About Razel
Razel Suansing is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Klima, the largest climate education organisation built from and for the Global South. She is the youngest Chief Political Affairs Officer in the 19th and 20th Congresses of the Philippine House of Representatives. She works at the intersection of climate education, indigenous knowledge systems, post-conflict policy, and human rights, in the country the World Risk Report ranks first among 193 nations for climate vulnerability and whose youth, by independent global survey, register as the most climate-anxious population in the world.
Origin
Razel was raised at the seam of two Philippines: her father in law enforcement, and the Mindanao her mother had left behind as a child, internally displaced by war. The two are the country's most enduring fault lines and one of the most contested in Southeast Asia. The Bangsamoro carries a four-decade Moro insurgency, the 2017 siege of Marawi City by ISIL-affiliated combatants, the displacement of approximately 1.3 million people, and a peace settlement that remains fragile.
She returned to her mother's home region first as a journalist, then as a Yale undergraduate researcher, then as an educator, and now as a Congressional officer for the Second District of Sultan Kudarat, the country's second-most conflict-affected legislative district. Her position, with a Mindanaoan internally-displaced maternal lineage, grounds her democratic-protection work in a personal stake in the integrity of the Philippine peace settlement.
Klima
Razel founded Klima in 2018 with one conviction: that the most climate-vulnerable Filipino children deserve curricula built for them, not adapted to them. Eight years later, Klima is the largest climate education organisation built from and for the Global South. Its work has reached 16,100+ people across four continents, 10,000+ through Klima's direct programming and 6,100+ through the KNOW Movement, the 15-organisation, 14-country global coalition Klima co-founded with Atlanta-based College Pathway during the COVID-19 education emergency.
In 2026, UNICEF named Razel one of the world's thirteen Climate Education Leading Minds, selected from a field of over 18,000 applicants. Klima now operates six programmes across the Philippines: Klima Kards, Klima Karavan, Klima Kurriculum, Klima Kamp, Klima Kollection, and Klima Kombinator in partnership with WWF Philippines. Klima Kurriculum, the first comprehensive sustainability curriculum ever authored for the Filipino classroom, is scheduled to launch on Khan Academy Philippines in the fourth quarter of 2026 with a projected reach of 2 million Filipino learners. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, Klima activated state university partnerships with Pampanga State University (42,336 students across eight campuses) and the Mindanao State University system (69,000+ students across twelve campuses), opening a combined footprint of 111,000+ students.
Legislative record
Razel defends democracy from inside the Philippine legislature, in a country where democratic protection has eroded sharply over the last decade. As the youngest Chief Political Affairs Officer in the 19th and 20th Congresses, in the Second District of Sultan Kudarat, she manages projects for a constituency of 400,000 in the country's second-most conflict-affected legislative district. Her proposed legislation impacts over 110 million Filipinos. Her implemented social services have directly served over 250,000 constituents through medical assistance, scholarships, vocational training, and emergency support.
She is head of the legislative team, who has authored the Internally Displaced Persons Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta for Human Rights Defenders, the Commission on Human Rights Charter, the National Prevention Mechanism Against Torture, the Bangsamoro History Curriculum and Bangsamoro History Month, the Blue Economy Bill, the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, and legislation criminalising AI-generated child sexual abuse material and non-consensual digital forgery. She convenes the working group producing the Philippines' first national Congressional inquiry on climate risk vulnerability, the parliamentary companion to the world's first National Inquiry on Climate Change.
Education and research
Razel read Political Science at Yale University, graduating with Honours and Distinction (Major GPA 4.00), with minors in Human Rights from Yale Law School and Journalism from Yale College. She received the Charles W. Clarke Prize in Comparative Politics, Yale University's highest prize in the field, for her undergraduate thesis Salam Sa Bangsamoro: An Exploration of Violence Mitigation Strategies against Salafi-Jihadist Groups in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. The thesis is the first in its field to demonstrate the effectiveness of development programmes as a means of preventing conflict recurrence in the Bangsamoro context and has been circulated among senior Philippine military leadership.
She is an incoming Master of Studies candidate in Social Innovation at the University of Cambridge, beginning October 2026 at Judge Business School and the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation. Her Cambridge research focuses on how social innovation operates under conditions of political pressure, drawing on political timing, political will, and political language as analytical variables. She is concurrently a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Asia-Pacific Sustainability Leadership Fellow.
Prior work
Razel has worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Jerusalem under the Deputy Commissioner General, the Yale Law School Schell Center for International Human Rights as a legal researcher on the Persecution Prevention Project on the Yazidi genocide, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines on the National Inquiry on Climate Change (the first in the world to establish a juridical link between climate change and human rights), the Philippine Department of Justice Action Center, and the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
As a journalist, she published over 100 pieces in under a year across Rappler, MindaNews, ABS-CBN, the Yale Daily News, the Yale Globalist, and CNN, including the first reporting on the assault of Vilma Kari, which was subsequently cited and covered by CNN. She was selected as one of 27 News Interns at Rappler from a field of over 400 applicants.
Selected honours
YALE UNIVERSITY: Charles W. Clarke Prize in Comparative Politics (2024)
UNICEF: Bright Spot Finalist, Leading Minds Fellowship on Climate Education, from 18,000+ applicants across 150+ countries (2026)
WE ARE FAMILY FOUNDATION: Three Dot Dash Global Teen Leader (2021)
MIT: Asia-Pacific Sustainability Leadership Fellow (2025)
YALE LAW SCHOOL: Kirby Simon International Human Rights Fellow (2022, 2023)
YALE UNIVERSITY: Frank M. Patterson Political Science Fellowship (2023)
YALE COUNCIL ON MIDDLE EAST STUDIES: Libby Rose Peace Fellowship (2022)
YALE UNIVERSITY: Meriman-Bensinger and Richter Fellowships, Davenport College (2023)
JOHN LOCKE INSTITUTE: Essay Competition Finalist for Politics and Law, top twenty of 64,500 international entries (2018)
IASAS: Oral Interpretation International Public Speaking Champion (2019)
PHILIPPINE NATIONAL HISTORY BOWL: National Champion and Team Captain (2019)
ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION: Premiere Oratory Competition Philippines, National Finalist, top six of 500 (2018)
EARCOS: Global Citizenship Award and Grant (2019)
FUTURE MINDS NETWORK: 25 Under 25 (2021)
GLOBAL CHANGEMAKERS PHILIPPINES: 25 Under 25 (2021)