Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Wife Has Her Own Global Career

It’s unlikely that “What are you wearing?” will be welcome words for Diana Fox Carney, an economist and climate policy specialist.

As the wife of Canada’s newly elected prime minister Mark Carney, she is bringing her own gravitas to the role of the country’s first lady. A global climate and energy policy authority, she has championed clean energy, sustainable livelihoods, responsible supply chains and net zero greenhouse gas emissions, and she has challenged consumerism. Fox Carney also has four published works including “Sustainable Livelihoods: Lesson From Early Experience.”

She has spoken publicly about how individuals can make changes to support climate action whether that be by taking public transportation or reducing red meat consumption. Fox Carney has also addressed the role that large global companies have to play in supporting climate action. Although Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, her predecessor as Canada’s unofficial first lady, was known for her stylishness and her work in television, Fox Carney appears to be more no nonsense about fashion. Through a spokesperson Tuesday, Trudeau declined to offer any guidance to Fox Carney in her new role.

Thanking Canadian voters Monday night after the federal election results were in for choosing her husband’s “vision,” Fox Carney wore a sleeveless red sheath dress with a satin crewneck collar, a heart-shaped pin, red knot earrings and black flats. Before her husband joined her on the stage in Ottawa, she described him as “consistent, compassionate, loyal and driven by an exceptionally strong set of values.”

Earlier on Election Day, she kept her sunglasses on top of her head and walked in ballet flats with her hands in the pockets of her boldly printed dress. When on the campaign trail for limited appearances, she kept things simple in basic dresses and sportswear separates. Lean and muscular, Fox Carney reportedly met her future husband playing hockey, when they were graduate students at the University of Oxford. The couple married in 1994 and have four daughters — Cleo, Tess, Amelia and Sasha.

Fox Carney started her career with the U.K. government in Zanzibar and has held leadership roles at think tanks in Canada and the U.K. Her résumé includes serving as a senior adviser on climate to the growth equity fund, BeyondNetZero, and as chair at Helios’ CLEAR, a fund that invests in climate adaptation and mitigation in Africa. The Gen Xer joined the Eurasia Group in 2021 as a senior adviser. An Eurasia Group spokesperson said Tuesday that Fox Carney was not available to comment about her commitment to sustainability and her views on consumerism. The British Canadian previously worked as executive director at Pi Capital, the U.K. leading content-based membership organization.

In an online Q&A with Terramera’s founder Karn Manhas, Fox Carney highlighted her interest in “electrifying everything (from household heating and cooling to the vehicle you drive), soil carbon sequestration, and enhanced weathering (to speed up the natural process through which minerals combine with carbon to remove it from the atmosphere) among other things. As first lady, she is taking on a pivotal role for Canada, which has seen interest in a consumer driven “Buy Canadian” movement gaining traction in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods.

Francois Neville, a professor at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, said that given Fox Carney’s background as an economist, he believes she “understands the economic implications of sustainability and consumerism, such that she might inform policymakers and business leaders on the costs and benefits of certain sustainability-oriented practices and policies; where they might make good business sense, and where they may fall short. Ultimately, I would expect her to take a pragmatic approach to these issues and how she would discuss them.”

Having studied agricultural economics for a master’s degree at the University of Oxford, Fox Carney, whose father was a farmer, has served on the strategic advisory board at Terramera. In her interview with Manhas, she spoke of working in overseas development in sub-Saharan Africa, and how she saw “up close the real devastation wrought by even small changes in the climate and came to understand that it is the most vulnerable, who are the least culpable.”

As “a big cyclist more for getting around than for exercise,” she floated the idea of what a difference would be made if everyone walked or biked any trek that was under 5 kilometers in the interview. She also cited three routines that are key to her well-being — her morning coffee, her afternoon tea and her garden.  

Like many public figures, Fox Carney has also had to deal with the unexpected. Last month during the campaign for the snap election, a manipulated photograph of Carney with her husband circulated on X and Facebook. An image of the couple that was taken on March 9, the night that Carney won the Liberal Party’s leadership role, had been altered so that her face looked more like his. The former Bank of England governor was pictured in a navy business suit waving, with his wife beside him in a white tank and a red pantsuit.

In January, a source close to Carney reportedly blamed the conservatives for circulating photos of he and his wife standing at the 2013 Wilderness Festival beside Ghislaine Maxwell, the now incarcerated girlfriend of the late Jeffrey Epstein. The source reportedly said at that time “they are not friends.”

Having appeared on Fox Carney’s former “BeyondNetZero” show, Sylvain Charlebois, a professor and researcher at Dalhousie University, described her as “highly educated and very smart. I suspect that she will have an opinion on a lot of different things. Obviously, she and Mark Carney met in school. I wouldn’t be surprised if she might have some influence over the prime minister.”

Her daughter Cleo, a Harvard University undergraduate, seems to share her mother’s commitment to climate action and sustainability as a member of both the Institute of Politics’ Environmental Action Committee, and the Counsil of Student Sustainability Leaders, as well as being a representative for Harvard’s Efficiency Program. A media request for Cleo was acknowledged by an associate, but it had not been responded to Tuesday.