Skoll Scholar 2015-16
Geographical Location: Africa, Asia
Area of Activity: Environmental Sustainability

twitter @songqiaoyao

Songqiao brings interdisciplinary and cross-cultural experience as a researcher, activist and entrepreneur working on global environmental sustainability issues such as food, water, and climate change. She started actively campaigning on environmental justice and climate change as a researcher and youth delegate at UN climate change conferences in 2010. She has facilitated multi-stakeholder dialogues and built partnership between China-US, China-EU and BASIC countries climate organizations. In 2012, she helped build the environmental NGO International Rivers’ China office and strengthened its program on river protection in China through extensive field research and policy publications. Her ethnographic research along the Nu/Salween river has won a National Geographic Global Explorer grant. As a social entrepreneur, she has co-founded a healthy juice brand in Beijing and is now starting a tomato processing project in Sierra Leone to reduce food wastage and strengthen local food security. Currently studying geography under a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, she focuses on local knowledge, global production systems and sustainable development through examining the environmental and social footprint of China’s overseas investment. She graduated summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College.