Biography
Varshini Prakash co-founded the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate organization, and served as its executive director from 2018 until September 2023.
Founding and the Co-Founder Claim
The Sunrise Movement’s own press statement of 7 November 2018 is signed “Varshini Prakash, Co-Founder” and opens with the sentence “I founded Sunrise Movement last year,” placing the founding in 2017. That is a first-party record rather than a journalistic attribution, which matters because founding credit for youth-led organizations of this period has frequently been misassigned in secondary coverage.
The organization’s associated 501(c)(3), the Sunrise Movement Education Fund (EIN 46-4773036), had existed since 2014 and its fiscal-year 2015 and 2016 returns name Evan Weber, not Prakash, as president and executive director. Prakash first appears in the entity’s fiscal-year 2018 return.
Executive Directorship, 2018 to September 2023
The two Sunrise entities’ IRS Form 990 filings give the tenure precisely. Prakash is listed as executive director of the Education Fund in its returns for fiscal years 2018 through 2022, and of the affiliated 501(c)(4) Sunrise Movement (EIN 82-1232167) in its returns for fiscal years 2021 and 2022. In both entities’ fiscal-year 2023 returns she is listed as “Executive Director (thru September),” with Aru Shiney-Ajay recorded as “Executive Director (as of October).” Neither entity’s fiscal-year 2024 return lists her at all; both name Shiney-Ajay as executive director.
Her reported compensation from the Education Fund rose from 83,599 for the partial year 2023.
Sunrise’s own statements have continued to identify Shiney-Ajay as executive director, including a July 2024 press statement calling on President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race and a March 2026 essay on the organization’s site.
Green New Deal Advocacy
Prakash’s 2018 statement in the organization’s name responded to the House Democratic leadership after that year’s midterm elections, calling on Nancy Pelosi and the incoming leadership to take up climate legislation or “step aside.” A December 2018 statement issued under her name welcomed congressional support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed Select Committee for a Green New Deal and counted ten members of Congress backing it within a week.
Writing
Prakash co-edited Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can with Guido Girgenti, published by Simon & Schuster on 25 August 2020. She announced the book on the Sunrise site in August 2020, describing about a year and a half of work with Girgenti and Sunrise staff and volunteers, and naming Naomi Klein, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Bill McKibben and Rev. William Barber II among the contributors. The Library of Congress name authority record for her was created from that book’s 2020 cataloguing-in-publication galley.
After Sunrise
The University of Massachusetts Amherst listed her as its “2025 Ellsberg Activist-in-Residence,” and its own event page describes her as “the former Director and co-founder of Sunrise” and “a proud UMass grad (‘15)” living in Boston. She delivered a public lecture under the residency, “UMass to Sunrise: Building the Youth-Led Movement for Climate Justice,” on 26 February 2025.
What Is Not Established Here
This page previously described her in the present tense as “co-founder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement.” The IRS filings of both Sunrise entities contradict the second half of that: she left the role in September 2023, and the most recent returns do not list her at all. The stale present tense was corrected rather than merely softened.
Removed or not asserted for want of a source meeting this project’s standard: a birth year (the Library of Congress name authority record carries none); any follower or platform figures; the claim, which appears in secondary coverage, that she remained on Sunrise’s board after stepping down — the complete officer and director lists in both entities’ fiscal-year 2024 returns do not include her; the exact month of the organization’s founding, which its own materials do not settle; and any account of her role in specific Sunrise actions, including the November 2018 occupation of Nancy Pelosi’s office, which no first-party record reached in this audit ties to her personally.
Senator Edward Markey’s office issued a press release describing her as a Sunrise co-founder and a State of the Union guest; markey.senate.gov returned HTTP 403 to every automated client and the Wayback Machine returned repeated 429 responses, so that record is not cited here. The characterizations quoted above from Sunrise’s own statements are the organization’s, and from the UMass listing are the university’s; they are attributed rather than adopted.
Sources
- 01.
Internal Revenue Service, via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Sunrise Movement Education Fund (EIN 46-4773036) — Form 990 filings, fiscal years 2015–2024. The 501(c)(3) entity's own annual returns, read through ProPublica's organization HTML page, which exposes the Key Employees and Officers table that the v2 JSON API omits. Source for: Prakash listed as Executive Director in the fiscal-year 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 returns; listed in the fiscal-year 2023 return as 'Executive Director (thru September)' alongside Aru Shiney-Ajay as 'Executive Director (as of October)'; and absent from the fiscal-year 2024 return, whose complete officer list names Shiney-Ajay as Executive Director. Also the source for her reported compensation from this entity rising from $24,000 (FY2018) to $83,599 (partial-year FY2023), and for Evan Weber having been listed as the entity's President and Executive Director in the fiscal-year 2015 and 2016 returns, before Prakash appears. The entity has been tax-exempt since August 2014 and is registered in Washington, DC.
- 02.
Internal Revenue Service, via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Sunrise Movement (EIN 82-1232167) — Form 990 filings, fiscal years 2018–2024. The affiliated 501(c)(4) entity's own annual returns. Source for: Prakash listed as Executive Director in the fiscal-year 2021 and 2022 returns and as 'Executive Director (thru September)' in the fiscal-year 2023 return, with Aru Shiney-Ajay as 'Executive Director (as of October)'; and her absence from the complete fiscal-year 2024 officer list. She does not appear as an officer of this entity in the fiscal-year 2018, 2019 or 2020 returns, which is why this page dates her executive directorship of the c4 to 2021 rather than 2018.
- 03.
Sunrise Movement. Sunrise Movement Founder Varshini Prakash Responds to the 2018 Midterm Elections. (2018). The organization's own statement, dated 7 November 2018 in its WordPress record, retrieved through the site's public REST API. It is the first-party basis for the co-founder claim: the statement opens 'I founded Sunrise Movement last year' — placing the founding in 2017 — and is signed 'Varshini Prakash, Co-Founder'. Also the source for the statement's stated demands to House Democratic leadership after the 2018 midterms and for the figure that 19 of the 34 new House Democrats were elected without fossil-fuel industry executive or lobbyist money, which is the organization's own count and is presented here as its claim, not as verified fact.
- 04.
Sunrise Movement. Statement from Varshini Prakash, founder of Sunrise Movement, in response to new support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Select Committee for a Green New Deal. (2018). Organization statement dated 3 December 2018 in its WordPress record. Source for the statement issued under her name welcoming Rep. John Lewis's support for Ocasio-Cortez's proposed Select Committee for a Green New Deal, and for the organization's count of ten members of Congress backing the committee within one week.
- 05.
Sunrise Movement. Winning the Green New Deal — the Book. (2020). Post dated 18 August 2020, written in Prakash's voice. Source for her co-authorship of the book with Guido Girgenti, for the 25 August 2020 publication date, and for the essay contributors the organization named.
- 06.
Prakash, V. & Girgenti, G. (2020). Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can. Simon & Schuster. Bibliographic record confirmed through the Open Library search and ISBN APIs, which return the title with Prakash and Girgenti as the named authors, first publication year 2020, Simon & Schuster as publisher, 384 pages, ISBN 9781982142438 (edition record /books/OL29837795M). Simon & Schuster's own product page returns a Cloudflare 403 to automated clients and could not be read directly.
- 07.
Library of Congress. Prakash, Varshini — Library of Congress Name Authority record n2020027727. Retrieved through the id.loc.gov suggest2 JSON endpoint. Establishes the authorized form of her name and records the source of the heading as the 2020 CIP galley title page of 'Winning the green new deal'. The record carries no birth date, which is why this page states none.
- 08.
University of Massachusetts Amherst Events Calendar. UMass to Sunrise: Building the Youth-Led Movement for Climate Justice. (2025). The university's own event listing for 26 February 2025, retrieved verbatim by direct HTTP request. It names her 'Varshini Prakash - 2025 Ellsberg Activist-in-Residence' and describes her as 'the former Director and co-founder of Sunrise' and 'a proud UMass grad ('15)', living in Boston, Massachusetts. Source for the residency, the UMass Amherst class year, the past-tense framing of her Sunrise role, and the lecture title. Pages on www.umass.edu itself return a Cloudflare 403; the events subdomain does not.
- 09.
Sunrise Movement. Biden: Pass the Torch to Protect Your Climate Legacy. (2024). Organization press statement dated 12 July 2024, issued in the name of 'Sunrise Movement Executive Director Aru Shiney-Ajay'. Cited here only to confirm that the executive directorship had passed to someone else and remained there after Prakash's departure.
- 10.
Sunrise Movement. Rising to the Moment: Why the Climate Movement Must Tackle Authoritarianism. (2026). Post dated 30 March 2026, bylined 'Aru Shiney-Ajay, Sunrise Movement Executive Director'. The most recent first-party confirmation that Prakash does not hold the role this page previously attributed to her in the present tense.