Lakeside School

During the Upper School assembly on Nov. 19, Andrea Rodgers ’94 was presented with the 2024-2025 Lakeside/St. Nicholas Distinguished Alum Award. The following citation was read aloud as part of the presentation.

Back in the mid-1980s, Middle School Athletic Director Sandy Schneider found herself juggling too many athletes in too small a space — and decided not to field a basketball squad for 5th-grade girls. What she wasn’t counting on: 10-year-old Andrea “Muffie” Rodgers, who insisted that her class deserved a chance. Schneider told the young Rodgers that if she came up with a coach and a list of nine players, she’d get her wish. To her amazement, it took Rodgers only three days. And the group Rodgers formed continued on to become one of the most successful squads in Lakeside history: After going undefeated from 5th through 8th grades, their record was 96-1 in the final three years of high school, with two state titles and a national ranking. “Andrea was so gifted,” says Schneider. “The best three-point shooter in our program, ever. She just had a line to the basket — and she was laser-focused on what she wanted.” Rodgers was assertive and assured, but, more important, she was a genuine teammate: She instinctively knew when to stand out and when to blend in. How to continue improving even from a place of excellence. And how to pursue something larger than herself with confidence, conviction, and humility.

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise, then, that Rodgers has dedicated her career — and her formidable talent and chutzpah — to what is arguably our largest issue of all, one with the greatest need for leadership, cooperation, and foresight alike: climate change and its catastrophic effect on young people. Her father, William Rodgers, was essentially the founder of the field of environmental law, a brilliant and self-effacing professor who taught at the University of Washington for 50 years. For vacations, he brought his family to strip mines, fish hatcheries, and Superfund sites. Andrea, after earning a B.A. in physical anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, attended Arizona State University for law school. There, she was drawn to the intersection of science, technology, and the law — and fell in love with constitutional law, spending a summer working for the Arizona Civil Liberties Union and feeding her strong sense of justice. Early in her career, she clerked at the Arizona Court of Appeals, where, she says, she got to “write and write and write” for a fair, conservative, open-minded jurist. She has been an honors attorney for the U.S. Department of Transportation, in-house legal counsel for the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe, and staff attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center. 

But her passions truly came together in 2010, when Rodgers started working with Our Children’s Trust, a unique public interest firm that focuses on youth affected by the climate crisis. In 2011, she was a crucial part of the legal team representing a group of youth climate activists worldwide who launched over 50 simultaneous legal cases on Mother’s Day weekend — all arguing that governments have a legal responsibility to protect the atmosphere for future generations. “Kids are the most impacted by the effects of climate change,” she says. “They’re 100% dependent on their caregivers, and politicians, to act in their well-being. And climate change is a perfect example of governments doing the exact opposite.” In 2015, Rodgers was instrumental in Juliana vs. United States, where a court held for the first time that children have a constitutional right to a stable climate system that sustains human life and liberty. In Hawaii, she achieved a settlement that requires the state’s transportation system to achieve zero emissions by 2045. In Held vs. Montana, her plaintiffs successfully sued the state for violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. Now deputy director of U.S. strategy for Our Children’s Trust, Rodgers has cases against the federal government, Canada, and in the states of Wisconsin, Utah, Alaska, Florida, and more, seeking to unwind — through patience, thoroughness, intellectual rigor, and farsightedness — a tangled web of injustices. “Kids are fighting for their lives. They just want to be able to go outside and have a healthy childhood,” she says.

By playing the long game, by advocating for society’s youngest members, Rodgers is creating precedents that will endure beyond her final court appearance. Her litigation asks all of us: What does liberty mean? And how can we ensure it is genuinely protected for the most vulnerable among us?

For her unswerving dedication to the welfare of our youth and our planet, for her courage to stand up for her principles, and for her contribution in establishing a new paradigm for global ecological responsibility, the Lakeside/St. Nicholas Alum Association is proud to honor Andrea Rodgers ’94 with the 2025 Distinguished Alum Award.