From aha to action

You came to Yale to study but stayed to work. Why?

After graduate school, I knew that the type of institutional change I wanted to work on would require a place with deep commitment to sustainability and a durable community. Yale offered both of these things, and a pathway to pursue this work at an increasingly large scale. During my graduate studies at YSPH, I underwent rigorous analytical training and studied complex data on exposures and disease, but I felt stymied by the long lag between harmful exposures and having enough evidence to act.

Looking for an alternate approach, I took an industrial ecology course at YSE. The systems-thinking framework — designing industries so waste from one process becomes input for another, increasing efficiency and reducing hazards — felt like a revelation because it combined data and the tangible redesign of how society functions.

This aha moment led me to pursue a joint degree in public health and environmental science. In 2005, Yale launched the Office of Sustainability. I worked in that office while pursuing a Ph.D. focused on complex systems change, networks, and scalable solutions to challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss.

After completing my studies, I worked as associate dean of academic affairs, research, and sustainability at YSE which gave me the chance to learn a great deal about how academic institutions function and thrive. In 2024, I was excited to step into my current role working alongside Julie Zimmerman, vice provost for Planetary Solutions, and our team to build cross-campus systems that connect people and efforts university-wide, creating new pathways for action beyond campus.

If you had 60 seconds, how would you describe what Planetary Solutions at Yale is, and why did Yale create it?

Planetary Solutions, a priority in the university’s overall science strategy that has since expanded in scope, seeks to weave together the entirety of this university — scholarship, teaching, operations, and external collaboration — to elevate, accelerate, and celebrate all the work needed to address planetary challenges. Our work focuses on three interconnected pillars: biodiversity and ecosystems, climate change, and communities and society.

We strive to ensure that everyone across campus working on planetary solutions can find and learn from each other. Then we work to accelerate the path from knowledge generated on campus to real-world action, through grant funding, fellowships, events, and other programming that we are constantly working to expand.

Through all that Yale is and all that Yale does, this initiative is transforming ideas, technologies, and partnerships into tangible change for a thriving people and a healthier planet.

Can you give me an example of taking expertise from across Yale and turning it into coordinated action?

One exciting example of this stems from the collaborative work we are doing with J. Mike Bellamy, vice president for facilities, campus development, and sustainability, and his team. Our goal together is to create a world-class example of what a university can do when it focuses its resources on implementing planetary solutions. It’s complicated — we navigate budget challenges and systems that have been in place for a long time — but there is a real opportunity to evolve and become a benchmark for other institutions.

One recent on-campus project is the removal and replacement of the chiller at Ingalls Rink, a specialized piece of equipment used to mechanically maintain the ice surface. Yale Facilities recently replaced the traditional ammonia-based chiller with a CO2-based chiller that significantly reduces emissions and improves energy efficiency. The diverse team of actors involved reviewed other institutional models and carefully considered our campus needs before selecting the solution that is both optimal for Yale and the most sustainable option available. This experience really exemplifies the type of cross-cutting team dynamic that planetary solutions require, threading together expertise from academics to operations to partners beyond campus, to arrive at the solution. This is the type of paradigm shifting work YPS strives to pursue. It’s exciting, and rewarding.

How do you decide what areas to prioritize?

YPS has a mandate to serve all areas of the university. Our team works to identify synergies across campus, bringing together the right stakeholders, and convening multidisciplinary teams. The work spans a wide range of areas — from energy, food and water, to health, transportation, urban systems, and issues of governance, poverty, and injustice.

My goal is to ensure that everyone can find a way to connect to our work. For example, our colleagues in public health can connect through our communities and society lens, but also through our climate change lens. They are increasingly confronting the health impacts of climate change, from heat stress to emerging disease patterns. At the School of Management, faculty and students can connect through our biodiversity and ecosystems lens by exploring supply chain challenges, commodity availability, and sustainable production, all of which also connect back to our communities and society lens.

At YPS, we work to engage the whole campus — not just the physical, natural, and applied sciences, but also the humanities, arts, engineering, and social sciences — because this is truly a university-wide effort.

If you could tell our readers one thing about YPS or how they can help make the planet healthier, what would that be?

“We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn’t overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.” ― Robert Frost

The issues we are talking about can seem overwhelming or insurmountable. I always think about this Robert Frost quote that my grandfather returned to often. We make a little form, and from that act we gain composure. I think about that when contemplating the gigatons of carbon — some 2.2 trillion pounds — that humankind must tackle. It’s hard because neither my team nor I can immediately grasp how to remove that much carbon from the planet’s atmosphere. If we could figure that out, we’d have no climate problems.

The bottom line is maintaining optimism and taking action, however small. We must keep looking for solutions and keep moving ideas forward, even in the face of significant headwinds.

What I’d say to everyone is this: make a little order where you are. Choose to walk or bike when you can. Be thoughtful about what you buy — reducing purchases where possible, and expanding reuse opportunities. Doing these things matters, and it will remind you that you are part of the solution.