About Us


The Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY) has become the premiere student-run festival for environmental films. The 4th annual EFFY showcases the arts through incisive, cutting edge films that raise awareness of environmental and related social issues. We aim to facilitate meaningful discourse and spark action and innovation throughout the Yale community and beyond.

All films and events are free and open to the public.

The EFFY Team

 


Paul Thomson

Paul Thomson

Managing Director. Paul’s interests lie in wildlife conservation and working to popularize conservation through media. He is a Master of Environmental Science student at Yale and a director of the Ewaso Lion Project, a lion research and conservation project in northern Kenya. Paul holds a BSc in Wildlife Ecology and Management from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Paul currently serves as an advisor to the Kinship Conservation Fellows program. In 2007, Paul was selected for the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders program by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Defenders of Wildlife.


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Emily Schosid

Emily Schosid

Managing Director. Emily hails from Boulder, Colorado, where she got her B.A. in Environmental Policy. She is now a second-year Master's student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and has focused her research on the ways the arts can be used as a tool for environmental education and communication. She likes to spend the time in between classwork and watching environmental movies with writing poetry, reading excellent fiction, riding her bike, and practicing yoga.


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Richard Miron

Richard Miron

Director of Programming. Richard is in his senior year as a Yale undergraduate, studying film, art, and environment. Growing up in Marietta, Georgia, he founded a film club at his high school, and created and organized an annual tri-county student film festival in the Greater Atlanta area (which is still thriving today). He strongly believes in using the arts as an educational and revelatory tool to help our planet, and is committed to making EFFY 2012 the best EFFY yet.


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Yan He

Director of Finance. Yan is a second-year Master of Environmental Management student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She was born in northwest China and grew up in Shanghai. Yan received a B.S. in Environmental Science from Fudan University in 2010. She has always enjoyed good stories. "Movies have been my best friends and shaped my personality as I grew up”. She is particularly interested in the complex interaction between human activities and the environment.


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Kendall Barbery

Kendall Barbery

Kendall Barbery is a first year Master's of Environmental Science graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.


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Agustin Carbo

Agustín Carbó

Agustín is a Mid-Career Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He is from Puerto Rico. Over the last 10 years, he was worked for numerous sectors as an environmental attorney in Puerto Rico and the United States, including serving as Executive Director of the San Juan Bay Estuary Program, and Chief Legal Counsel and Under Secretary of Permits at Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. He was a volunteer at the 2010 & 2011 Dallas International Film Festival.


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Lauren Graham

Lauren Graham

Lauren is a first year Master of Environmental Management student at Yale F&ES. She is interested in the intersection of water, energy and agriculture, and is focusing on water policy and environmental conflict resolution. Before arriving at Yale, Lauren worked as a green building consultant, mediator, and researcher on the impacts of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale in her native New York. She is a graduate of Stanford University, receiving a BA in International Relations and a MA in Sociology.


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Molly Greene

Molly Greene

Molly Greene is a first year Masters of Environmental Science graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, where she focuses on critical geography and the politics of space. Before coming to Yale she received a B.S. in Community Development and Applied Economics, with a concentration on Ecological Design from the University of Vermont. She has worked as designer, builder, permaculturalist, artist, educator, and member of a circus troupe. In the future, Molly is interested in using art and writing to explore social and environmental issues.


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Angel Hertslet

Angel Hertslet

After completing her B.A. in environmental studies, Angel worked as an urban forester in New Haven, a teacher in Montana, a toxic tort paralegal in NYC, and consultant to an agricultural NGO in Rwanda. Her interests are many, but of chief importance is developing environmental literacy, both on an individual and societal level. She is excited to learn more about how film serves as a medium for communicating the ways in which the environment underwrites our economy, our health, our culture, our happiness.


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Omar Malik

Omar is a first-year Master student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. While studying at the University of California, Berkeley, he helped build the school's official filmmaking organization. His current interests lie in evolutionary processes and global climate change, and he believes that the humanities are essential to getting the public involved with the issues of our time.


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Dania Nasser

Dania Nasser

Dania Nasser is completing her master’s degree in Environmental Management at Yale University. She received her BS in Environmental Engineering. Dania has worked in patents and environmental policy. Prior to graduate school Dania worked as a consultant focusing on green buildings, water, soil and air quality.


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Phil Santiago

Phil Santiago

Phil is a first-year Master's student from New Jersey. He spent the past decade in Boston studying biology at Harvard, researching cancer in a lab at MIT and making a brief foray into the music industry. At F&ES, Phil is interested in responses to climate change. He has a total man-crush on David Attenborough.


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Gina Schrader

Gina Schrader

Gina has more than 10 years of professional experience managing domestic and international conservation campaigns. In 2011, she earned the Master of Environmental Management degree from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Prior to arriving at Yale, she managed regional wolf recovery programs at Defenders of Wildlife in Washington, DC. She also serves on the board of directors for the Red Wolf Coalition and is an alumna of the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders program.


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Kathryn Wright

Kathryn is a first year Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She proudly hails from sunny Atlanta, Georgia. Kathryn completed her undergraduate work at the University of Pittsburgh where she earned a BSBA in Marketing and a BA in Environmental Studies. Outside of school, she is an active dancer and violinist, and is thrilled at the opportunity to combine her background in marketing with her love for the arts and the environment.


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The EFFY Team

Advisory Board


Eric Desatnik,
Founder


Tamar Cooper,
Co-Founder


Chandra Simon,
Senior Advisor, Former Executive Director


Mary Fischer,
Advisor


Gordon Geballe,
Associate Dean of Alumni and External Affairs, Lecturer in Urban Ecology, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
The Environmental Film Festival at Yale ©2011 Yale University