By Bernheim
At Bernheim’s 2025 RESTORE celebration, we introduced the Next Gen Climate Hero Award, an award honoring young people making meaningful contributions to environmental stewardship. The award celebrates bold curiosity, community care, and a deep love for nature. This year, we were proud to name 12-year-old Ayla Tolentino as the very first recipient.
Ayla is a 7th grader from Franklin County, Kentucky, and currently serves as Vice President of her middle school FFA chapter. Her passion for native plants, pollinators, and soil health has been growing since she was a toddler. She attended forest school in the Red River Gorge and could name trees before she could tie her shoes. Today, she channels that same energy into hands-on learning, including a project on the germination rates of expired seeds. With parents working in horticulture and ag marketing, and a thriving backyard vegetable garden, nature runs deep in her roots.
Earlier this year, Ayla wrote a speech about the importance of using native plants in landscape design, which she shared through her involvement with FFA. Ayla was invited to present her speech at RESTORE, reminding us that environmental advocacy isn’t just a job for adults; it’s something we must nurture in the next generation.
Creating the Next Gen Climate Hero Award was an intentional step in lifting up youth voices at RESTORE. This year’s event spotlighted students already making an impact. The Irrigators, a team from Elizabethtown High School, earned a grant to build a cutting-edge greenhouse for Central Kentucky United Way. University of Louisville students from the Sustainability Cohort also shared their work managing the Garden Commons. Ayla may have been the youngest speaker, but her clarity, conviction, and care for the natural world showed wisdom beyond her years. Honoring her wasn’t just a celebration—it was a promise to keep listening and continue making space for the next generation of environmental champions.
