Chapman alumna works to emphasize intersectional environmentalism

Leah Thomas, a Chapman environmental science and policy alumna, is known on Instagram as @greengirlleah and is the founder of the popular Instagram platform @intersectionalenvironmentalist. Photo courtesy of Thomas

During a rise in online activism in conjunction with the increased momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement in summer 2020, I went on a quest for informative Instagram accounts and stumbled across @intersectionalenvironmentalist and its founder Leah Thomas, @greengirlleah. She provided resources for understanding racial and social justice issues in the context of environmentalism, an area of study I was unaware of prior. 

After months of closely following Thomas and the broader intersectional environmentalism platform, I found out she was a Chapman alumna, nearly screaming with excitement.

Thomas launched the @intersectionalenvironmentalist platform in June 2020, almost exactly three years after graduating from Chapman with a degree in environmental science and policy. The account currently has over 279,000 followers and seeks to make resources about the intersections of social and environmental justice more accessible to the public, rather than solely isolated within academia.

“We just started compiling resources to the best of our ability, whether that’s books to read or documentaries to watch to learn about the intersections of identity and environment,” Thomas told The Panther. “Race is one that I talk about often, and that’s because in a lot of Black and Brown communities in the U.S., they don’t have access to green spaces to recreate and they have higher incidences of asthma.”

To Thomas, intersectional environmentalism means examining the ways that identity and environment relate in categories like age, gender, spirituality, sexuality and others. Conversations surrounding environmental justice started in Thomas’s life when she was an undergraduate and have remained central in her life for years, she said. 

Thomas spent the summer after her first year at Chapman in 2014 back in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. That was the same summer Michael Brown died at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, which sparked months of protests in a city only a few miles away from Thomas’ home. Thomas said that her environmental science studies at Chapman coincided with the Black Lives Matter and Women’s March movements occurring at the time.

“There was a lot of talk about feminism, and within that there was intersectional feminism,” Thomas said. “I was thinking about environmentalism through the perspective of being both Black and a woman, as I was really taking a deep dive into those two parts of my identity.”

As she began to examine the relationships between social justice and environmentalism, Thomas told The Panther she often had to go beyond the classroom to educate herself.

“To be completely honest, it wasn’t taught very heavily at Chapman,” Thomas said of environmental justice. “There were some professors that kind of looked at me funny back then for saying, ‘Can we study race and environmentalism?’ I don’t know how many times I heard, ‘The environment isn’t a racial issue; why do you want to do that?’”

When Thomas first started the account, many others were similarly confused on the term “intersectional environmentalism,” Thomas said. 

“Apparently it didn’t really exist before, that exact terminology, though I’m sure people have said it,” Thomas said. “It reverberated online and people were saying, ‘I want to be an intersectional environmentalist; what does that mean?’ So I’m not a gatekeeper of that terminology — I don’t want to own it. I think it’s something that was built from community conversations.”

Thomas’s work through @intersectionalenvironmentalist inspired junior environmental science and policy major Lexi Hernandez and other Chapman students to discuss the importance of adding an environmental justice course to their curricula. After bringing the idea to environmental science and policy program advisor Jason Keller, they succeeded in their pursuit this spring semester. 

Keller knew Thomas as a student and maintained a close relationship with her after she graduated. As program adviser, he supported Thomas’ undergraduate experiences as an intern with the National Parks Service for two summers, the first at Nicodemus National Historic Site in rural Kansas and the second at the White House during former President Barack Obama’s last year in office. 

“It’s really cool to see how her string of experiences all came together at exactly the right moment,” Keller said. “She has been building the skillsets and the experiences to be ready to do what she did, to have the level of attention that is on her now.” 

After graduating from Chapman, Thomas continued expanding her expertise, working as a freelance writer and in corporate sustainability at both Ecos and Patagonia before transitioning into full-time work on the intersectional environmentalism platform, which she sustains through sponsorships and partnerships with corporations such as TAZO. She told The Panther she hopes students planning for careers in environmentalism trust their instincts when deciding what to pursue.

“There are so many careers within environmentalism and environmental justice, and you don’t necessarily have to be in a lab or a researcher,” Thomas said. “To students who have a niche interdisciplinary or intersectional interest, or want to study something that isn’t often reflected, listen to your heart and keep pushing. Professors are just people; they don’t know everything. Challenge them.”