Environment & Justice Scholar Inspired by the arts.
About Marissa Ng
Marissa is an international scholar and policy advocate whose work centers on environmental security, biodiversity conservation, and the social justice dimensions of gender and race. She has received full scholarships for graduate study at the University of Oxford and Harvard Kennedy School, where she was awarded the John F. Kennedy Fellowship and will be pursuing a Master of Public Administration. At Harvard, she is also a Belfer Young Leader Fellow and Charles Edison Fund Fellow, and will be conducting research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
Marissa’s career spans leading forest and coastal conservation strategies in East Africa and Canada, as well as advising on sustainability topics as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. Her work has taken her from vanilla farms in Madagascar and Mpingo forests in Tanzania to the coastal waters of her home in British Columbia.
Most recently, she supported Indigenous-led conservation in the Great Bear Rainforest and Sea through her work at The Nature Conservancy, where she provided interim leadership for the Marine Program Director role in Canada. She has also researched marine heatwaves and kelp forest decline, supported by the Rhodes Trust, and co-authored a report on gender equality that was internationally featured at the Women Deliver Conference. Her work with First Nation communities and experience in community-based conservation continue to shape her perspectives on equity and the environment.
Marissa holds an MBA and an MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation, and Management from the University of Oxford, where she was an Oxford-Pershing Square Scholar. She graduated with honours from the University of British Columbia at age 19 with a bachelor’s degree in business, and has also studied at Sciences Po Paris.
Originally from Canada, Marissa is currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has also lived in China, Ethiopia, France, the UK, and elsewhere in the US.
Trained in classical piano, ballet, and competitive figure skating, Marissa remains devoted to the arts. She loves photography and books, travels for Balboa (swing dance), and writes the occasional poem or song. She speaks conversational French and broken Mandarin.
