An interdisciplinary legal scholar with a background in climate science.

Great to meet you!

Passionate about the intersection of law and climate science, I am a JD-PhD candidate in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Stanford Law School.*

Climate change is one of the defining crises of our generation. In response to robust scientific research on anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions causing climate change, scientists, policymakers, and civil society alike have called for swift action to curb and reduce these emissions. Yet the global community still fails to act appropriately to avert the most severe consequences of unmitigated climate change. What are some of the key barriers to implementing these mitigation efforts?

Both my PhD research and legal scholarship aim to address this question, with interests in connecting climate science, law, policy, and justice. I am interested in making climate science more legally literate and how systems change approaches can be applied to climate law and policy. In the past, I’ve also been interested in how ecological and policy systems can be better integrated for climate goals. As a former climate justice community organizer, I am also passionate about and recognize the importance of justice-based climate policies. Academically, this interest in climate justice takes on many forms, from community-based participatory action research at the United Nations climate negotiations to youth and faculty engagement in the fossil fuel divestment movement.

In particular, my dissertation centers on GHG accounting as a process within this science-law-policy-justice interface. How we measure and account for GHG emissions forms the bedrock of climate change policies. Greenhouse gas inventories are essential to the success of global mitigation efforts, particularly in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Paris Agreement, which relies on national-level GHG emissions reduction commitments and reporting. To date, GHG inventory science has been approached mainly by the natural sciences. My dissertation will contribute to a relatively small and critically important academic community: the law and policy of inventorying itself. Some of my research centers on better understanding GHG inventorying processes and how they can be improved from city to global scales. I am currently working on legal research on both improving GHG accounting as well as the impact of greenhouse gas accounting in exacerbating environmental injustices.

*Stanford sits on the land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Ohlone people. Consistent with values of diversity, equity, community, justice, and inclusion, I have a responsibility to acknowledge, honor, and make visible the University’s relationship to Native peoples.