The Keith M. Miser Leadership Award is presented to the student who has been successful in campus leadership endeavors. This award honors Keith's idea of student involvement and recognizes a student who has contributed to the campus through their leadership activities. One of the two recipients of the Keith M. Miser Leadership Award is Mariah S. Rivera (she/her/hers pronouns).

Mariah is a wildlife and fisheries biology major in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. A native of Stratford, Conn., she has a distinguished track record of academic accomplishment and leadership roles on campus, especially as an advocate for social justice and as a voice for students of color.

She was an Aiken Scholar and a USDA-NIFA Multicultural Grant student through the Rubenstein School—the USDA-NIFA grant prepares leaders to promote environmental sustainability in the context of human-environment interactions nationally and globally.

Mariah’s many other academic honors include the Senior Award for Recognition of Leadership and Community Building from the Rubenstein School, the Alan B. Urgent Award and the Ram Vincent-Bryan Community Builders Award, both from the UVM Mosaic Center for Students of Color. This past fall semester, she volunteered to help organize the university's extensive research mammal collection.

From 2019–2020 Mariah served as president of People of Color Outdoors, an organization that helps students with little or no outdoor experience gain the skills and confidence to be active participants in outdoor adventures.

Mariah also worked as an AdvoCat student tour guide, serving as the outreach and communications coordinator for the program in 2020–2021. She was a facilitator for the Black, Indigenous, People of Color Environmental Collective and served as a Rubenstein Steward.

“Through my role as a steward and student of the Rubenstein School I have been working to shift the environmental narrative being taught in my classroom spaces to include more Black and brown voices,” Mariah says.