I am the co-founder and Executive Director of Start: Empowerment, an education nonprofit advancing environmental justice and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in schools and community spaces. Our environmental curriculum has reached more than 120,000 students nationwide, and Start: Empowerment’s programming has engaged thousands of youth across New York City and Texas. In 2021, I launched the first organizing fellowship by and for Gen Z youth, paying over 70 Black and Brown young leaders to learn, organize, and lead environmental justice campaigns. Our Texas youth organizers have successfully stopped oil terminals and a desalination plant, preventing an estimated 300 billion metric tons of carbon emissions. Alongside this work, we are building community-led alternatives, including land acquisition, food cooperatives, and farming initiatives. In 2025, I was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for my leadership.
As Policy Director, I led and supported campaigns that advanced policies combating environmental racism at the city, state, and national levels. My work included securing access to clean water in East Austin; stopping the Soranic military facility; holding Tesla accountable; and advancing landmark policies such as the Environmental Justice for All Act, cumulative impact legislation, and aggregate mining regulations. I also worked to stop the “dirty side deal,” expand solar energy access in East Austin, and advance equitable land use and energy justice policies. Other campaigns include developing a strategic plan for the Colorado River Corridor, reforming the demolition process, increasing voter registration, building a local housing justice coalition, and leading youth education initiatives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I supported mutual aid responses, and I played a key role in the No Way Prop A campaign opposing increased police funding.
I created a community led housing justice collective in order to fighting displacement, gentrification, and developer-driven policy in Austin. As a core organizer I supported and led housing justice & tenant organizing campaigns across the city—including Acacia Cliffs, and Aero Apartments—securing historic wins such as full one-to-one replacement of affordable units, right-to-return agreements, and the creation of a city fund to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing. From 2023–2024, I helped lead a year-long, grassroots resistance campaign against the HOME upzoning initiative, mobilizing 500+ frontline residents, 30 neighborhood groups, and 30+ organizations to challenge policies that accelerate displacement in Austin’s Eastern Crescent. In response to HOME’s passage,we worked with impacted communities introduce an Equity Overlay to protect BIPOC and low-income residents from displacement tied to land development code changes. Through 15+ housing justice teach-ins, protests, press conferences, and leadership development programs, we have trained 50+ community members as organizers, facilitated testimony at city council and planning commission hearings, and built a housing justice movement led by those most impacted.
I co-founded the Colorado River Conservancy alongside longtime Indigenous East Austin environmental advocates in order to develop a community-led conservation vision for the stretch of river from the East Longhorn Dam to the Travis County Line, an area that has been historically ignored and is rapidly being developed by newer aggregate mines, tech companies like Tesla and luxury housing development. Our goal is to protect, preserve, and restore this beautiful stretch of river.
International Climate Campaigns
I've co-led international coalitions to successfully establish the loss and damage fund, push for an equitable fossil fuel phase-out, and successful adopt the Belem Action Mechanism for a Global Just Transition through the UNFCCC process. I've participated in COP27, SB58, COP28, CBD COP16, and COP30.
Research
As a scholar, my research interest focuses on political economy, inequality, (Post)colonial studies, liberation pedagogy, critical geography, Queer, Asian & Indigenous ecologies, and environmental justice. Whether it's researching neoliberalism and the rise of the far-right, environmental justice education disparities in NYC, the commodification of land and zoning in Texas, asthma and housing inequalities, or water quality testing in the Colorado River, I aim to use research as a tool to further understand and dismantle systems of oppression. I've done research as an NYU Gallatin summer scholar and worked at the Haber Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Public Health.
Awards & Honors
2025 Forbes 30 under 30
2025 EJ Rising Star by WeAct
2025 EcoAmerica Award
2024 Green Carpet Sustainable Fashion Award Young Leader Honoree
2024 Austin Woman Changemaker List
2023 Vital Voices Grassroots Leadership Inaugural Cohort
2023 Harvard AOCC Award for Educational Justice
2023 Cesar Chavez Award
2023 Grist 50 Fixer
2023 Tom's of Maine Incubator Recipient
2022 WWF Conservation Award Winner
2022 Echoing Green Fellowship Finalist
2022 Jericho Fellowship, Activism Prize
2022 UN Youth Assembly USA Ambassador
2022-2023 Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship
Graduated Summa Cum Laude from NYU
Deans List, Latin Honors, University Honors Scholar
Undergraduate Academic Excellence for the Class of 2020 for Gallatin
Phi Beta Kappa 3rd year of college
Tori Burch Innovation Scholar
Selected to showcase paintings at the Gallatin Arts Festival
Dean’s Conference Fund to attend Environmental Law and Policy Review Conference in Washington D.C.
NYU Conference funding to attend 2018 PrepCom for the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in Geneva
Finalist in the NYU E-lab 10k Changemaker Challenge
Publications
Leclercq "Access to Climate Education is a Matter of Justice" Al Jazeera, Nov 18th, 2024.
Leclercq "Green Cities are for People, not Profit" YES! Magazine, July 11, 2024.
Leclercq "Behind the scenes of COP28 in Dubai," Assembly Malala Fund, Feb 28, 2024.
Leclercq "A Love Letter to my friends in the Climate Movement," Assembly Malala Fund, Nov 29, 2023.
Leclercq "How Asian-Pacific Islanders Shaped Environmental Activism," Atmos, Dec 19th, 2022.
Chen & Leclercq "The Problem with Climate Change Influencers," Teen Vogue. June 29th, 2022.
Leclercq, Herrera, and Almanza “Demolition: The Legacy of displacement and gentrification in East Austin Continues.” PODER, Feb 2022.
Leclercq, Almanza, and Herrera, “Reaching Vulnerable Population in East Austin” Austin Public Health, 31 October 2020.
Almanza, et al. “Comparative Analyses of Low-Income Housing Along the East Riverside Corridor Master Plan 2019.” Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin Community, 2019.
Leclercq "Beneath the Gilets Jaunes: Disruption Power Structures or Reinforcing the Far-Right Rhetoric?" Senior thesis, NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Studies, May 2020.
Bell and Leclercq, "Take This With You Zine." May 2019.
Leclercq, Alexia "The World is Already on Fire" EMBODIED Magazine, 2019.
Leclercq, Alexia "In My Mother's Eyes" BRIO: NYU’s Undergraduate Literature journal, 2020.
Leclercq, Alexia “American Paranoia: The Fight Against ‘Evil.’” EMBODIED Magazine, 29 April. 2019.
Fun Facts
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I'm obsessed with capybaras
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I published a cookbook in high school
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I have a cat Instagram with 117k followers
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I speak 4 languages fluently, learning my 5th
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I learned English in middle school after immigrating to the U.S
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I've actually moved 9 times and lived in 4 countries
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I'm learning to ride horses