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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Dr Rebekah Shirley: Leader in global sustainability

by

Fayola KJ Fraser
17 days ago
20250622

When Dr Re­bekah Shirley first set foot in Nairo­bi, Kenya, it re­mind­ed her of Trinidad, where she was raised, and Ja­maica, where her roots run deep.

Now liv­ing in Kenya, US-born Shirley’s life’s work in sus­tain­abil­i­ty, en­er­gy, and cli­mate jus­tice has found fer­tile ground.

“I trans­late sci­ence in­to pol­i­cy in­to ac­tion—along­side com­mu­ni­ty,” she says sim­ply. But her path has been any­thing but sim­ple.

From a cu­ri­ous teenag­er clean­ing beach­es with her school’s UN­ESCO club in Port-of-Spain to be­com­ing Deputy Di­rec­tor for Africa at the World Re­sources In­sti­tute, Shirley has built a ca­reer in re­search, jus­tice, and trans­for­ma­tion.

With over 15 years of ex­pe­ri­ence across Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa, she has emerged as one of the most dy­nam­ic Caribbean minds lead­ing glob­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty work to­day.

Shirley’s jour­ney in­to en­vi­ron­men­tal lead­er­ship be­gan not in a grand lec­ture hall or in­ter­na­tion­al sum­mit but in the halls of St Joseph’s Con­vent Port-of-Spain. Shirley and a few friends had wan­dered in­to a UN­ESCO club meet­ing, which she re­counts as a piv­otal mo­ment, even now.

“That was where my spark start­ed,” she re­flects, “it be­came a great space. We did beach clean-ups and out­door ex­cur­sions and learnt to con­nect and care for our nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment.”

As she be­came more in­vest­ed in the pur­pose of these ac­tiv­i­ties, she as­sumed the pres­i­den­cy of the school’s UN­ESCO club and knew since then she would fol­low the path to pur­sue the study of En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence.

Raised by a Ja­maican fa­ther and a Trinida­di­an moth­er, Shirley’s roots were al­ways steeped in Caribbean con­scious­ness, but when her stud­ies took her to McGill Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da, her per­spec­tives be­came glob­al.

She fol­lowed her pas­sion for en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ence and ob­tained a first-class ho­n­ours Bach­e­lor of Arts and Sci­ence in En­vi­ron­ment from McGill. Aside from her aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments, it was the vi­brant and di­verse com­mu­ni­ty of Caribbean and African stu­dents at McGill that “re­in­forced the no­tion that my work and con­tri­bu­tions could spread far be­yond the Caribbean re­gion”.

In 2008, Shirley re­turned home to Trinidad and To­ba­go to work at the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) against the back­drop of a glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis. The con­trast be­tween Trinidad’s rel­a­tive oil-backed sta­bil­i­ty dur­ing this cri­sis ver­sus the rel­a­tive­ly greater eco­nom­ic cri­sis of oth­er is­lands, which were more im­port-de­pen­dent, stood out to her.

She had a mo­ment of con­scious­ness, re­al­is­ing “in this big world of En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence, I want­ed to hone in on the study of en­er­gy and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty”.

Shirley be­gan to re­search the best pro­grammes she could pur­sue to­ward that ca­reer and end­ed up at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, which is home to one of the world’s old­est en­er­gy re­sources pro­grammes.

At Berke­ley, Shirley com­plet­ed an MSc in En­er­gy Re­sources and an MSc in Civ­il En­gi­neer­ing and went on to do a PhD in En­er­gy Re­sources be­tween 2010 and 2015, a time when cli­mate change con­ver­sa­tions hit a fever pitch with COP15 in Paris.

“You couldn’t es­cape it,” she says, “Berke­ley was a place of crit­i­cal think­ing, and I was drawn deeply in­to the in­ter­sec­tion of cli­mate, en­er­gy, and jus­tice.”

Keen­ly in­ter­est­ed in clean en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies and their ap­pli­ca­tion to in­dus­try, mo­bil­i­ty, agri­cul­ture, and cli­mate re­silience, Shirley soon re­alised that the tools she had built through­out her stud­ies could trans­late in a va­ri­ety of prac­ti­cal in­ter­na­tion­al con­texts.

Her doc­tor­al re­search took her to Bor­neo in South­east Asia, where she ex­plored the in­te­gra­tion of so­cio-cul­tur­al, eco­log­i­cal, and re­source man­age­ment per­spec­tives in­to pow­er sys­tem plan­ning tools. De­vel­op­ing an in­te­grat­ed op­ti­mi­sa­tion mod­el­ling ap­proach, she iden­ti­fied high-in­vest­ment re­new­able en­er­gy op­por­tu­ni­ties for Bor­neo.

Work­ing with lo­cal civ­il so­ci­ety, her re­sults con­tributed to shift­ing lo­cal pol­i­cy away from fur­ther large-scale dam de­vel­op­ment. Her work of­fered al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy mod­els that re­spect­ed lo­cal cul­ture and ecosys­tems. The re­search find­ings sparked vi­ral com­mu­ni­ty cam­paigns and even­tu­al­ly in­flu­enced pol­i­cy at the state lev­el, lead­ing to the cre­ation of the Baram Peace Park.

For Shirley, it made clear her pas­sion, which she de­scribes as “the tri­fec­ta—re­search, com­mu­ni­ty ac­tion, and an un­der­stand­ing of pol­i­cy and po­lit­i­cal process­es that dri­ve change. That ex­pe­ri­ence showed me that re­search alone isn’t enough”.

That case study pro­pelled Shirley in­to her ca­reer, which is ap­ply­ing re­search to dri­ve im­pact and es­sen­tial­ly repli­cat­ing the suc­cess in Bor­neo in var­i­ous in­ter­na­tion­al con­texts. She was in­vit­ed to repli­cate her mod­el in Thai­land and Viet­nam and com­plet­ed a post­doc that took her to Nige­ria and Kenya.

Her first vis­it to Africa was more than pro­fes­sion­al—it was per­son­al. “There was an im­me­di­ate con­nec­tion. I felt a cul­tur­al and emo­tion­al link. Peo­ple lacked ac­cess to en­er­gy, and I had the tools to help. I thought that work­ing in these con­texts was a way to lever­age my re­search skills to con­tribute to prob­lem-solv­ing in a place I felt cul­tur­al­ly con­nect­ed to.”

To­day, Shirley works with the World Re­sources In­sti­tute (WRI), where she leads re­search on land­scape restora­tion and food sys­tem trans­for­ma­tion. For her work turn­ing ac­tion­able re­search in­sights in­to so­lu­tions and in­flu­enc­ing the glob­al di­a­logue on en­er­gy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, she has re­ceived many ac­co­lades, in­clud­ing be­ing named an ESI Africa Elite En­er­gy In­dus­try Leader and an En­er­gy In­sti­tute En­er­gy Leader, Africa Util­i­ty Week’s Out­stand­ing Young Leader in En­er­gy, a GWEC Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, and most re­cent­ly, the World En­er­gy Jus­tice Young Schol­ar 2023.

Shirley is al­so a sought-af­ter pub­lic speak­er on en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ences and sus­tain­abil­i­ty so­lu­tions and de­liv­ered a TED Talk on Africa’s im­mense po­ten­tial as a clean en­er­gy hub.

Her path hasn’t been with­out ob­sta­cles. As a young Caribbean woman in a male-dom­i­nat­ed field, she’s had to nav­i­gate scep­ti­cism and stereo­typ­ing, es­pe­cial­ly at in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate con­fer­ences and glob­al sum­mits. “Cli­mate is about sci­ence, fi­nance and pol­i­cy–all male-dom­i­nat­ed fields at their in­ter­sec­tion,” she says. She re­count­ed that es­pe­cial­ly in her ear­ly thir­ties, while tak­ing on se­nior lead­er­ship po­si­tions, she was per­ceived as “too young or too in­ex­pe­ri­enced, es­pe­cial­ly walk­ing in­to a room of men in suits with curly hair and a Tri­ni ac­cent”.

Her strat­e­gy? Lean in­to ex­per­tise. “My mech­a­nism for as­ser­tion is stay­ing true to my sci­ence-based ex­per­tise,” she says, “I ap­pre­ci­ate and un­der­stand the sci­ence, I’m well-read on aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions in my field, and I have facts, fig­ures and da­ta. That’s what earns me re­spect.”

Shirley al­so leans heav­i­ly in­to her Caribbean iden­ti­ty. “There’s some­thing nat­ur­al about how Caribbean women lead—we’re warm but firm, root­ed in em­pa­thy but de­mand­ing ex­cel­lence of our­selves and oth­ers.”

In ad­di­tion, she be­lieves that com­ing from a melt­ing pot of cul­tures helps us, as Caribbean peo­ple, res­onate with var­i­ous cul­tures and com­mu­ni­ties across the globe. This abil­i­ty to forge cross-cul­tur­al con­nec­tions and un­der­stand­ings is a cor­ner­stone of her lead­er­ship.

Look­ing to the Caribbean, Shirley mus­es on the way that the changes we are al­ready see­ing in the cli­mate and en­vi­ron­ment will af­fect us as a re­gion. She ac­knowl­edged that Caribbean voic­es and small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) have al­ready shaped the cli­mate con­ver­sa­tion in big ways—from the part SIDS have played in the “1.5 to Stay Alive” cam­paign to lead­er­ship in cli­mate adap­ta­tion and com­mu­ni­ty-based so­lu­tions.

Al­though we have missed the 1.5 mark glob­al­ly, the Caribbean has a part to play in lo­cal­ly dri­ven so­lu­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Shirley, we have a long way to go as a re­gion in terms of pub­lic aware­ness, plan­ning, and pol­i­cy align­ment in a re­gion where ur­ban de­vel­op­ment still lags be­hind cli­mate re­al­i­ties.

Re­bekah Shirley is a daugh­ter of the soil, blaz­ing trails across the world and as­sert­ing her­self in lead­er­ship po­si­tions at the helm of her field. Her ca­reer path, guid­ed by aca­d­e­m­ic par­ents, a sup­port­ive fam­i­ly, and a vil­lage of aun­ties, cheer­lead­ers and men­tors, con­tin­ues to evolve.

Her ad­vice to young change­mak­ers? “Be in­ten­tion­al. Time is short—live with pur­pose.”

As she has done, she en­cour­ages young peo­ple to hold them­selves to a high stan­dard while still hold­ing on­to their hu­man­i­ty. To forge true im­pact, she calls for us to tap in­to the spir­it of com­mu­ni­ty and con­tin­ue to find so­lu­tions with em­pa­thy and con­nec­tion.


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