Since finishing my undergraduate degree in oceanography, I have continued to refine and shape my passion via a Master’s in Science Policy where I collaborated with a community concerned about helium extraction to develop an educational board game. My ongoing Ph.D. research focused on government processes for managing the Arctic Ocean and human relations with place. When awarded a Knauss Fellowship and while interviewing for our placements, WETO surprisingly stood out as it aligned with my passion. It would give me an opportunity to shape and define how DOE supports offshore wind energy through a social science portfolio and encourage me to learn about community concerns, how people are heard, and how those concerns are engaged in governance practices. I may not have realized it then, but working in energy turned out to be one of the best avenues for furthering my career goals and expanding my horizons.

I have been lucky to have a small cohort of Knauss fellows, past and present, with whom to collaborate within WETO as we all work towards understanding the interconnected nature of offshore wind development. We have shared work across portfolios, Department of Energy offices, agencies, and scales to build towards shared knowledge. This shared knowledge heavily contributed to my confidence just a few months into the fellowship when Dr. Jen Rhicter, a former professor at Arizona State University, asked me to be a guest speaker for her Politics of Energy Policy and Justice undergraduate course. The class was spending a week discussing wind energy with a focus on the United States and Mexico, particularly some of the social and governance challenges relating to the siting and use of wind farms. Dr. Rhicter reached out to me to provide perspective on offshore wind in the U.S. in relation to the students' readings. I was nervous. Did I actually know enough to share something useful and interesting with these students after less than two months of time working on the topic in my Knauss fellowship? A request to contribute to a report to Congress took away my time to prepare for talking to the class, leaving me feeling even more frantic.

In the end, I managed to pull together a variety of resources that I had used to orient myself within my fellowship. I was able to walk the students through the U.S Wind Turbine Database and the process of developing the United States' first offshore wind turbine, Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island. Offshore wind is a fledgling, though rapidly growing, industry in the United States that plays a key role in President Biden’s ambitious climate goals. Promises of job opportunities, infrastructure improvements, and clean energy can center conversations about development alongside social concerns like co-use disruptions of fisheries and the disruption of people's sense of place. Sharing what I had learned in my fellowship with the students and discussing the controversial wind farm in Oaxaca, Mexico highlighted the many questions about how communities will be involved in wind farm decision making that produces equitable outcomes. After talking with the students, I felt confident in the knowledge I had gained thus far on energy and its intersection with social injustices and started to realize my growing passion to work on these topics together.

I’m excited to continue to see how communities can influence a clean energy future powered by the ocean.

Six months later and three-quarters of the way through my Knauss fellowship, energy remains an auxiliary passion for me. I still center myself on improving access points for communities to make changes in environmental decision making, yet, I can no longer ignore the swirling of my past work and current interests in a whirlpool with energy infrastructure at the center. Offshore wind development is at a key point for shaping the relationship between communities, energy planning, and the use of energy resources. The deeper I have gone into how social science research engages with the larger conversations surrounding wind energy and try to contextualize needs within justice and equity, the more I see energy linking to my deeper passions. There is momentum towards defining how communities have a voice in informing ocean uses in ways that recognize, value, and address communities and cultures in making just and equitable futures. These links are so strong that I am hopeful to continue to work within DOE after my Knauss fellowship ends. I’m excited to continue to see how communities can influence a clean energy future powered by the ocean.