Current position: Master in Public Affairs Candidate at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Past leadership positions:

Sustainability Initiatives Coordinator, UISG; President/Co-founder of Associated Iowa Honors Students; Finance Chair of UI Lecture Committee

Graduated from the UI: in 2011 with a B.A. in Political Science and Geography

How did your student leadership position influence your career path? Taking leadership roles outside of the classroom made me realize that I enjoy many different aspects of project implementation. So much of academic life can feel artificial or disconnected from the real world, and so taking on work to improve sustainability at Iowa always felt very practical.

Tell us a little about your journey after graduation to where you are now, as well as where you are headed in the future.

After graduating from the University of Iowa in 2011, I worked for a year on Chinese buildings and transportation policy at the Beijing office of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Wanting to complement this policy work with grassroots experience, I moved 1700 miles south to Yangon, Myanmar, where I managed business operations for a local social enterprise’s solar energy team for two years. While there, I realized that I needed to gain more knowledge about energy technology and microeconomics, so I began graduate school at Princeton to focus on economic policy and energy. After finishing my program in May, I hope to continue working on increasing usage of energy efficiency and renewable energy technology, a passion that I discovered while at Iowa.

What lessons from your UI leadership experience have stuck with you in your career since college?

Arranging for the distribution of compact fluorescent lightbulbs to low-income residents of Iowa City—a project that I organized while in UISG-- was particularly influential to my career path. It was through this lightbulb exchange that I realized that economics and environmental protection don’t necessarily need to be in conflict, as through our distribution of lights, participants saved thousands of dollars on lighting, while also reducing carbon emissions. I also learned that community mobilization was important. With our collaborators, we helped organize over 25 students to distribute over 5,000 light bulbs to local communities.

"In addition to building good will between the university and the greater Iowa City community, I believe that putting a human face on the environmental movement helped make the event more successful."