Alumni

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    Alumni Impacts

    Hugh Brown under a canopy of bamboo

    Rehabilitating Ghana’s Forests

    After a decade as director of operations for Ghana’s Forestry Commission, overseeing the country’s commercial forest plantation development and land restoration, Hugh Brown ’10 MF was named executive director of the Commission's Forest Services Division in 2022.

    The Commission has begun the restoration of more than 450,000 hectares of degraded forests and planted millions of new trees under Brown's leadership — part of a major reforestation initiative by the Ghanaian government to contribute to global climate action.

    Eleanor Stokes speaking on a NASA stage

    Insights from the Night Sky

    Using data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite aboard NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite spacecraft, Eleanor Stokes ’18 PhD is mapping disaster impacts in vulnerable communities. As co-leader of Black Marble, NASA’s first nighttime light dataset, Stokes has helped FEMA and other relief organizations direct their boots-on-the ground operations after natural disasters. “Humanity is facing major global risks from extreme weather and rising sea levels,” she says. “It’s very important to have a satellite record that can speak to the human piece of the puzzle.”

    Potrait of Chelsea Chandler sitting on wodden steps to a red barn

    Working to Make the Midwest Greener and Cleaner

    As the climate solutions director at Clean Wisconsin, a nonprofit whose mission is to fight for clean air and water in the state, Chelsea Chandler ’10 MEM is working to protect one of Wisconsin’s most effective programs: Focus on Energy, the statewide energy efficiency program.

    By helping people buy efficient lightbulbs or tune up their grain dryers, Focus on Energy has been an enormous success, and Chandler says that evaluations of the program have consistently shown huge returns for the investments.

    Irene Shi sitting in front of blue-green lake in the Himalaya

    Preserving China’s Biodiversity

    As the executive director of the Shan Shui Conservation Center in China, Irene Xiangying Shi ’13 MESC is helping conservation efforts in the Tibetan Plateau and southern regions. The Center focuses its work on urban ecosystems and endangered species, such as giant pandas and snow leopards. 

    “If we have the right incentives,” she says, “people will conserve nature in the best way." Her efforts have helped build a biodiversity conservation alliance, an information sharing platform on biodiversity, and long-term funding mechanisms to continue work on these issues.

    Portrait of Nikola Alexandre

    Indigenous Restoration Approaches

    As co-founder and executive director of Shelterwood, Nikola Alexandre ’18 MF, MBA leads the restoration of a 900-acre forest in Northern California with Black and Indigenous community approaches to land care.

    His work creates partnerships with and between traditional conservation NGOs, Indigenous and racial justice organizations, government agencies, and private landowners to model socially just and ecologically sound pathways to protecting and restoring nature. In 2020, Alexandre was named a Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award candidate for his work.

    Ki’ila Salas

    Restoring Belize’s Landscapes

    Ki’ila Salas ’19 MF returned to her home country of Belize to participate in its first landscape restoration initiative, helping to develop its National Landscape Restoration Strategy for the Belize Forest Department. The project is part of the country’s national restoration commitment to the Bonn Challenge, which has a global goal to bring 350 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes into restoration by 2030.

    “The project gave me great pride and joy in guiding the process of how the restoration strategies should be accomplished,” Salas says.

    Rae Wynn Grant photographed by Tsalni Lassiter

    Tracking Bear Movements

    After Rae Wynn-Grant ’10 MESc studied bears in the Nevada mountains, the National Geographic Society sent her to conduct similar work with the American Prairie Reserve in the grasslands of Montana — a region where bears are not common.

    The nonprofit is seeking create a national wildlife refuge. Wynn-Grant began working with carnivores while at YSE, tracking lions in Tanzania. She has leaned on her expertise to predict which habitats will attract bears, using state and federal data and camera traps to monitor bear movements and habitats.

    A burned forest from above

    Canopy Magazine

    Read the latest issue of Canopy, our alumni magazine — now fully digital.

    Read Canopy
    YSE alumni connecting with current students in Washington DC

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    Kroon Hall on the Yale Campus

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    Office of Development and Alumni Services

    205 Prospect Street, 2nd Floor, Room 20
    New Haven, CT 06511
    +1 203-432-5697
    alumni.yse@yale.edu