Sage Hall
205 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511-2189, U.S.A.

Phone: 203 432-8920 Fax: 203 432-7297
E-MAIL: fescareers@yale.edu

Peter Otis, Director
Sage Hall (203) 432-8920
peter.otis@yale.edu

Kathy Douglas, Associate Director
Sage Hall (203) 436-4830
kathryn.douglas@yale.edu

Mariann Adams, Administrative Assistant
Sage Hall (203) 432-5100
mariann.adams@yale.edu

Matthew Jokajtys, Student Assistant and GeO expert, matthew.jokajtys@yale.edu
Yalamber (Pragyajan) Rai, Student Assistant and GeO expert, pragyajan.rai@yale.edu
Beth Scherer, Professional Skills Modules Coordinator, elizabeth.a.scherer@yale.edu
Tien Shiao, Program Assistant, tien.shiao@yale.edu
Monica Skeldon, Professional Skills Modules Coordinator, monica.skeldon@yale.edu
Rebecca Steinberg, Peer Career Advisor, rebecca.steinberg@yale.edu
Meredith Trainor, Peer Career Advisor, meredith.trainor@yale.edu

Matthew Jokajtys Matthew will be helping CDO with general support as well as maintenance of the GeO database and will offer training in its use.

Yalamber Rai Yalamber will be helping CDO with general support as well as maintenance of the GeO database and will offer training in its use.

Beth Scherer is a second year student year student pursuing a Masters of Environmental Management focusing on economics and policy. Before arriving at Yale, she worked as an environmental consultant with Stratus Consulting, Inc. in Washington, DC. In this roll she conducted regulatory impact analyses and technical feasibility studies for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Stratospheric Protection Division. In addition, she helped to develop EPA's GreenChill Partnership for advanced supermarket refrigeration technology, assessed Web site usability for EPA's Office of Environmental Information, and provided logistical support for the Coastal Elevations and Sea Level Rise Federal Advisory Committee. Beth is a native of Connecticut. She holds a BA from Colby College in Economics with a minor in Environmental Studies.

Beth is beginning her second year as Professional Skills Modules coordinator.

Tien Shiao is a second-year Management of Environmental Management candidate focusing on Water Science, Policy and Management. After obtaining a B.S.E. in Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a M.S. in Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, she worked for four years in Columbus, Ohio at Battelle, environmental consulting firm, as an environmental engineer. Her current interests lie in developing tools to manage scarce water resources and ways to predict water trends due to climate change. She worked at the World Resources in Washington DC this past summer in their Markets and Enterprises Division. She is continuing her work with them and helping to develop a water risk index for investors. She is from Taiwan but spent all of her life in Malaysia and Egypt. As an international student but with some experience in the US job market, she hopes to be an additional resource at the CDO office for international students.

Tien is a Program Assistant at CDO, and will be coordinating several programs this year in addition to the International Student list-serve.

Monica Skeldon Monica is beginning her second year as Professional Skills Modules coordinator.

Rebecca Steinberg is a first-year MeSc student at FES studying the human dimensions of wildlife management in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (SMMNRA) in southern California.

A note from Rebecca:

I am very excited to be a Peer Career Advisor (PCA) with CDO. I am from Saranac Lake, NY, but I have traveled around the country for the past three years as a wildlife technician. My most exciting moments include helping to capture and radiocollar a gray wolf in northwest Wyoming, being evacuated from National Park Service housing during a wildfire in southern CA (which later burned down the house!), and rescuing and releasing brown pelicans at a wildlife rehabilitation center in southwest Florida.

I am very eager to assist fellow students in preparing polished resumes and cover letters. My prior experiences in peer-education and resume and cover letter review have taught me that students largely under-utilize CDO resources and that they often wait until a deadline to seek assistance. So, please do not be shy and get help early!

Meredith Trainor is a second-year Master of Environmental Science candidate conducting research on the impact of long-term management by community forest user groups on forest biodiversity and regeneration in Nepal. At Yale Meredith helped plan the first School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Community Block Party, is a member of the School of Management Graduate Crew Team, and has worked with Stigma, the ethnobotany student group, and Scope: the Research SIG to help develop and enhance communication of the research that Master’s students are doing at FES.

Prior to Yale Meredith worked mainly in the non-profit sector, first as Project Coordinator for the National Geographic Society’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, and more recently as Partnership and University Program Coordinator for the Changemakers initiative at Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. With National Geographic Meredith worked on developing the Society’s sustainable tourism program and materials, coordinated new initiatives and projects, and had the opportunity to speak nationally and internationally on behalf of the sustainable tourism program. Working with Ashoka, she focused on developing Partnership and University programming, outreach, and relationships in support of Changemakers, a web-based international collaborative competition designed to surface and support social entrepreneurs. Meredith holds twin Bachelor of Arts degrees in Environmental Studies and Political Science from Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Meredith is conducting resume and cover letter reviews as a peer career advisor.

Staff Bios

Stanton “Peter” Otis, Jr. - peter.otis@yale.edu
Peter Otis is the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies’ first full-time Director of Career Development. The overall goal of the School’s Career Development Office is to assist master’s and doctoral students in charting courses that will lead them to careers fitting their interests, skills and abilities in harmony with their values. He has worked at Yale since 1994.

He has a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College, Hartford, CT and a master’s in counseling education from the University of New Hampshire. He served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone as an agricultural extension agent.

Positions in higher education that he has held have included Director of Career Development at Lyndon State College in VT and Plymouth State College in NH. During his nearly 20 years at Plymouth State College, Peter also served as Personnel Director and Director of New Student Orientation and Director of International Student Affairs. In 1986 he created the first one year administrative exchange from the University System of NH that allowed him and his family to live in coastal, northern California while Peter worked at Humboldt State University in its Career Development Center.

He recently received an award for Environmental Career Counselor of the Twentieth Century, given by the Environmental Career Center of Hampton, VA.

The primary and most satisfying focus of Peter’s career has been the advising and counseling of students and alumni/ae and the linking of these persons with others with mutual interests. A piece of paper attached to Peter’s office door says, “If you love what you do, you get to play for the rest of your life.” He believes he has been blessed with this opportunity to get paid for playing while assisting others.


Mariann Adams
Mariann Adams has been providing administrative support for CDO for eleven years and has been at F&ES since 1996. She is very interested in environmentalism and the work of F&ES. Mariann is a native of Connecticut, and lives in East Haven with her husband Brian Seaman.


Kathy Douglas
Kathy Douglas has over six years of experience working in Masters and PhD-level student career services and student services at Yale.

Before coming to F&ES, Kathy served as Assistant Director of the McDougal Center at Yale Graduate School, bringing nonacademic career opportunities to graduate students through Graduate Career Services. Related projects included establishing the Women Mentoring Women program and Dissertation Boot Camp, and publishing four issues of the multi-media/multi-disciplinary publication, Palimpsest: Yale Literary & Arts Magazine.

Kathy holds two MFAs and is a published poet. She has lived in New Haven for 17 years and was one of the community organizers for the Nash Street community park created in collaboration with URI and New Haven’s Livable Cities Initiative. After receiving her first MFA, she served as curator of Sagamore Lodge Museum and had the privilege of living in the heart of Adirondack wilderness for a year. She is very much interested in Buckminster Fuller’s call for humans to use our incredible intelligence for ‘livingry’ rather than weaponry, and is extremely interested in ecologically intelligent designs and strategies of all kinds.