Science and history guide my policy analysis. But like most people, my strongest motivation to work on climate comes from seeing impacts on the people and places I love most, such as the ocean.
Growing up in Southern California, I spent every moment I could in or on the water. The more time I spent in it, the more attuned I became to the disturbances in it — algal blooms, litter, sound and vibration from engines, and unusual temperatures.
One ocean sport stood out among the rest for me: outrigger canoe, or va’a in Tahitian. Thanks to immense community support, coaching, luck, and some hard work, I was able to ride this amazing sport around the globe to world championships in Tahiti, Hawaii, and Australia. I was also invited onto the U.S. DragonBoat team, taking me to world championship events in Thailand and China. In each of these places, I learned about ways that the ocean had changed over the last 20 years.
The most impactful moment happened in a reef in Mo’orea off of Tahiti. I was freediving and spearfishing with a local man that just one month and four races ago had been a stranger, but now was essentially family. As we got out of the water on the island he grew up on, he told me about how there used to be so many more fish and colorful coral, and how these sharp algal masses never used to fill the lagoon. I also witnessed his family’s generational land flood like it had never flooded before. All of this instilled in me just how much climate change is already here.
At the same time, I was studying a broad range of subjects in university. I learned the history and science of climate change and economics, but I also studied sociology and the common interconnections between extractive and repressive social systems and destructive environmental outcomes. I came to believe that neither meaningful progress on social issues nor on climate change could be done without the other.
Seeing policy as the biggest lever for change, I went to work for my local state senator. This role helped me understand the local impacts and responses to broad environmental policy. Hoping to apply my interpersonal and teaching skills to make a bigger impact, I began working at Environmental and Energy Consulting (EEC), an environmental advocacy and consulting firm in Sacramento.
At EEC, I learned the realities of policymaking in California and built experience lobbying, leading policy coalitions, negotiating compromises, analysing and writing policy, and building fruitful relationships.
My new role at The Climate Center is a dream job and I can’t wait to see what we are able to accomplish. My dream is that we will make enough systematic change to set our planet on a cooling trajectory. Then I can sail to Tahiti, pick up my aforementioned “uncle” who shared so much with me before, and sail around a healthy and stable Pacific.
