Our team is excited to welcome Stacey O’Sullivan (she/her) – our newest intern, who was awarded a MITACS grant to work with us for the summer of 2020 in partnership with Sustainable Waterloo Region. Stacey is a Master’s of Climate Change student at the University of Waterloo. She completed her undergraduate degree in Environmental Science at the University of Waterloo as well. She has spent the last six years working as an environmental technician in industry, consulting, and government contexts. While this career path involved environmental stewardship, she found it did not have an explicit enough focus on climate change/sustainability.
Climate change and sustainability are very important to Stacey, and she has made a lot of personal lifestyle changes over the years to live with a smaller carbon footprint. While volunteering with the BC Sustainable Energy Association and completing sustainability oriented online course work in her spare time, she realized it was finally time to further align her professional life with her personal lifestyle and values, and this is what brought her back to Waterloo!
The Master’s program affords students the opportunity to gain real world experience through the completion of an internship, and Stacey is thrilled to begin her summer internship with TRANSFORM, in partnership with Sustainable Waterloo Region. She is excited about the research being conducted by TRANSFORM, as she is particularly interested in how the private sector can contribute to and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy. Some specific interests of Stacey’s include deep resource efficiency and the zero waste/circular economy.
Stacey looks forward to diving into case studies of businesses engaged in transformative sustainability practices, to learn what they are doing, what is working well, and what the ongoing barriers to this work are. As she is considering the pursuit of a career in sustainability consulting at the end of her Master’s program, she has no doubt that this experience will be highly interesting and valuable.
Stacey is excited to expand her knowledge of transformative, sustainable, and low carbon practices. The internship will also allow Stacey to further develop some critical transferable skills for the climate change field, such as group facilitation, participatory interviews, data and policy analysis, and teamwork and collaboration.
Welcome to our team, Stacey! We are thrilled to be a part of your journey to making the world a more sustainable place! You can connect with Stacey further on her work through her LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-o-sullivan.
