Committee

2019 SDLAC Committee

Nicholas Fields (Co-Chair)

Nicholas is a second-year Master of Environmental Management (MEM) Student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Foreign Fulbright Scholar from Barbados. He worked for nine years in the environmental not-for-profit space, initially in areas of advocacy, community engagement and learning, and facilitating public-private sector partnerships for marine environment conservation; and subsequently in climate vulnerability and resilience in Small Island States. His academic interests are based in climate resilience and sustainability discourse and practice. He hopes to work in climate, the natural environment and geospatial analysis, especially related to issues of climate vulnerability, adaptation and resilience of nature, people and places.

Camila Rodriguez Taylor (Co-Chair)

Camila is a second-year Master of Environmental Management (MEM) student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a Presidential Fellow from Argentina. She is a co-leader for the Yale Climate Change student interest group and a Yale Climate Change and Health Initiative Student Associate. Camila is an environmental engineer and has 6 years of experience in addressing climate change from the public, private and academic sector. Prior to Yale, she led the design and implementation of climate change programs addressing small-scale farmers whose livelihood is threatened by extreme droughts and floods in Argentina. Most recently, Camila was a Cameron Speth Fellow at WRI working for the Food and Land Use Coalition on Colombia’s Roadmap to a New Food Economy, and worked for UNDP Barbados and OECS analyzing gender-responsive microfinance for disaster risk resilience programmes in the Caribbean. Her academic interests include climate change adaptation, food systems and climate finance.

Christina Ospina

Christina Ospina is a Master of Environmental Management candidate pursuing a Business and Environment specialization with a focus on global land use change issues and food systems. Prior to Yale, she worked in the energy sector in DC, providing resources on operational and safety best practices for publicly-owned electric utilities. She acquired her undergraduate degree in Human Biology with a concentration in Human-Environment Interactions from Stanford University.

Maria Urrutia

Maria is a second year M.E.M. student interested in sustainable development and the implementation of renewable energy systems as a climate change mitigation strategy. She is particularly interested in the development of renewable energy projects in developing countries, especially in the Latin American region. Maria believes an energy transition is not only necessary to combat climate change, but also to empower populations by solving energy security problems. Most of her professional experience prior to Yale has been focused on conducting policy research at an international level. Maria has done policy research for the Ministry of the Environment in Nicaragua. While working for a Danish NGO, she also conducted energy policy research and contributed to the NGO’s climate change communication efforts. Maria earned her BA in Environmental Policy from Colby College, Maine.

Ali Golden

Ali Golden is an MEM-5 specializing in business and the environment. She has experience working in corporate social responsibility, and she is interested in how companies can promote conservation through sustainable supply chain management and public-private partnerships. Ali also has a long-standing interest in climate adaptation and finance. As an undergraduate, she wrote a year-long senior thesis about climate change adaptation policy in the National Park Service. She has also written articles about municipal green bonds for the Conservation Finance Network.

Brittany Williams

Brittany is a 2019 Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies with a focus on sustainable land use and climate change adaptation in the tropics. Brittany previously served as an Agroforestry Volunteer with the Peace Corps in Guinea where she led several projects including community reforestation and capacity building among beekeepers. She also worked in Washington DC on a Feed the Future program increasing food security among smallholder farmers in Haiti, Guatemala, Benin, Kenya and Bangladesh. Most recently, she worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the Caribbean supporting development of national climate change policies and monitoring climate change adaptation pilot projects focused on sustainable agriculture, water resource management, resilient infrastructure and renewable energy. She holds a B.A. in International Development and a B.S. in Environmental Policy and Management from University of California, Berkeley.

Carlos O. Ibarra

Carlos is a Mexican student in his first year of the Master of Environmental Management program at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. His interests include finance and economics in the energy sector, focusing in Latin American countries; his goal is to design incentives for the private sector to invest in renewable energy and sustainability.

Andrea Cruz Quiroz

Andrea is a first-year Master of Environmental Management (MEM) candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Before attending Yale, she worked in solar energy for three years and backpacked around the world for a year and a half. She is passionate about advancing the adoption of solar energy around the world and is planning to dedicate her career to that goal. She graduated Cum Laude from Middlebury College in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies. Currently, she works at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment and at the Center for Industrial Ecology. Her hobbies include dancing, photography, and brewing coffee.

Leo Goldsmith

Leo is a Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is interested in urban planning and climate change adaptation. Prior to Yale, Leo obtain his B.A in environmental studies at Oberlin College and worked at the New York Restoration Project conducting ecological restoration in Highbridge Park and the Sherman Creek Cove in New York City. He hopes to work on climate change adaptation in cities in Colombia.

Fabiola Hernandez

Fabiola is a second-year MEM student at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Fabi is focusing her work on climate change policy and she is particularly interested in the opportunities arising from enhancing climate action by working with a gender-based approach. This summer, as the Speth Fellow she interned for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington, D.C. she helped write a report on the twenty most promising global measures to mitigate climate change and participated in projects related to grassland and marine species conservation in Mexico, her home country. Before coming to Yale, she worked for Mexico’s National Forestry Commission in the design of initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Josefina N. Cobián

Josefina Cobián is a second year Master of Environmental Management (MEM) candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Her focus is on Climate Change mitigation specifically in forest policy and climate change adaptation and resilience building in developing countries. Prior to F&ES, Josefina worked at the government sector for the National Forestry Commission of Mexico in the management of projects implemented with international funding for the reduction of emission from deforestation and forest degradation. This summer, Josefina interned at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. where she collaborated with the forest team under the climate change initiative doing research on forest policy and participating in projects related to Climate change. As a result of this internship she was co-author in a paper published in the journal Forests.

Pallavi Sherikar

Pallavi Sherikar is a first-year Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Her academic interests include modeling interdependent climate risks, studying the role of social cohesion in climate protection, and applying a climate justice lens to adaptation financing. Before attending Yale, Pallavi worked as a Climate Resilience Fellow for the County of Alameda in California where she researched climate impacts on local operations and populations. While working for the county, she co-authored a guidebook for local government staff to catalyze adaptation implementation through a workshop model. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Economics & Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.