Joey Wu

Woodbury, MN

Using storytelling to shed light on climate insecurities and solutions.

Joey won for his approach to water security. He is a storyteller who has partnered with international organizations and conferences such as the World Bank.

Joey Wu, 2025 Brower Youth Award Winner

More About Joey

Joey Wu has personally experienced how terrifying limited access to drinking water can be. During a summer trip to his family’s village in Taiwan, a typhoon damaged local water-supply lines and their tap water, which turned muddy with sediment and became undrinkable. The villagers built makeshift water filters until the pipes could be fixed. Wu helped in that effort. The experience offered him a powerful lesson in resilience and helped him understand why access to clean water is an essential human right.

A few years later, as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Wu designed a water filter that could remove harmful PFAS, or forever chemicals, from tap water. He presented it to the Philadelphia Water Department as a potential solution to PFAS contamination in low-income neighborhoods in city. But adoption proved to be a problem. Many residents of these historically neglected neighborhoods didn’t trust trap water and preferred bottled water. This made Wu — who is also United Nations youth delegate and Clinton Global Initiative University Scholar — realize that technical solutions to environmental problems can’t work in isolation, they need socio-cultural buy in as well.

In 2022, Wu launched Waterroots, a youth-led climate literacy initiative that empowers young leaders in water-stressed regions to share their lived experiences and help bridge the gap between technical solutions and community needs and inspire locally-driven solutions. Wu applied his learnings from several fellowships, including the UN’s Millennium Fellowship, to expand Waterroots into a digital community space. Today, Waterroots has over 50 members across 25 countries who share their water stories — everything from how plastic pollution is increasing malaria in Cameroon, to the undue water burden faced by women and children in Kabul — through YouTube videos and more. Wu mentors these emerging leaders, oversees project development, and facilitates partnerships and outreach. He hopes to continue making space for conversations that build bridges between people and reveal the shared stakes we all have in the future of our planet.