Timberland Earthkeeper Hero Sami Nerenberg uses design to combat social and environmental issues—two things close to her heart. As a San Francisco native, she grew up immersed in its beautiful natural surroundings and a couple blocks from the projects. Inherently, she’s always been interested in two things: the world’s limited resources and social inequalities.

The interconnectedness of social and environmental issues pushed to the forefront of Sami’s work at Rhode Island School of Design, both as a student and as its youngest faculty member. Her work, and the class she created Design for Social Entrepreneurship, focuses on using design to improve communities, create less waste, and designing for needs opposed to designing for wants. Her mission is to change the way people use products and how products are developed and created, specifically the ones in homes across the globe.

As a Timberland Earthkeeper Hero, Sami is sharing her story about her “green makeovers” for urban housing as part of an inner city youth project. She’s teaching kids about products in their homes. For example, many items may contain lead paint, VOCs, vinyl in the furniture, mold, pest, toxic cleaning products and more. All these items can lead to things like brain damage, asthma, headaches and even cancer. Low-income, minority communities are more susceptible to using these types of products because they are inexpensive.

This past summer, Sami’s tackled these social and environmental problems in one by piloting a healthy home makeover TV show. She worked with a group of teens from low-income communities and taught them how to create affordable and healthy changes in their homes. Her work hasn’t stopped there. Sami continues to share her ongoing stories on Changents.com.