Alliyah Lusuegro

Alliyah Lusuegro's first home is in metro Manila, Philippines. She greeted the climate in her motherland's womb, cradled in the humidity of the islands. At an early age, she formed a deep attachment to the environment, especially the ocean, every time she visited the Pacific waters and drove along mountainsides on family trips. The environment to her is founded on kinship and the warmth her community has always shared through passionate, passing hellos and their unquestionable love for food.

Alliyah has since then migrated to the United States, hailing in her primary home base of Chicago, IL, or the ancestral lands of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa peoples. Alliyah graduated from Swarthmore College (Lenape land) with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a double minor in Biology and Gender & Sexuality Studies. At Swarthmore, Alliyah co-led the Green Advisors in the Office of Sustainability, a group of students who promote sustainable practices on campus. She received the 2020 Campus Sustainability Champion award from Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consumption for her advocacy of environmental justice in higher education sustainability. Alliyah is also a QuestBridge National College Match Scholar and an alum of the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program (DDCSP) at the University of Michigan, where she researched plankton health in the Great Lakes and air quality in Detroit, MI.

Alliyah is a home-builder and lifelong pursuer of justice. She cares deeply about environmental, social and immigrant rights, believing that everyone, particularly Black and Brown folks, has the right to a happy and healthy home. Alliyah builds homes through words and stories as a writer for Platform Magazine. She is excited to engage with her interests of storytelling and policy within the Fish Conservation Program at Ocean Conservancy in Washington, D.C.

To rest, recharge and indulge, Alliyah loves to read three books at once, run in city parks and nature trails, and make plant-based foods. She is all about listening to music, chasing sunsets, and voicing eternal homage to her village.