Celina Chien

Panthera Board Member

Celina Chien is an environmental storyteller, combining her roles as an ecologist, award-winning photojournalist and artist to communicate from the frontier of conservation, harness empathy for change and advocate for biodiversity. Her work is grounded in her background as a scientist and her kinship to nature, using visual storytelling to build bridges across sectors & cultures, and to extend the reaches of human empathy beyond our own species. Celina is an outspoken advocate of environmental and social justice. She is also a professional actor and is equally passionate about narrative storytelling.

As a photographer, Celina’s documentary work has focused on exploring the nuances of environmental topics from palm oil expansion to the zoo debate to the wildlife trade. She also releases her work as fine art pieces, most recently after a successful exhibition in October 2022 in support of leopard conservation with Dolce&Gabbana. This work strives to forge links between the fashion, artistic and conservation worlds with more collaborative releases to follow. In 2021, Celina placed in the prestigious 57th Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition as a highly commended finalist in the photojournalism category. She sits on the judging panel of the same competition hosted by the Natural History Museum of London in 2023.

Celina is a TEDx speaker, science communicator, primary school to undergraduate level educator and regularly represents youth & justice-oriented nature conservation at multilateral conferences such as COP27 and COP15. Celina serves as the youngest member of Panthera’s Conservation Council, an advisory board member and inaugural ambassador for Girls Who Click, a nonprofit empowering girls in nature photography, and has been recognised by Diversify Photo collective in their ‘Up Next Photographers’ watch list. Celina is also a member of the Youth Council at the Reserva Youth Land Trust, an NGO that successfully created the world’s first entirely youth funded nature reserve.

She graduated from Imperial College London with a BSc Biological Sciences in 2020 and MRes in Tropical Forest Ecology in 2021 specialising in soundscape ecology. Celina is local to London and Milan with Dutch and Chinese origins.