Our team

Prior to founding WildBound, Songqiao was the first Chinese participant and faculty member for Homeward Bound, the largest all-female science and leadership expedition to Antarctica. She is a researcher, activist, and entrepreneur on environmental issues in China and globally. Over the past 10 years, she has led and advised youth climate organizations and projects, worked to conserve China’s rivers as a National Geographic Global Explorer, and consulted on agriculture development projects in Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

In 2024, Songqiao became the first Chinese woman member of the Club of Rome. Songqiao received a Master of Philosophy in Geography from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar and a Master of Business from the University of Oxford as the first Skoll Scholar from China. She graduated summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College.

As the Asia Lead of Architecture 2030, she set up the organisation’s operations in China in 2015 and facilitated the first buildings private sector commitment to zero carbon, announced at COP21 in Paris. Since 2022 Yaki has been sensing into the essence and potential of Architecture 2030’s Asia programme as one that regenerates and co-evolves with our living system.

Yaki is also a certified nature and forest therapy guide with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, and an ever-evolving regenerative practitioner. Her latest passion is the Future Positive (Future+) Leadership Programme, introducing regenerative living, development and design through deeply connecting with the self, others and nature, sensing the land, identifying essence and potential, and supporting the emergence of reciprocal relationships.

In an earlier life Yaki was a programme manager at The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation’s climate team and a campaigner at Amnesty International. Yaki completed her MSc Environment and Development at the London School of Economics, fully funded by the FCO’s Chevening Scholarship.

Majored in Landscape Ecology and Nature Conservation in Germany, Gao‘s been working in various environmental fields from NGO campaign for river conservation, environmental policy research, green investment and nature capital assessment. After becoming a mother, she‘s been focused in nature and environmental education until now.

Gao has been investigating and living in ecovillages for the past decade. In 2016 she co-developed a documentary film “Long Way Towards Consensus”, the first Chinese film about sample eco-villages in Europe. She has been promoting ecovillage as a future living option in various occasions such as Beijing Biennale, Forum of Ecological Civilization, Rural Revitalization Conference etc.

Jiexin gained an Urban Planning master degree from University of Cambridge and an Urban Design master degree from University College London. Before joining Architecture 2030, he worked for Foster + Partners, where he has participated in many high-end international and Chinese urban planning and architecture design projects in both London and Shanghai offices.

At the China Youth Climate Action Network (CYCAN), Jingwei contributed to the planning and delivery of the International Youth Summit on Energy and Climate Change (IYSECC), supported the coordination and communications of youth delegations to UN climate conferences, and worked on youth low-carbon consumption initiatives and university environmental networks. These experiences shaped her continuing interest in young people's agency and the relationships, resources, and learning spaces that sustain their engagement.

At WildBound, she brings stories of people and nature into public conversation through brand storytelling, editorial and visual content, events, and exhibitions. Through the Changemakers for a Regenerative Future program, she has contributed to program development and collaborative research and writing, exploring the experiences and narratives of young environmental changemakers in China and the possibilities for change through relationships and systems thinking. Within Future+, she helps organize and communicate regenerative design gatherings, courses, and community activities, connecting practitioners across cultures, places, and disciplines to explore regeneration rooted in local contexts.

Her path from engineering and law to communications and community practice has brought her to an enduring question: how can we renew our relationships with ourselves, one another, and the natural world? She particularly enjoys hosting, deep dialogue, and collective creation, drawing on literature, art, and experiences in nature to make space for honest expression, attentive listening, and unexpected encounters. She sees care, friendship, and imagination as both sources of change and qualities to nurture along the way.