Lexie Chen ’25 Leaves a Path of Green in Durham
By Brooks Dareff
It’s a typically cold winter day in Ithaca, New York, when Lexie Chen ’25 joins a video chat from Cornell University’s Mann Library. The first-year student sits just a few buildings east of the Johnson Museum of Art, one of her favorite spots on campus. Among the museum’s attractions is the breathtaking view from its top floor. “It overlooks some of the Finger Lakes,” she says, “and the entirety of North Campus.”
Whatever the season — Chen first visited during spring break of her senior year at Durham Academy — Cornell’s dedicated incorporation of nature into its environment is part of what drew her to the university. “Nature and the landscape at Cornell, it’s not just ornamental. Each day when we walk to class, we interact directly with nature,” she says. “Even in the winter, the view is honestly just phenomenal, even when it’s frozen over.”
Biophilia, this desire to commune with nature, yields pages of hits on the Cornell website; respect for the natural environment is one of the university’s core values. The concept is also gaining traction back home in Durham, thanks in part to determined advocacy from Chen. As she was taking in Ithaca’s brilliant fall foliage last October, the Durham City Council approved a resolution she had co-created and championed during her final year at DA — moving the city toward membership in the Biophilic Cities Network, a global community dedicated to designing cities rich in nature.
It was a meaningful milestone for Chen, who was a Middle Schooler when she began to recognize how “everything from city structure and urban planning and parks and gathering spaces, just how impactful those can really be to quality of life and the way that someone moves about the world and life.”
The resolution’s unanimous passage marked the first formal step in the city’s application to join the network, but it followed countless steps that Chen took behind the scenes. Over the course of a year, she communicated, collaborated and co-created with a range of stakeholders — the most intensive stretch unfolding over several months through Durham Academy’s Pathway Scholars program. Chen was in the first cohort of the program, which empowers Upper Schoolers to design and implement community-based research projects.
“I just really couldn’t believe that I was given this sort of avenue to do this at such a young age, especially, and be given the resources and the support and the time, most of all,” she says of the Pathway program.
Chen’s biophilia has roots in St. Louis, where her family lived for much of her childhood. There, they frequented the 1,326-acre Forest Park’s cultural institutions and restored wildlife habitats — natural spaces that served as a vast reservoir of wonder and education for Chen. Often, the purveyors of enrichment were strangers who helped her identify a mandarin duck or spell her name in hieroglyphics. She now calls these “lessons shared by strangers in this space. I guess for me that was sort of a catalyst as to recognizing how green space and parks especially are powerful agents for community health and connection.”
When her family moved to North Carolina in 2018, Chen joined DA as a sixth grader. Her biophilia continued to grow in the confines of the COVID-19 pandemic, as home isolation made her acutely aware of her environment. It was also during this time that she discovered Biophilic Solutions, a podcast about the universal impact of nature. And, while taking Andrea Caruso’s Biodiversity class at the Upper School years later, Chen’s connection to nature was further strengthened.
It was also at the Upper School that she came to see her own power to effect change. She recalls how nervous she felt after being asked to present a speech at the 2024 This I Believe assembly in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But, with the support of caring faculty, Chen worked through her fear of public speaking and delivered her speech with conviction.
“Just hearing their encouragement was another reinforcement, before I took the Pathway Scholars class,” she says, “about what I was capable of and what I could try to achieve if I l just started trying in the first place.”
Chen took that self-confidence to the Biophilic Leadership Summit in Georgia and then to a related event in Raleigh — along the way, meeting with network leaders and officials representing biophilic cities around the globe.
Daring now to imagine a Biocities Durham, Chen’s Pathway Scholars journey officially began in August 2024. She networked with local environmentalists, including Barbara Driscoll, former president of New Hope Bird Alliance, and learned about existing biophilia initiatives. She identified biophilic goals in the city’s comprehensive plan — such as equitable access to green space, and biodiverse and resilient communities — as well as gaps and outmoded components that network inclusion might help close and update. All of it suggested the city might be receptive and share her vision.
Chen began meeting with Driscoll bi-weekly to craft a proposal and pored over resolutions that had been passed by some of the 30-plus existing biophilic cities. She also gleaned valuable insights about organizational benefits, burden on staff and other logistics from Brian Smith, who coordinates Raleigh’s biophilia efforts.
With a resolution, time commitment document and FAQ in hand, Chen and Driscoll presented to Durham’s Environmental Affairs Board in March. The following month, they presented to City Council Member Carl Rist, who agreed to introduce the resolution to the full council. “Lexie led the briefing for Carl Rist,” Driscoll says, “and it was so professional he thought she was a college student.”
As the project advanced, Pathway Scholars program coordinator Kelly Teagarden ’04 observed Chen’s growth: “Watching her move from nervous outreach to authoritative, well-researched advocacy was one of the most inspiring evolutions I’ve witnessed as a teacher.” Chen’s project also speaks to her lasting legacy, Teagarden says. “As one of the first Pathway Scholars, Lexie helped set the tone and standard for what this program can be. She demonstrated that high school students are fully capable of engaging in meaningful, policy-level work that has real impact on the community.”
Moving forward, Chen’s biophilic hopes for Durham are numerous, among them green space and renewal for historically marginalized areas of the city. She points to the ethos of Singapore, which has changed its motto from “Garden City” to “City in a Garden.”
Meanwhile, in Ithaca, where the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management’s motto and mission is “business for a better world,” Chen is considering a concentration in Sustainable Business and Economic Policy. “I think as of right now, career seems very far away, but I know that ultimately whatever I do decide to pursue, I want it to align with how I think about impact and whether that’s something that can support my long-term environmental and social values and morals.”