Emily Fano

Emily Fano has been involved in the climate space for 13 years. In 2011 she collaborated with four NYC public school parents on a school food and tray waste composting pilot that became a model for the citywide program. In 2012 she began working at the National Wildlife Federation to run their EcoSchools program, which nurtures environmental learning and climate action in elementary and secondary school. Her work included a pollinator conservation program called Growing A Wild NYC, In 2015 she co-created a climate resilience education program, Resilient Schools and Communities (RiSC), and in 2018 co-founded the Climate and Resilience Education Task Force and its associated Youth Steering Committee, which together advocate for climate education policy

Emily Fano 

She/her

Director of Climate Resilience Education at the National Wildlife Federation

Upper West Side 

Q&A 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Could you talk a little bit about your work with the climate and the National Wildlife Federation?

My work with the National Wildlife Federation started in 2012, when I was hired to run their EcoSchools Program. I worked to grow the program from a few dozen to about 750 schools. At the same time, I was trying to create a community of educators that were interested in sustainability. One of the first things that I did was host sustainability coordinator gatherings at model Eco-Schools that were implementing sustainable practices. I remember that we met at a school in Brooklyn that had a huge solar panel installation and a green roof. We did a tour at a school in the Bronx that had a big cooking program, where students would grow hydroponic greens and then make salsa and sell it. A teacher at another school in the Bronx reclaimed unused land and planted hundreds of fruit trees. He also tended bees and had a chicken coop. We toured a middle school in Queens that had an active sustainability coordinator who had a beautiful pollinator garden. 

Then, in 2015, I started partnering with Brooklyn College on a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to create a climate resilience program called RiSC. That was the beginning of the resilient schools work that I'm doing now. We started by engaging the schools that had been hard hit by Hurricane Sandy at the time – schools that were either flooded and had to close, or were running on generators because they had electrical fires, or schools that served as shelters for displaced students. We created a curriculum that focused on educating students about climate science and understanding the city's resiliency plans. We created what was probably the first vulnerability assessment for schools, aligned to PlaNYC, our city’s strategic plan. 

Is there anything that you're the most proud of, or was your favorite thing to work on?

The composting pilot is something I'm really proud of, because that became a city-wide program. Composting is really hard because if students go home and their parents aren't recycling their food scraps, then the kids come to school and they just do what they’re used to doing at home. There's not much we can do about how that happens or doesn't happen in a home, but the ethos of it is supposed to be embedded in every school. I'm also really proud of the Task Force, because it's something that has continued despite many odds, lack of funding, lack of capacity, and it's continually growing. 

Could you talk a bit more about taking the initiative to start these programs and persevering when you’ve faced obstacles?

I was motivated by what I saw when [my kids] were going to public school: the enormous amount of waste and the lack of consciousness. I think we're a very wasteful society in America – we don't think about conserving resources. I grew up in Europe. There's a very different mentality there. People save things. They recycle everything. They compost their food scraps. So I think what motivates me to do this work is to try to fix these problems and create a better world -not just for my kids, but for future generations. You know, we don't think about the impacts of our actions on wildlife and on animals who have no choice in the matter but they’re the unconsenting victims of our poor decisions. 

I noticed that your Zoom background is a whale. Is that one of your favorite animals?

I love all animals, but I think whales are so symbolic of the beauty and the intelligence of nature that we take for granted. Humans tend to think they're really smart, but on many levels, we're very ignorant. 

What scares you the most about the climate crisis?

My gosh, what doesn't scare you about the climate crisis if you're awake and alert. It's just apocalyptic. I mean, what's happening in Southern California right now [with several wildfires raging in the Los Angeles area], and just the devastation of our natural landscapes, of people's lives, and of wildlife. The animals that don't have a choice, they don't understand what's happening, and all of these human-caused climate impacts are just wreaking havoc everywhere. We don't understand how fragile our planet is, especially when we start to surpass tipping points. We are unleashing a domino effect of devastation. 

What gives you hope?

I do believe in direct action and civil disobedience. I've always supported Earth First. They would try to stop loggers from cutting down old-growth trees by putting spikes in the tree trunks – they call that monkey wrenching. I support the folks that go and ram whaling ships. At a certain point, you have to understand the scale of the violence that's being perpetrated against the natural world, and sometimes being polite just isn't enough. So what gives me hope are all the people that are willing to engage in direct action in support of the Earth and the young people that are not going to back down. 

Could you talk more about your day-to-day job at the  National Wildlife Federation?

I wear many hats. I design programs and manage their implementation. I’m in charge of partnerships and growing our constituencies. But I also do contracts and invoices. I try to create bridges between our different regional teams. I do a lot of social media. I bring kids up to Albany to lobby for legislation and I do a lot of outreach. I also fundraise. 

Do you think that being in New York City provides any benefits or resources to your work?

I think New York is a real bubble in many ways but we're a pretty progressive place. There are a lot of exciting things happening here in the climate space. A lot of passion, a lot of people – educated people of all ages who care – that are here trying to do good things. So I think it's an exciting place to be. 

What skills would you say you need to work at the National Wildlife Federation?

You’ve got to be a multitasker. You’ve got to be a good fundraiser, a good communicator. Be very patient, be an innovative thinker, be able to work well with others and know your topic. 

Do you have any mentors or inspirations in the climate field? 

Al Gore is probably one of my inspirations, because of the way that he has publicly used his platform to call attention to the climate crisis, and the fact that he never gave up and he persevered, and now he's doing these trainings all over the world. Harriet Shugarman is one of my favorite people, and I really consider Harriet a mentor as well. I met her at the San Francisco training with Gore, and she's an incredible person and climate activist who's become a friend. She's always there to answer a question or to give a suggestion or to talk if I need to, and she's been a wonderful mentor to me. I also want to say that Wangarĩ Maathai of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya was one of the people that I read about early on who really inspired me because she also, against all odds in a pretty patriarchal culture, persevered and planted millions of trees.