From bee lover to pollinator promoter

Olga Frolova: From bee lover to pollinator promoter

Columbia Climate School inaugural students will don blue caps and gowns for graduation school day this week. But while classes may be over, students will take part in a variety of exciting internships this summer before officially graduating in August.

Olga Frolova, one such student at the Climate School Climate and Society Program, grew up in a beekeeping family. In the Q&A below, she tells us what she’s learned from observing these hard-working insects, why she gave up a career in the fashion industry, and how she plans to spend her summer internship with the New York Bee Conservation Society.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in studying climate?

In my life, I have worked in different fields. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2017, I started a fashion career. Shortly after that, however, I began to realize first-hand how harmful clothing production and distribution can be to the environment. The list is long, but it includes dyes that end up in rivers and oceans, samples that fly in from far away in plastic packaging that are quickly thrown away, a glut of excess fashion items that are dumped in landfills, and factories in developing countries that are nearly No or no environmental regulations.

As a child, I spent countless days helping my father take care of his bees. Beekeeping has been a family activity for 75 years. I have always enjoyed watching bees up close and have grown to admire their collective intelligence and work ethic. Growing up, I realized that bees are also an important part of our ecosystem. They play a vital role in pollinating the vast majority of the world’s crops and plants. Working with these little insects taught me the importance of detail, and how a chain of seemingly innocuous little events can add up and create something important and beautiful, or end up with dramatic effects on a large scale.

I believe I inherited a love of nature from my father. The combination of these factors, and the realization that more needs to be done to help address the climate crisis, not just at the business but more importantly at the individual level, is why I’m interested in studying climate.

Where are you interning this summer? What will this work bring?

I will be interning at a non-profit organization called Bee Conservancy. Their work focuses on protecting all bee species and ensuring environmental and food justice through community-based education, research, habitat creation and advocacy.

For honeybees, habitat loss is one of the greatest threats in the world today. Protecting bee populations and helping them thrive and allow our ecosystems to thrive is critical. So I decided to help protect bees by combining my previous beekeeping experience with the knowledge I gained at Columbia University. My work will include maintaining bee sanctuaries like Governors Island, researching and educating communities, developing program-specific programs, and supporting online and in-person educational activities in the five boroughs of New York City. I’m excited to give back to local organizations and learn how the U.S. protects bees because all my beekeeping experience is in Europe.

How can the Climate and Society program help you prepare for this role?

“The beauty of the Climate and Society program is that it provides a set of foundational skills that can be applied in different contexts. More and more companies will need experts in the topics we study, as climate change is affecting everyone, nowhere Not here.”

The Climate and Society program taught me to overcome challenges; solve problems; think creatively, critically, and quantitatively; express strong and clear opinions; respect and listen to other perspectives; question opinions; and be willing to revise my own ideas. Most importantly, it exposed me to many different and unique experiences from which I learned a lot. People and teachers are the most valuable assets of such an interdisciplinary program, which includes highly technical courses covering R programming and advanced physics, but also very relevant and broadly applicable skills such as disaster management and climate change adaptation. I am grateful for the opportunity to study at Columbia University.

What do you hope to learn from your internship?

I hope this internship will fill a gap that the program cannot address and help me expand my hands-on experience and knowledge of different bee species, not just bees. I want to learn more about what can be done to protect them, no matter the scale. I want people to be aware of the problem of declining bee populations, not just in the U.S. but around the world.

I believe that once people in the New York City area learn more about the role bees play and the challenges they face, their attitudes towards these important insects will become more compassionate and proactive in their conservation. In the end, we truly depend on them. Most fruits and vegetables we grow or buy rely on bee pollinators. We need bees to balance our food supply with our overall well-being. This internship will also help me expand my network in this field and give me an opportunity to grow professionally.

How does this internship relate to your career goals? What do you hope to do after graduation?

My long-term goals span different industries and roles. I have many ideas and ambitions and beekeeping is just one of many activities I enjoy. I’m also thinking about returning to the fashion industry to play a more active role in the sustainability revolution that’s changing most companies. In addition, renewable energy is an area that is attracting many new investments, and given the urgent need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, I would like to learn more about this area.

The beauty of the Climate and Society programme is that it provides a set of foundational skills that can be applied in different contexts. More and more companies will need experts on the topics we study because climate change is affecting everyone, everywhere.