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Aaron Katz
Master of Integrated Product Design ‘23 Aaron Katz is a 1st year Master's student in the Integrated Product Design (IPD) program. His interests lie at the intersection of product innovation and user experience, with an emphasis on climate sustainability. Prior to Penn, Aaron worked as a product researcher and designer in the outdoor equipment industry. He is passionate about equitable access to outdoor adventure and a community-level responsibility for local environments. Aaron earned a BSE in Civil & Environmental Engineering at Princeton University.
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Alexandre Foucher
PhD, Materials Science ‘22 Alexandre Foucher is a Ph.D. student in materials science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
He received a combined BS/MS in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Arts et Métiers ParisTech, France, in 2017. His research focuses on in situ diagnostics using transmission electron microscopy to understand novel materials for sustainable catalysis. |
Alicia Van der Stighelen
Master of Environmental Building Design '22 Alicia Van der Stighelen is a Research Assistant and graduate student in the Master of Environmental Building Design (MEBD) program. She is an upcoming associate at Boston Consulting Group where she interned this past summer. She is passionate about the sustainable transformation of the construction and energy sector, focusing on cleantech implementation and adaptive reuse of the existing built environment. Alicia holds a Master of Science in Civil Engineering with a concentration in Architecture from KU Leuven, Belgium. During her Master’s, she went on exchange to Tsinghua University in China and spent two months in Greece conducting thesis field research on disaster resilience. In her free time, Alicia loves running, traveling, reading, and playing piano/violin.
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Anna Thomas
Master of Public Administration ‘22 Anna Thomas is pursuing a Master's in Public Administration at the Fels Institute. She is passionate about climate justice, environmental conservation, and scientific literacy in government. Her special interests in Pennsylvania include improper shale gas extraction, nuclear waste management, and energy and climate policy. She supports the passage of the Green Amendment, per Article 1, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights, in which Pennsylvanians are given the right to “clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.”
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Ashley Knight
Master of Business Administration ‘23 Ashley Knight is a first-year MBA student at Wharton where she is a double major in Sustainability and Finance. Before Wharton, Ashley represented Mercer as a Fellow at the World Economic Forum where she conducted sustainability research. At Mercer, she was most recently responsible for North America’s private debt business and a member of the Sustainable Opportunities Investment Committee. Before taking on the private debt role, Ashley was based in Mercer's London office where she conducted due diligence on primary private equity and debt investments. Previously, she worked at Credit Suisse in Singapore as an alternatives product specialist for family offices across Southeast Asia and began her career at State Street Bank in Boston in its trading and fund solution businesses. Ashley holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College where she graduated with honors and is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA). Ashley serves on the Executive Board of Wharton's Private Equity & Venture Capital Club.
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Colin Lehman
PhD, Chemical & Biomolecular Eng. '23 Colin Lehman is a fourth-year PhD student in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department (CBE) doing research focused on carbon mineralization, one of many strategies aimed at reducing the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He hopes to use his time with the fellowship to learn more about and to become engaged with climate policy. Prior to starting at Penn, Colin worked as a Process Engineer in the Oklahoma natural gas industry. He received his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tulsa.
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Colton Sheehan
PhD, Chemistry '25 Colton Sheehan is a second year graduate student in the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the design of solar cell devices for carbon capture and energy storage. He is passionate about developing technology for sustainable energy to mitigate carbon emissions. Prior to attending Penn, Colton received his Bachelor's degrees in chemistry and physics from the University of Virginia.
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Jacob Hyppolite
Master of Environmental Studies ‘23 Jacob Hyppolite is a MES candidate with a concentration in Sustainability, and is extremely passionate about Renewable Energy & Policy. He currently works as a Research Assistant in the Wharton School helping create a new Data Science tool determining Political Risk. He's spent the last 5 years working in Analytics as a Data Scientist & Analyst. He hopes to use that experience to apply data-centered solutions to renewable energy problems. Jacob graduated with a BS in Quantitative Economics & Econometrics from the University of South Florida.
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Joseph Leanza
Master of Public Health '23 Joseph Leanza, MD is an attending physician and the Global Emergency Medicine Fellow in Penn's Department of Emergency Medicine. His academic projects include emergency care systems development and strengthening, Emergency Medicine education, humanitarian response, and the intersection of public health and climate change.
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Maria Gelrud
PhD, Finance '22 Maria Gelrud is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in Finance at The Wharton School. Her research explores the effects of climate change on financial markets as well as the energy transition and climate change mitigation policies. Prior to Penn, Maria received a B. A. in Economics from the New Economic School, Moscow.
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Max Pisciotta
PhD, Chemical Engineering ‘26 Maxwell Pisciotta is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Pisciotta’s research focuses on the feasibility and implications of decarbonization pathways, specifically those that employ carbon capture and storage and carbon removal. Max also holds a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, which he earned at the Colorado School of Mines, with a research focus in energy storage via fuel cell technology.
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Mrinalini Shukla
Master of Business Administration '23 Mrinalini Shukla is a Wharton MBA graduate student. Prior to Wharton, Mrinalini was an Energy & Utilities Engineer at Shell based in India and Qatar. She is passionate about energy access and has travelled to the Himalayas to install solar microgrids in remote villages. She aims to provide sustainable and scalable energy solutions for emerging economies.
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Nell Pearson
Master of City Planning '23 Nell Pearson is a first-year city planning student at the Weitzman School of Design. Her interests center around urban resilience, emergency response, as well as place-based environmental policy and design solutions. Her previous research includes ecotheology at Sabbathday Lake in Maine, the last practicing Shaker Village, inclusion of informal recyclers via design interventions in Durban, South Africa, and ethnographies of environmental stewardship in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Nell was selected for a 2021 Fulbright Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Award for her proposed research on equitable environmental policy. Prior to Penn, Nell worked at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy on community outreach, environmental education, and green space advocacy. She graduated from Bates College in 2020 with a double major in history and anthropology.
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Nick Van Hollen
Master of Business Administration ‘22 Nick Van Hollen is a dual MBA/MPA candidate at The Wharton School of Business and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Prior to his graduate studies, Nick spent five years in management consulting, where he advised governments and utilities in the US, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia on renewable energy development and energy access initiatives. Nick currently works part-time with a venture-backed startup in the grid edge industry and co-hosts the Wharton Energy Club's podcast, The Wharton Current. He holds a BS in Finance from Georgetown University.
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Tristan Earle Grupp
Master of City & Regional Planning '23 Master of Urban Spatial Analytics '23 Tristan Grupp is a City Planning and Urban Spatial Analytics student at Penn Design. His background is in international development, particularly of rainforests, agriculture, and land degradation studied through remote sensing. He has spent the last five years researching climate change policy and is fascinated by data governance, environmental protection enforcement, incentives for conservation, and land monitoring. He is currently research Europe's forest transition with economists at Wharton and forest disturbance in the Peruvian Amazon. In his free time, he is a div 1 epee fencer and enjoys running along the Schuylkill river trail.
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Sabrina Arias
PhD, Political Science ‘23 Sabrina Arias is a PhD Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania concentrating in International Relations, with a secondary concentration in American Politics. Her research engages in topics including public opinion, international cooperation, American foreign policy, and climate politics. Her dissertation examines how small and medium countries employ lobbying strategies and diplomatic capital to “punch above their weight” at the UN. Before coming to Penn, Sabrina worked in the private sector as a market research consultant, taught English in Malaysia as a Fulbright ETA, and obtained a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Columbia University, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Philosophy from Rutgers University.
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Satowa Kinoshita
Master of Business Administration ‘23 Satowa Kinoshita is a first-year MBA student at Wharton interested in the VC/start-up space as well as the intersection of the public and private sector. Prior to Wharton, she was a management consultant at Oliver Wyman and has experience across ESG strategy, urban development research, and sustainable food systems non-profits. Born in Japan and raised in D.C., Satowa graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA/MSci in Natural Sciences.
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Shannon Wong
Master of Business Administration ‘23 Shannon Wong is a first-year MBA candidate at The Wharton School. She is interested in climate finance and technology with a focus on urban resilience, sustainable food and agriculture, and transportation. Shannon is on the board of Wharton's Sustainable Business Coalition. Prior to Wharton, she worked in the impact investing practice of MaRS Discovery District and started her career in foreign policy. She received a BA in International Relations from Brown University.
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Warren Ndlovu
Master of Environmental Studies ‘23 Warren Ndlovu is an MES candidate in the School of Arts and Sciences with a concentration in Sustainable Investing. Prior to grad school he worked in management consulting focusing on growth strategy and customer strategy. He also worked as the Chief of Staff at a pan-African tech investment holding company where he applied his management consulting experience to the company's burgeoning businesses. He began his career in investment banking as a derivative structuring analyst tailoring risk management solutions for corporate clients. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics with a focus on international finance from the University of Cape Town.
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