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  • CAREER Q&A

My professor said ‘Black people are not interested in the environment’. I set out to prove him wrong

Environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor has helped her field to be more welcoming to researchers of colour.
By
  1. Virginia Gewin

    1. Virginia Gewin is a freelance reporter in Portland, Oregon.

Dorceta Taylor, outlined in pink, sits at a table and gestures while talking with other people at a conference

Dorceta Taylor at a meeting with the US Environmental Protection Agency and alumni from several early-career conservation fellowships that she directs, including Tonyisha Harris (seated right). Credit: Conner McLaren Photography

Dorceta Taylor has a long history of firsts. In 1991, she became the first Black woman to earn a doctoral degree from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in New Haven, Connecticut. In 2014, she created the first comprehensive report for monitoring racial, gender and socioeconomic diversity in environmental non-profit organizations, foundations and government agencies. And in 2018, she launched the New Horizons in Conservation Conference for early-career professionals of colour. After more than two decades as an environmental sociologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, she returned to Yale in 2020. Two years ago, she was named the Wangari Maathai professor of environmental sociology, the first endowed chair in the field named after a Black woman. Her newest book, the SAGE Encyclopedia of Environmental Justice, which is due to be published in July, is the world’s first such compilation, describing key events, institutions and people of colour in the environmental justice movement.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00351-z

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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