School of Natural Resources and Environment

Internship Reports

Title Desc. Internship Fundingsort descending
Strategic Energy Innovations (SEI)
Business for Social Responsibility (BSR)
ICF International
VillageReach
Wello

Wello makes the WaterWheel, a product designed to help alleviate water access issues in developing countries. Mary spent the summer designing a market entry strategy for a product pilot intended to measure social impact in rural BoP communities in Rajasthan, India. She also built financial projections and walked the CEO through a scenario planning exercise, ultimately recommending the optimal business structure.
Simpe Networks

Simpa’s technology and platform has the potential to change the way energy is used in rural electrification efforts. Simpa’s pay-as-you-go model streamlines payment collections, offers operational efficiency, and provides access to people who otherwise wouldn’t have electricity. Currently, Simpa applies their technology to solar home systems that provide energy to a single home. My job was to help them analyze the potential to enter new markets. To achieve this, I produced a three-part analysis.
Acumen Fund

Michael Baratoff provided debt and equity to small water companies operating in rural regions of the developing world.
GreenOrder

As a Summer Associate at GreenOrder, Michelle worked with a global client company and its multiple business units to develop and implement a holistic product lifecycle management strategy.

World Resources Institute

Emily Taylor spent the majority of her time at WRI shepherding two working papers through the publication process. The first working paper, she helped with the final components of editing, revising, research, and review before proofing and publishing. The second paper she contributed more substantially to the content (is now listed as an author), and guided it through the internal review and partway through the external review.
US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Transportation and Air Quality

During his internship, Andrew Eilbert analyzed and then fixed rates for compressed natural gas transit buses within the Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES). In addition, he wrote an accompanying report to describe my methodology for changing these rates. This work on alternative fuel and hybrid vehicles aligns nicely with his graduate coursework, where Andrew has been focusing on the development and management of low-carbon technologies in the School of Natural Resources and Environment.
Kymeira Materials

Kate Newlin's job as an intern was to conduct a LCA-based analysis of a material being developed by a start-up material supplier. Personally, she learned that it is important to understand the types of work settings that contribute to efficient and focused work, and those that are distracting, then to do what you can to create the former for yourself. Professionally, Kate learned firsthand how tricky LCA can be, particularly with respect to data collection.
Ford Motor Company

Antonia Chan is an Erb student and interned in the Supply Chain Sustainability group at Ford Motor Company. Since the team had recently lost its champion, she identified and built strategic cross-departmental relationships to enhance the impact of the work in the SCS group. She also helped developed a supply chain sustainability scorecard to evaluate supplier performance and communicate actions to mitigate reputational, financial, and legal risks to Ford.
Seattle City Attorney's Office

Gus Winkes completed a legal internship with Seattle City Attorney's office. He is a  dual degree student with the law school. For the internship, Gus obtained a limited license to practice law in Washington. This allowed him to represent the City of Seattle in court and to draft legal documents, in addition to doing extensive legal research and writing. He worked for the Land Use Section, so learned a lot about Seattle land use law, as well as general lawyering skills.
City of Ann Arbor
Center for Energy and Environment
Tim Dobson completed three projects related to renewable energy research and community involvement. The main focus was finding institutions that would allow my company to learn and possibly partner with them on a community renewable energy project. Through this research-centered internship, he was able to learn much about the current state of renewable energy in Minnesota and gained a better understanding of what the work environment is like in an energy non-profit company.
Rio Tinto
World Resources Institute

Lilly Connett spent her summer working in the Markets and Enterprise Program (MEP) of the World Resource Institute (WRI). 

Sussman
City of Seattle - City Green Building

Jen worked in the City of Seattle's City Green Building program under the Department of Planning and Development to begin evaluating the success of Priority Green Expedited, an accelerated permitting process to incentivize and increase the number of sustainable buildings in the city.

Weinberg
Centro de Politicas Públicas UC

The internship consisted in leading a study which analyzed recycling programs carried out at different municipalities of Santiago, Chile.

Weinberg
Green Seal

Ye Yue worked remotely to help develop GS-45 standards on single-use plastic resin film bags, conducted LCA comparing conventional and environmentally preferable products.

 Weinberg