Clara Fang, Ph.D.
Clara is the founder and principal of Green Tara Consulting, which advances diversity, equity, and belonging in the environmental sector through research, education, and advocacy. In addition to a PhD in environmental studies, she has training in sociocracy, authentic relating, and participatory decision making in order to support groups in achieving equitable and enduring outcomes.
As a consultant, she has worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Green Leadership Trust, Citizens’ Climate Education, Climate Breakthrough, Climate Reality Project, The Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, City of Albany, New York, the United Nations Environmental Programme Youth and Education Alliance and more.
Clara is one of the founders of Oasis: A Green Equity Collective, a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting equity and justice practitioners in the environmental sector. Prior to consulting, she was deputy director at Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, senior fellow at Citizens' Climate International, and program director at Citizens' Climate Lobby. She currently serves on the board of Green Leadership Trust, an organization that supports BIPOC leaders in the environmental sector.
Clara holds a PhD in environmental studies from Antioch University, a master in environmental management from Yale, an MFA in creative writing from University of Utah, and a BA in English from Smith College. She is a certifiied workplace mindfulness facilitator and a recipient of the Robert and Patricia Switzer Fellowship for environmental leaders.
My Story
I was born in Shanghai, China, and immigrated to the United States when I was nine years old. Shanghai from 1983-1992 was an industrial manufacturing center where air pollution was a persistent fact of life. The sky was always a uniform gray, and families (including mine) cooked their meals on coal stoves like a million mini coal-fired power plants throughout the city. Asthma and respiratory illness were pervasive and accepted parts of life. I grew up in a family with strong extended family ties and a hard working ethic that valued higher education.
My life changed in every way when my parents immigrated to the United States in 1989. My father, a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution, came to the U.S. as a research assistant at Catholic University in Virginia and stayed as a political refugee. My mother and I came to the U.S. in 1992. After a few years of menial jobs and living in the basement of an acupuncture clinic, they found jobs as a public health official and an engineering technician, bought a house in the suburbs, and enrolled me in one of the best public high schools in the country.
My relationship with the natural world blossomed in my new environment. I fell in love with the old growth forests of Rock Creek Park, the suburban woodlands of Maryland, and the rich ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay. I graduated high school and got my Bachelor’s degree in English from Smith College and Masters’ degrees from the University of Utah and Yale University.
At the Yale School of the Environment, I was among a handful of domestic students of color in a class of over 100. While the school did a lot to make all of us feel welcome, it was at times difficult to be one of the 5%. This feeling only intensified after I graduated and entered the extremely White field of environmental sustainability. For years I struggled in work environments where my ideas were often dismissed, my assertiveness criticized, and my youthful appearance taken as inexperience. When the racial protests of 2020 inspired many environmental professionals of color to speak out about their experience of oppression and exhaustion in their work, I finally felt relief that maybe something wasn’t wrong with me all along, but with the system. I started my Ph.D. program wanting to study climate advocacy but realized that the main barrier to climate action wasn’t a lack of concern, but a lack of inclusion.
Even though being a minority in the environmental field is sometimes an isolating and painful experience, working on diversity and inclusion has made me feel more hopeful and empowered. Learning about bias and systemic racism enabled me to understand my experience in the context of societal structures, which helped me feel less confused and inadequate. Teaching it empowers others to change and dismantle the oppressions of society. Change is happening even if it is slow and uneven. My personal witnessing of it motivates me to try to create an environment where my peers and younger colleagues can thrive.
Clara Fang
July 25, 2023