UCLA SPG: What motivated you to pursue a career at a clean energy nonprofit group?

AA: My work at UCLA was focused on understanding the fundamental physics of what is driving atmospheric processes, and although it was really interesting in terms of analytical work, I felt like my research was a little bit disconnected from society. I started volunteering with the Red Cross in 2020, working on disaster preparedness research and programs for wildfire evacuation sites. Being a part of those programs and volunteering made me really think about climate change, and I felt like there might be a connection between the analytical work I was doing and working in climate change policy, even if it was kind of tenuous. So I wanted to try to bridge that gap, and policy work was the answer for me

UCLA SPG: What policy issues do you work on?

AA: Clean energy policy. There’s a 1:1 ratio between clean energy policy and climate change policy, but I think less about disaster preparedness or how to prepare communities for the impacts of climate change and more about how to shift energy consumption from fossil fuels to clean resources, and therefore reduce emissions in the long term. It’s rewarding because I feel like we are helping communities get on board with our mission of switching away from fossil fuels, but there's also a lot of other great things that will come from that! By reducing emissions, you're also reducing pollution, which is better for public health. And by building out all the clean energy infrastructure that's needed to support these policy goals, you're also adding a lot of jobs.

If we're actually going to meet the US’s emissions targets, a lot of jobs and people are required. At RMI we also think about economic development and how to make people's lives better in this more holistic way. For example, we wrote a report recently about how the Inflation Reduction Act can transform the energy landscape in the US. Because many of the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act are actually tax credits, it’s not penalizing people for emitting. Instead, it gives states financial incentive to switch to clean technologies. Our analysis found that some red states like Wyoming have so many clean energy resources, like wind potential, that they're actually going to make more money, on average, than blue leaning states.

UCLA SPG: Did you have relevant expertise in these areas prior to starting your position?

AA: Not in particular. Actually, the only experience that I had with clean energy policy was a policy memo that I wrote with other members of the Science Policy Group that was published in the Journal of Science Policy and Governance. We wrote about the potential for different communities in Louisiana to shift to distributed energy resources, like solar resources, which are more flexible and smaller in scale than gas or power plants. One summer in grad school I took a certificate course on science policy through UC Irvine. We had to write a policy memo for that class as well, and I wrote it on water infrastructure in Los Angeles. So I guess I did a little bit of broad climate change policy, but I felt like I really had to learn a lot of things on the floor.

UCLA SPG: What is a typical day for you as a Senior Associate at RMI?

AA: One of the things I love the most about my job is that days are really dynamic, depending on what is happening. I would say, on a typical day, my work is very analytical. Those days I might be doing a lot of data work on the back end, scripting with Python, working in Excel, or modeling. Other days are engaging directly with policymakers, or writing reports or memos.

We have a lot of different programs at RMI. We have some programs that are focused on decarbonizing one sector of the economy. So, for example, we have a team that's focused solely on decarbonizing the transportation sector and thinking about electric vehicles. We also have regional teams that focus on the regional policy that it takes to decarbonize this specific area. I'm on the US program at RMI; we engage with US policymakers through coalitions at the Federal and State level and through research and analysis. Within that program, I sit on the analysis wing of our State policy team so a lot of my days are spent developing open-source models and tools to help state level policymakers make decisions about the best policy pathways to decarbonize their economy. For example, we worked directly with the states of Washington and Colorado to help them figure out a good plan for decarbonizing their economy. To do that, we use a tool that we've developed called the energy policy simulator. It's open source and open access. Another new project I started with our economic development team that I’m very excited about is focusing on how we can make the electric vehicle battery supply chain more robust in the United States. We are thinking about what battery demand looks like in the near term and how to fill those gaps with domestic manufacturing.

UCLA SPG: What is your favorite part of your job?

AA: My favorite aspect of my job is getting to tell policymakers all the benefits of implementing these policies – how it's going to make their constituents’ lives better – and being able to back that up with data. Sometimes the data piece of policy work can be missing; that connection isn't always there. But getting to back up policy recommendations in a very quantitative and data-driven way means we can predict how much investment this policy could drive, how many jobs could come out of this, and the public health benefits.

UCLA SPG: What has surprised you most about your job?

AA: At UCLA I was in a very physics-heavy lab. Switching from that mindset to working with people who are very policy-oriented has definitely been new for me, and I'm learning a lot from people who know a lot more about policy. I think that there's a big opportunity for people who are data-driven and want to make an impact to enter into this field. Collaboration between people who know a lot about legislation, who can pick apart various policies and implementation pathways, and people who are more data-driven is very valuable and productive.