Student Experience

UCSC’s Right Livelihood Center empowers the next generation of activists 

The Right Livelihood Center at UC Santa Cruz offers students a range of opportunities to connect with global visionaries. Students Natalie Capobres (Kresge ’26, environmental studies) and Kevin Lin (Kresge ’26, community studies) share their experiences.

March 13, 2026

By Haneen Zain

Founded in 2013, the Right Livelihood Center (RLC) at UC Santa Cruz serves as the Global Secretariat of the Right Livelihood College, a network of 10 campuses worldwide united around social and environmental justice. The center connects UC Santa Cruz students and faculty directly with the Right Livelihood Foundation’s community of 204 laureates from 81 countries, recognized globally as recipients of the Alternative Nobel Prize. Past laureates include environmental activist Vandana Shiva, climate advocate Greta Thunberg, and environmental lawyer Robert Bilott—individuals working on the frontlines of the world’s most pressing challenges.

The only Right Livelihood Center in all of North America, the RLC at UC Santa Cruz offers students a range of hands-on opportunities rarely found at other universities. Students can collaborate directly with laureates on real projects, take courses featuring their work, and plug into an international student network spanning five continents.

For Dave Shaw, coordinator of the RLC at UCSC and global secretariat of the Right Livelihood College, the center is rooted in empowerment—trusting that students already have what it takes to create meaningful change.

“Our students are future nonprofit executive directors, founders, business leaders, innovators, and so on,” Shaw said. “It’s not exactly that I want to open doors for them and give them experiences—they’re already doing it themselves. So how do we get behind them, support them, and give them the tools to build themselves up?”  

Third-year student Natalie Capobres (Kresge ’26, environmental studies) joined the RLC at UC Santa Cruz in August after taking a class with Shaw. Since joining the center, Capobres has had the opportunity to learn about activism more deeply, hear the stories of activism leaders around the world, and even travel internationally. 

As UC Santa Cruz’s RLC student global secretariat, Capobres champions a number of projects, including designing a leadership training course; maintaining and updating the Right Livelihood College website alongside an intern in Sweden; and helping to organize the 2026 Right Livelihood International Conference, a global, hybrid gathering across campuses and continents from April 13- May 8. 

In December 2025, Capobres alongside a group of UCSC students associated with Right Livelihood traveled to Sweden for the Right Livelihood Awards Week. Capobres was able to meet the intern she had worked alongside for months in person. 

The week-long trip consisted of historic tours, meetings with a fellow Right Livelihood Center at Lund University—for the first time in person— and culminating in the Right Livelihood Award Ceremony, where UCSC students sat front row. Following the ceremony, students had the opportunity to meet and converse with RL scholars and fellows, including Greta Thunberg. 

“Being able to talk to these activists who fight and defend their environment and learning about how they got to their position and the struggles they had to overcome has been really meaningful for me,” Capobres said. “Hearing their stories has been really impactful, and it’s motivated me to keep studying and utilize the education that I’m getting.” 

RLC Coordinator and Global Secretariat Dave Shaw emphasized the importance of giving students opportunities to travel. For a majority of the students on the trip, this was their first time out of the country. Shaw added that the trip might not have happened without the generous support of an anonymous donor, a member of UC Santa Cruz’s first-ever Crown College graduating class. 

“Our students are already stepping into leadership in powerful ways,” Shaw said. “Thanks to the generosity of donors and the shared investment of the campus community, they can engage directly with global changemakers—traveling, collaborating, and taking on real responsibilities that shape both their education and their future paths.”

In June, Capobres will graduate from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in environmental studies with a concentration in global environmental justice and a minor in legal studies. She emphasizes that her experience with the Right Livelihood Center at UC Santa Cruz has solidified her passion in environmental justice and law. Post-graduation, Capobres plans to gain work experience before pursuing law school—a long-term goal of hers. 

“I’ve always been into environmental protection, but Right Livelihood taught me more about environmental protection for people’s rights as well, not just for the sake of the environment.” 

For fourth-year student Kevin Lin (Kresge ’26, community studies), the Right Livelihood Center has been the focus of his six-month community studies field study internship. Lin had heard of the Right Livelihood Center long before he started his internship. Shaw presented to one of Lin’s classes about the RLC, highlighting the work of Mother Nature Cambodia, a civil rights group protecting the country’s environment through frontline human rights activism, and it left a lasting impression. So when it came time for Lin to choose a focus for his field study, the RLC was an easy choice.

“That transformed my education, because ever since that presentation, the skills I’m learning at the Right Livelihood Center aren’t just ideology or terminology I read in textbooks, it’s actual skills I can use in the future,” Lin said. “It’s really transformed my knowledge into action.” 

As a community organizer for the RLC, Lin works with core teams to organize events. He credits RLC with teaching him skills that he will take with him beyond graduation; skills like how to host a meeting, utilizing Google Workspaces, collaborating with other members, planning events, and even hosting a conference. 

“Dave Shaw’s patience and mentorship really helped me to be more prepared for my career path after graduation,” Lin said. “He’s nourishing and growing organization leaders out of Right Livelihood, and I’m learning those skills. I don’t think I would ever get that out of a traditional classroom experience.” 

After graduating from UC Santa Cruz this spring, Lin plans to return to his hometown in New York, where he hopes to put his education to work supporting local immigrant communities.

The 2026 Right Livelihood International Conference 

Shaw, Capobres, Lin, and other members of the UCSC Right Livelihood Center are working together to organize the 2026 Right Livelihood International Conference.  

The hybrid event is a four-week global conference exploring how education can strengthen democracy, collective intelligence, and just futures. Bringing together Right Livelihood Laureates, students, faculty, and community partners across continents, the conference combines asynchronous learning with participatory dialogue and collaborative action. 

The conference will feature Right Livelihood Laureates, scholars, educators, students, and community leaders from around the world. 

Confirmed and upcoming Laureates:

• Reema Nanavaty (India)
• Sima Samar (Afghanistan)
• Alsanosi Adam (Sudan)
• Ryoko Shimzu (Japan)
• Rob Bilott (USA)
• Audrey Tang (Taiwan)
• Julian Aguon (Guam)
• Raul Montenegro (Argentina)
• Juan Pablo Orrego (Chile)
• Tony Rinaudo (Australia)
• Devlin Kuyek (Canada)
• (More to be announced)