About Me
I’m currently a PeaceCorps Volunteer in Niger working to improve local governance. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, I spent four years in Walla Walla, Washington attending Whitman College. While there I served as the Campus Sustainability Coordinator and was an active member of the climate change club. I’m interested in community organizing and spent a lot of time working in lower-income neighborhoods in Walla Walla to decrease crime and increase civic engagement, particularly among the Latino population. I helped found Whitman eJustice which combined my interest in environmental issues and poverty alleviation by distributing energy efficient light-bulbs in few of the neighborhoods where I had previously worked. I’m also interested in international development and especially in increasing off-the-grid, renewable sources of energy in developing countries as a means to increase economic productivity and solve our climate crisis. In 2008, I helped start a biodigester project in Kakamega, Kenya that uses cow dung as an alternative source of fuel to wood harvested from the tropical rainforest. I have done quite a bit of youth organizing, as the coordinator of the Tunzana network for the United Nations Environment Programme and a youth delegate to conferences everywhere from Copenhagen to South Korea. I also had the privilege to serve as an intern in the White House Office of Political Affairs, an experience that has greatly increased my interest in public policy.
