Women & Allies in Climate

Tia Clark is a Charleston, South Carolina native and food and beverage veteran who started Casual Crabbing with Tia in 2017 when health problems led her to make an overhaul of her diet and lifestyle. She now hosts an Airbnb Experience, “Let's Go Crabbing,” recognized as one of Airbnb’s best in the world.

Tell me about your story. What inspired you to start working on the water?

I didn’t start crabbing until I was 37 years old. I had worked in the food and beverage industry all my life, I was a heavy drinker, a heavy smoker and I wanted to change. When I quit smoking, I started having all these hives and inflammation. I went from doctor to doctor with no answers, until one doctor suggested I try an elimination diet. I was ready to give up. But within three days of starting the diet, the inflammation started going away and I stuck to it. When I went back for a checkup, she said she wanted me to add 30 minutes of physical activity into my new routine. I had no idea what to do, but I ran into a cousin and he said, “Come crabbing with me.” So, I did.

He taught me how to throw a cast net, use a fishing pole and in a matter of hours, I had caught fish, crabs and shrimp. It was the first time I ever caught and cooked my food in my life. And that changed me. From then on, I had this connection to the water and catching my food.

I went crabbing every day. It became my happy place, and I would post photos about it on social media. One of my friends started a Facebook page for me with the name “Casual Crabbing with Tia,” but I didn’t think anything of it. Then, all these people started leaving messages asking to come crabbing. At first, I said no—I was worried bringing other people in would ruin it. But I started to let a few people come along.

Not long after, a friend told me Airbnb was launching something called “Airbnb Experiences” in Charleston. Again, I initially said no but ended up filling out an application anyway, and within two weeks, Airbnb accepted the pitch. I hosted my first experience in July 2018 and by November, I was being flown to their headquarters in San Francisco as one of Airbnb’s top four hosts in the world.

By the time I got back, it had blown up. I was hesitant to make crabbing my full-time job—I kept thinking, “this can’t last,” and I was really hesitant to let more people come to the water and just take stuff.

But then I formed a relationship with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the South Carolina Oyster Recycling and Enhancement (SCORE) program, and I started learning more about blue crabs. The SCORE program recycles used oyster shells from around the community, like from restaurants, to build artificial oyster reefs. I started getting involved and hosting monthly volunteer events for people to come hang out and build these reefs. I also learned from them that a portion of the money from the recreational saltwater licenses my guests have to purchase to crab with me goes back to the DNR and SCORE program.

So, when I realized that my business was actually helping out our estuary and giving back, that’s when I saw that this is really something I could believe in. And that just launched me into this world of organic stewardship.

Sharing crabbing is one thing, but sharing what I do on the water, bringing people along and teaching them that the little things we do go a long way to protect this resource—that’s taken over as my main goal and mission.

What made you care about climate change?

Climate change directly impacts my business and the work I’m trying to do. I want to be able to continue to do this for the rest of my life, and that means I need to help make people aware of climate change.

And it sounds stereotypical, but I believe that our youth are going to be the ones who help change this thing. So, it’s really important to me to work with kids, and starting young is going to make a big difference.

Have there been any moments you felt particularly supported by the Women & Allies in Climate community?

When I went to the Innovation Lab in Seattle, it was the first time I had ever been in a room with just women. That alone gave me so much confidence. That day was very special for me—just being a woman and a small business owner in that space opened me up in ways that is hard to describe.

Nobody expects a black woman to be in charge on the water. Period. Nobody. People walk past me and go to my male dockhands and ask them about what we’re doing. Experiences like that make me want to fight hard to try to create spaces like that lab for other women.

What advice do you give to the kids you work with?

I start by explaining to them, even if you’re not going to college, there is an entire world out here that you can live a good, comfortable life in, by doing things that you really care about. We all have to work, so make it something that you enjoy.

I worked for money for so many years and it literally sucked the life out of me. The first chance I took to work for joy and take a chance on myself is the best time of my life right now.

Adrian Huq is a climate organizer and climate educator from Derby, Connecticut. They are the co-founder and intern supervisor for the grassroots New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team, established in 2019. In addition to several internships and pursuing a master’s degree at the Yale School of the Environment focused on climate change science and solutions, Adrian is also an active figure in Connecticut’s climate activism space and has spoken at more than 60 climate-related events, panels, rallies and engagements.

Adrian is one of the youngest WIC network members, first attending an Innovation Lab during high school in 2019.

Tell me about your career path so far and how you ended up founding the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team?

Coming from a household that was very conscious of recycling and reuse, my first environmental interest was waste. My environmental interests stemmed from childhood, particularly around issues like food waste, recycling and ocean pollution. In middle school, I was interested in taking action on my school’s food waste, so I would take home my friends’ extra fruits and snacks from lunch and set up food share boxes. I took that up another notch in high school by advocating to the New Haven Board of Education about systemic ways we can address waste in our cafeterias and get a recycling route for the district.

When I was a junior in high school in 2018, I became an intern for a local initiative called Energy Efficiency Project under the New Haven Leon Sister City Project (NHLSCP), where I got to take on a leadership role in educating my classmates and teachers about how they could implement energy-saving products and habits in their households.

Learning more about energy led to learning more about climate change, and that’s when my commitment to environmentalism really snapped into place for me. After attending several social justice programs, it became clear to me what climate and environmental justice is. Putting all those pieces together from my previous interests over time made me see that climate change is a really important and urgent issue on both an environmental and social level.

At the end of my junior year of high school, my boss at NHLSCP introduced me to the New Haven Climate Movement (NHCM) and asked if I could organize a youth-led climate rally, since it was an adult group at the time. I didn’t have any previous organizing experience, but nevertheless we made it work, and I helped put on a climate rally in downtown New Haven in May 2019. It was a great succes, and we all agreed that youth should be involved in NHCM going forward, so I co-founded the Youth Action Team, made up of mostly local high school students and college students. I continue to be engaged as a key organizer in NHCM and a supervisor to our high school student interns.

What accomplishment are you most proud of during your career?

Even though the policy wins and campaigns are important, I think a major success has been building a community and network of people who are important to me in the New Haven community. A whole village of people influenced my leadership style and introduced me to opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise.

So many people—not just in the climate space, but also in fields like the arts, labor unions, and philanthropy—took me under their wing and really supported me. And I’m happy to support them back now.

Can you describe what your time was like at the Women & Allies in Climate Innovation Lab?

The act of The Nature Conservancy reaching out and inviting me to be part of the event and giving me space to present about NHCM was really meaningful. I was just a high school student at that point, so I felt very empowered from the start, and I was glad that you all had reached out to local, grassroots people to participate in the convening.

It was really impactful to be introduced to this network as a high school student, and I look forward to continuing to keep updated with the group.

How do you think sustainable funding for women-led climate solutions would help advance the climate movement?

Sustainable funding sources, including seed grants for small organizations, are so important to this kind of work. As a longtime nonprofit worker, we’re always looking for grants and opportunities to fundraise to be able to pay for materials, youth interns and ourselves, as a very small team.

Having a funding pool available for women-led climate solutions around the globe would be really impactful. Focusing efforts where they’re really needed and where they can have an even bigger economic impact in driving sustainable change, such as funding projects in the Global South, is really important from a climate justice perspective as well.

What advice do you give to other people looking to make an impact in the climate or equity space?

There’s so much that young people can provide for the climate movement, and they can hold more political power than adults in a lot of situations. You’re not too young to be involved in activism, and there are so many ways that you can plug in or donate your time.

And you don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of opportunities; you can start small within your own school or branch out and research what’s going on in your community. There are likely organizations within your state that are already working toward a similar goal.

Even though climate change is a huge global issue, we can all take on a piece of responsibility to combat it. Follow your calling and know that even working on a city scale is important in the grand scheme of climate change. So just try to fit in wherever your passion and excitement calls you to.

Can you tell me a bit about your work history and how you ended up in the climate field?

I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin—a rural community of about 1,000 people. Then I went to a huge university—UW-Madison—which was a big change, and I spent my junior year in coastal Kenya.

My time in Kenya was a real pivot for me in terms of learning from people and grounding in place. It was recognizing that the actions of people upstream were impacting the people on the coast because of the sediment flowing through the river and impacting the fish population. Living there helped me realize how interconnected things really are, even when you can’t see the connections.

I got really interested in making those connections more visible for people. I was thinking: If people only knew that their actions impact other people in other places, how might they change what they do?

I enrolled in graduate school because I had a lot of questions and wanted to keep learning. I started designing video games where you could take complex interactions and put them into a game and give people an opportunity to manipulate different variables that could change the environment and communities.

Then I worked at the Walt Disney Company and Leapfrog, where I was able to work collaboratively with people who think really differently than me. Eventually I moved to the California Academy of Sciences and worked on a campaign about food, energy, water, and people. I decided I wanted to work more specifically on climate and I wanted to be solutions-focused.

What advice would you give to other women or people looking to make an impact in the climate or gender equity spaces?

Be curious, and take the time to listen and learn from people who are already in this space. Be curious about what they’ve tried, what has worked for them, and what hasn’t worked as well. And to approach it from a very collaborative “let’s raise all boats together” angle rather than a competitive angle. This is something we actually got to practice at the Innovation Lab when we worked in breakout groups to come up with some prototypes. What is so powerful is being curious, learning, and respecting other people’s journeys and backgrounds. And asking questions and not assuming things. That, to me, is a really important part of trust-building.

I would also encourage people to think about what changes they want to see in the world and to recognize that some of the impacts or changes they want to see are going to take a long time and collaboration with a lot of partners. When we simplify metrics and impact tracking to website clicks, for example, we lose sight of the bigger picture. My advice is to keep the big goal in mind—to remember why we are doing the work, who we are doing it for, and to not get so bogged down in the easy-to-quantify metrics that we lose sight of why we want to have an impact and on whom.

Can you share any examples of how the Women & Allies in Climate initiative has led to tangible outcomes?

Progress happens at the speed of trust. What this group did for me was to build an on-ramp to building trust with many women working in this space. I now have relationships with women in other organizations around the world with whom we are now exploring opportunities.

Trust doesn’t happen overnight, but it sure happens a lot faster if you get to know someone in person. It’s harder to build this trust in virtual meetings.

How has joining Women & Allies in Climate impacted you personally and professionally?

I met so many really interesting women who I probably wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet otherwise. The team did a great job of assembling a group of interesting women working across the climate spectrum. I now have more role models and folks I can call and ask questions. It has been an incredibly powerful professional development opportunity for me.

How are you tackling the climate crisis both professionally and personally? 

Well, I tackle the climate crisis every minute of my life, both privately and professionally. Professionally, I've been doing it for over 20 years in a number of ways. I've worked with big corporations on their climate change strategy and implementation, I've been a lobbyist advocating for clean energy policy, and I’ve worked with communities disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. 

Currently, I am consulting for nonprofits, philanthropy, and companies to accelerate their equitable climate strategies. I especially enjoy managing multi-sectoral collaboration. Personally, I am active in my community and in elections to ensure we’re mitigating emissions, building resilience, and advocating for appropriate policies. 

What did you find most powerful about the Women & Allies in Climate Innovation Lab you attended? 

The Innovation Lab was very powerful in building a community of women leaders that are committed to driving climate solutions at the urgency and scale that is required. There’s a cross section of expertise and experience and a willingness to get the job done—together.   

In the year since the last convening, a lot of us have kept in touch and are finding ways to support each other—whether in our work or personally. I’ve found that it has made me more effective to have this group by my side. 

Can you describe a moment when you felt particularly empowered or supported by the Women & Allies in Climate community? 

I had an abrupt change in my professional situation and when I shared it with network members, I was humbled by how overwhelming the response was. I felt very supported and empowered to move through this stressful change.