Amna Nawaz: Kayla Stuart is a Tennessee-based urban forester who leads the organization Tree CPR to create healthier, stronger communities as climate change escalates.

She shares her Brief But Spectacular take on the power of trees.

Kayla Stuart, Program Director, Tree CPR: My fondest memories outdoors were with my grandparents in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We would look for crawdads and salamanders and birds.

My grandfather was an ecologist, so we had a walking encyclopedia with us who fed us all this information that I didn’t realize would have such a huge impact on my life. I unfortunately lost him to cancer, and ever since then I have been looking for ways to continue his legacy and really make him proud of the person that I’m becoming in our natural world.

Memphis sits along the Mississippi River in the Delta region, and it’s got some of the most beautiful big trees I have ever seen in my entire life. Trees provide protection for us, and, sometimes, we forget that. They can cool cities up to 20 degrees sometimes in times of extreme heat.

There’s a lot of inequities in neighborhood to neighborhood across Memphis. You can tell which neighborhood is more vulnerable just by looking at how their vegetation is managed, if there are any trees that have been planted recently.

And a lot of times, those communities that are more vulnerable and have historically faced discrimination tend to have lesser-quality tree canopy.

I created Tree CPR. Tree CPR is a work force-based program that teaches individuals primarily from underserved communities the technical skills, as well as the soft skills, they need to get jobs in natural resources. I want the students in my class to understand how important it is for us to be stewards of the vegetation in and around our communities.

It’s important for people from these, like, historically disadvantaged communities to have a seat at the table so they can make decisions for their own neighborhoods, to say, hey, we need more shade here, we need higher-quality tree canopy here. They will reduce their communities’ vulnerability because they’re present in those conversations, and that’s important.

I hope to not only make my grandfather proud, but I want people who look like me and who have had similar experiences in life as myself to really feel like they can take control of their own communities through urban forestry.

My name is Kayla Stuart, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on creating a cooler future.