East where she convened young Jordanians, Palestinians, and Israelis to rehabilitate the waning Jordan River rehabilitation, and at the Heinrich Boell Stiftung’ DC office where she coordinated an exchange program between German and US coal communities on just transitions towards a renewable future. Gavi holds degrees in nonprofit leadership and earth sciences from the University of Pennsylvania.