“Kayla Miller ’25 is the coolest person I know,” is a sentence I’ve heard dozens of times from dozens of people. Between her media presence, blog, and seamless leadership of C4, AJA, and … literally everything environmental justice (EJ) related on campus, I am not afraid to admit that she is, in fact, the coolest person I know. From unabashedly loving Drake to admitting she did not receive an internship last summer, our campus has deeply benefited from her authenticity. Her vulnerability has inspired me in my leadership positions. Simply put, she is a role model to many in our community.
When I told her this, Kayla recounted a story she posted on Instagram. She was fielding questions from underclassmen, “Someone asked, ‘Do you ever feel pressure around being a role model?’ I don’t feel that pressure, because I forget I’m being perceived, but also I’ve always had an expectation placed on me [to be] obedient. I always really resented that, because [in school] teachers placed the expectation to correct not well-behaved peers’ behaviors. I remember because I thought I didn’t ever do that. It was like, ‘You know what they’re talking … I’m gonna talk with them.’ It was always a mutually beneficial exchange, I rub off a little bit on them, and they rub off a little bit on me. I appreciated those experiences because I think high school [usually] plays into binaries, good and bad, or popular and unpopular. I’ve never really experienced that.”
Kayla continued, “In eighth grade, I got Cs in my classes, and I had been a straight A student. I had so much trouble, oh, so much trouble. I was hanging out with different people, the less well-behaved kids, and I wasn’t doing anything crazy, just got home late a couple of times. I think that was a time when I allowed myself to fall into the fear of doing things completely wrong and disappointing people. It was scary and let me know that I didn’t have to go to that extreme in order to discover things about myself or be inauthentic to myself, because at the end of the day, even though I wasn’t doing anything crazy, that wasn’t who I was. I think that was the main lesson to learn. That’s why I’ve always been able to just be myself, because it doesn’t feel right to be anything else.” She continued, “I think a lot of it has been determining what is right for me and what will be wrong for me to do because we don’t all have the same beliefs across the board. That’s what’s guided me. I give credit to my mom for raising me to have my own internal validation.” Her mother’s lessons kept Kayla aligned during college and helped her navigate leadership roles.
Kayla has co-led C4 (Campus Coalition Concerning Chester) since her sophomore year. C4 is a student-run environmental coalition supporting Chester Residents Concerned Over Quality Living (CRCQL). CRCQL aims to shut down the ReWorld, formerly known as “Covanta,” incinerator in Chester County and improve the quality of life within the densely populated, low-income, largely minority community. Last year, Kayla received a Udall Scholarship for her work with C4, an honor extended to emerging leaders in the environmental, Tribal public policy, and health care fields. Kayla credits the seniors who helped cultivate her interest in CRCQL and EJ at Swarthmore. “I came here and saw that they had Environmental Justice: Theory and Action with Professor DiChiro. In the course, we had a project with C4, and the TAs were Chantelle Reyes and Tyler White ’22, seniors, and they revitalized C4, but I didn’t know any of that when I first joined. The project I worked on was a fundraiser at the University of Pennsylvania to get people to donate to CRCQL, and the other options they have are a youth community event, and then social media, print materials, and direct action. We built it all around arts and music, and had people donate different crochet items they made. I promoted it, but the biggest challenge was figuring out my little elevator pitch about CRCQL, what’s happening, and the environmental racism occurring in Chester. That was out of my comfort zone.”
This semester has been strange. Seemingly overnight, I went from Corinne to the “Kitao Kitties” person. In a certain sense, I feel disquieted by the parasocial relationship some peers have with me. Simultaneously, my work with Kitao and The Phoenix proves personally significant. I confided in Kayla over my conflicted feelings on leadership, as I honestly didn’t know anyone else who might relate.
Leadership did not initially come easily to Kayla, but she stepped into a power vacuum, learned to direct and manage groups effectively, and worked to include new members. “I don’t like to tell people what to do. I like people to feel they can come up with their own ideas, because I don’t know everything. I’ve never grown from a space where I feel like I’m the smartest person in the room. I don’t want to be in spaces like that. Being a leader is becoming really attuned at meeting people where they’re at, and also being really flexible and understanding. I genuinely care about everyone that I interact with. That’s the main thing that keeps people coming back to C4. Multiple people will know your name when you come back, say hi to you, when you’re outside and remember the small details. Swarthmore students are really good at creating personal connections with people. I think that is really important for people in leadership positions to make people feel they belong. That’s how I was treated when I first joined C4, and that’s why I always applaud Chantal and Tyler. I was a first-year and they were seniors, but I felt so important, and that my ideas were respected. That’s how I want everyone to feel treated.”
“In terms of navigating campus celebrityhood, just be yourself because if you are yourself, people are gonna like you for whatever reasons, and they’re also gonna not like you for whatever reasons. I’d rather be disliked for showing up in your face as completely myself. I also have feared how to show up in leadership roles because you don’t want to be too bossy, or act like you know everything. That’s never my intention, and that’s not usually how I come across. My word is not the final say. Being a leader isn’t about leading from the front, or knowing what to do all the time, and telling people what to do. Being a leader is jumping from different position. Sometimes you’re in the back, not saying anything, and letting other people direct things for themselves. Sometimes you’re working in a smaller group, and people are looking at you while you’re working, but you’re not exactly telling people what to do. Sometimes it is being in the front and making the announcements. I’ve had to gain confidence in the way I like to lead.”
Her words have been ringing in my head ever since. I interviewed her around a month ago, and I find myself constantly repeating, “I’m not rated E for Everyone.” My friends laugh at the sentiment, but depending on yourself for validation can be demanding. Kayla, like me, uses writing to work through her thoughts. It can be tough processing situations alone when you feel immense pressure to constantly share your thoughts. Simply sitting and writing feelings onto the internet allows you to ruminate on what is precisely bothering you. Kayla uses km.worded – her personal blog on herself, popular culture, and politics (plus a lot more) – to express her thoughts about the world surrounding her. Having read km.worded repeatedly, I told Kayla that her processing has affected how I structure my view of publicity via Phoenix articles. Recently, I’ve considered starting my own blog, and I was curious how she began publishing her work online.
“I always loved English class in school, I had the closest relationships with those teachers. I figured, ‘Let me just post these things online. Let me try that out.’ My teacher, Ms. Essig is one of my Mount Rushmore educators who’ve pivotally impacted my life.”
Kayla elaborated, “I was really good at doing things the way I was told to do them. I really understood an implicit way to do an argumentative essay. The formula just made sense to me, but I never really had fun playing around with the structure. She was the first teacher that told me to play around and have fun when I was writing. I think having her and teachers who encouraged me to play around with writing encouraged me to start a blog. I didn’t really start taking it seriously, until a year ago [even though the blog is five years old]. It’s a space that I go to when I have a fervent thought that needs to be addressed. I don’t do it to satisfy other people. I think the second I start thinking about other people perceiving it, I’m more concerned about how they are [perceiving it]? It gets scary, especially as more people start looking at it, because there’s only so much you can articulate about yourself. Or if what I’m producing online might supersede how I’m presenting [in real life], or precede people knowing me [in real life]. That kind of scares me a little because you can’t control that as much. I think I’m learning how to be okay with that. In more recent years, I’ve been more receptive to the ways people have validated me. So I’m like, ‘Okay, I can do this seriously. I can take myself seriously as a writer.’ And when I read things back, I think, ‘Oh, my God, that was actually pretty good.’”
But, Kayla’s not afraid to share herself with the campus. Moreover, she’s willing to create spaces where there are none. Having heavily associated Kayla with C4, I was unaware of her immense work at reestablishing AJA – an affinity group centered around helping Black women and gender expansive students thrive, not just survive, on campus, “I helped restart AJA my first-year spring, in direct response to the sexual violence done to Black women and black femmes on this campus. A lot was revealed from previous years, but also current years. I went to an all girls school up until high school. I wrote my college essay on going to an all girls school. Most of the people in my [high] school were Black women, so I wanted to cultivate a space for Black women on campus. I saw that the spaces I, and the people who look like me, need weren’t here. I realized we probably have to be the ones to create those spaces, and we can create those spaces.”
As we wrapped up our interview, Kayla told me she was working on her thesis. Curious about the topic, I asked her to elaborate, “My thesis is converging environmental studies, Black studies, and English. It’s on Black mothering and environmental justice activism specifically, a Black ecofeminist framework. Social reproduction focuses on careers that are domestic and kind of seen as feminized or as domestic work. My thesis looks at how Black women environmental justice activists employ social reproduction to protect their communities who are targets of environmental racism and whose legacies, or lives and futures, have been altered. My thesis is also really focused on Afrofuturism, who is allowed to have a future, and what environment is needed? What kind of environment is needed for us to feel comfortable or even able to reproduce in this world, whether that be socially or through kinship relations. I don’t have to be biologically related to you to pass on traditions or culture, or just protection or care onto you. How does that care and protection, etc, go on to the next generation?”
Truth be told, there is so much I could add about Kayla from our interview and outside the article’s scope. As we talked, it was difficult not to imagine the first-year me sitting across from my idol, the Kayla Miller. C4 created a community for me when I wanted to transfer. The organization inadvertently introduced me to my closest friends at Swarthmore. I only continued attending meetings because Kayla was so welcoming. Even when everyone else forgot my name, she remembered. Student leaders need to recognize the power they hold and try to be careful with the way they use it. Her thesis project, work with AJA and C4 and blog all focus on creating an environment of care. Put bluntly, nobody does it like Kayla.
Walking out, I left with two final sentences, “Thank you for being yourself. The campus will feel your loss post-graduation.”
I mean it.
Want to see EJ work in action? Come to CRCQL’s fifth annual environmental justice march this Saturday, May 3, 2025. Meet at the Ben West parking lot at 11 and 11:50 am for transportation.
