The ESIIL Stars Program aims to build a cohort of highly sought-after professionals who can efficiently harness emergent data and tools to address societal challenges, support data-driven decision-making and planning, accelerate scientific discovery and innovation, and bridge the data-to-knowledge gap. The ESIIL Stars Program invites students from diverse backgrounds at schools serving communities that are historically underrepresented in STEM to participate in 6-months of Earth and Environmental Data Science (EDS) training and internship. Inspired by Earth Lab's Earth Data Science Corps (IRB Protocol 20-0254), ESIIL Stars includes a combination of online data skills training for students and faculty, career-focused webinars, an open textbook that introduces novel analytics for environmental data, and project-based learning. Faculty training builds capacity to teach Earth and Environmental Data Science at partner institutions.