EB Alumni Spotlight Awardee

EB Alumni Spotlight Awardee: Dr. Lisa Schipper, Class of 1986

Dr. Lisa Schipper was chosen as this year’s recipient of the Alumni Spotlight Award for her work as a social scientist striving to tackle climate change. Her efforts to understand the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities are commendable and reflect EB’s values. Congratulations Dr. Schipper!

What did you enjoy most about your time at EB and why?

I was at EB from age 5 to 11 (1-5th grade, CP–CM2), although I was in Sweden for part of CE1 and in the UK for half of CM2. Probably because of these moves, EB represented stability for me, and the standard against which I measured everything else. Compared with the Swedish school that I attended in the UK, EB was strict and very advanced. The teachers at the Swedish school didn’t understand how I could be two school years ahead in my math already at age 11. It felt to me like the other schools I attended away from EB weren’t real schools. The children didn’t listen to the teachers—how could that be possible?

So—from the advantage of hindsight now I can see that stability and rigour were the things that I valued most. Of course, at the time I saw this as enjoying my routines and my friends. It set a standard for me that is very high, but I think reasonably so.

Please describe your current work/studies.

I am a social scientist doing research on the relationship between climate change and development. I look at how and why people are vulnerable to climate change in developing countries, and what they are doing to adapt to it. For the last fifteen years, I have been doing research in Central and South America, south and Southeast Asia, east and west Africa. I started off looking at climate change already for my undergraduate degree (Environmental Science at Brown University), and then looked more specifically at development for my subsequent degrees (MSc and Ph.D in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia) so I have been doing this long before it was a trendy topic. I am really glad to see that the public have picked up on how urgent it is to solve climate change.

Right now, I work in the Environmental Change Institute in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, so I also teach and supervise at under- and post-graduate levels, which I love. I edit an academic journal called Climate and Development and since 2018 I am co-leading a chapter for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will be published in 2021 as part of the 6th Assessment Report. How do you feel EB has influenced you or led you towards your choice of profession?

Attention to detail and valuing academia have been two things that I have no doubt were first implanted in my mind by EB. These are not things that you can find anywhere. I think it is the combination of the French rigour in schooling with the creative and ‘out of the box’ spirit of Berkeley that allow for the development of people who are driven but also independent. We don’t want to be cookie-cutter professionals —we want to find our own pathways toward making a difference.

My choice of profession has probably most been influenced by my father, who was a researcher at Berkeley. He worked on household energy efficiency and sustainable transport, and instilled a value for the environment in me that I am now trying to transfer to my daughter. But I had and have better focus that he did, and I think this is because I am super-organised— something I attribute to my French schooling. This has helped me with time management and work-life balance, my father was hopeless at that!

What would you say to parents just starting out at EB?

My parents put me in EB because they were preparing to go to Switzerland with us to take up a Fulbright fellowship that my father had been offered and they thought I should have some French. He eventually declined it and we never went, but my Swedish mother really liked the European/international atmosphere at EB and so I remained there, and eventually my sister also started in EB (and was lucky enough to be there when the school was expanded all the way up to 8th grade). I think that all parents who put their children in EB have different

reasons, and different expectations: to put academia in focus; to give their children an international worldview; or to make sure their children can speak fluent French.

Current political movements around the world are fostering citizens to become more insular, afraid of the unknown, and anti-global. Children who attend EB will turn out the opposite: aware of the world and eager to explore it; curious about the unknown and keen to make new friends; and, without doubt, they will be global citizens who feel their identity is not constrained to a nationality, but instead feel that they are advocates for a global society where we look out for each other and the environment.

Describe your favorite memory from EB.

I have so many memories that are so clear in my mind and that fill me with happiness. The way we had to play inside when it rained (and the musty smell that accompanied that—probably coming from us children!). When we had an earthquake in third grade and had to duck and cover under our desks. The artwork and singing that we did, especially with the chorus (I still sing in a choir). Jan’s wolfdog puppies. Michael’s dissection experiments, where I think he was the most excited of us all. My energetic teachers—how did they cope with us?! The time we spent as a 4th grade class in a temporary room by the playground (while construction was going on for our new classroom)…

But I suppose that all of these memories are alive because of the best part of all —my EB classmates, most of whom I still have frequent contact with. Do you feel that EB adequately prepared you for life after EB? Do you feel you are a citizen of the world?

Sometimes when I have a low moment of poor confidence (as all academics do… c’est comme ça !), I remind myself that I have hidden assets—the most important of these is my many languages. The French that I got at EB gives me an enormous advantage. I recently did fieldwork in Benin for a month, and of course it would have been impossible if I hadn’t had such fluent French. But I also use the language on a daily basis with parents of my daughter’s classmates, colleagues in the office, and other colleagues with whom I work closely. This opens doors and creates trust. This, coupled with the Spanish I started learning at FAIS and the German that I learned during my undergraduate study, gives me five languages that I can move in and out of with relative ease. This does indeed make me feel like a global citizen. This has been put to the test by having lived in 9 countries, including 3 countries in Asia and 5 in Europe. Every time anyone asks me ‘Where are you actually from, I cannot make out your accent/culture/ background?’ I am ecstatic—this is exactly what I want!

Would you consider sending your children to EB? Why?

Of course—if I lived in Berkeley. My daughter is trilingual (Swedish, German and English) and would of course benefit from French too. When we lived in Vietnam from 2016–2018, she had a French classmate who spoke little English and that inspired her to want to learn French as well. Anything else you’d like to add?

Out of the many achievements in life so far, this Award stands out because it was not the result of something that I made a conscious decision about or did myself—it was my parents who put me in EB. Since both of them have died in the last few years (both to cancer, both falling ill very rapidly despite healthy lifestyles and relatively young ages), I cannot help but feel that they would have been the proudest of this Award. Given how conflicting and impossible many parenting decisions are, it would surely have been extremely comforting for them to know that they made the right decision back in 1981!

“…without doubt, they [children who attend EB] will be global citizens who feel their identity is not constrained to a nationality, but instead feel that they are advocates for a global society where we look out for each other and the environment.” 2019 –2020 Annual Report