Clara Fang, Ph.D.

Clara Fang is a DEI consultant and research scholar at Antioch University New England with twenty years of experience in climate advocacy and racial justice.

As a consultant, she has worked with NOAA, Climate Breakthrough, Citizens' Climate Lobby, Climate Reality, Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, and the United Nations Environmental Programme Youth and Education Alliance and more on climate and diversity.

Prior to consulting, she was senior fellow at Citizens' Climate International, and director of student engagement at Citizens' Climate Lobby. She has worked as sustainability manager at Towson University, sustainability coordinator at Swarthmore College, and the City of Albany, New York.

Clara holds a BA in English from Smith College, an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Utah, and a Master of Environmental Management from Yale University. Clara completed her PhD in environmental studies from Antioch University in May 2023. 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, mucus, and nasal congestion 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. I also earned 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 almost all White students and international students. While the school did a lot to make all of us feel welcome and become successful, 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 was empowering in that it enabled me to understand my experience in the context of societal structures, which helped me feel less confused and inadequate. Helping other people see these problems also empowers them 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