Josh Blake – Communications Coordinator | Josh is a student in Yale College studying Political Science and Education Studies. He manages communications coordination for UHPSI in the Yale School of the Environment and coordinates with fellows to manage their professional presence. On campus, you can find him staying active playing squash, chairing the Independent Party of the Yale Political Union or reading epics. He hopes to attend law school and pursue public sector practice back in his home state of Louisiana, where he gained an affinity for environmentalism and conservation.
You can reach Josh at joshua.blake@yale.edu, or on Linkedin.
Sam Jurado – Western Resource Fellow | Samuel Jurado is a PhD candidate in Environmental Sciences at the Yale School of the Environment, where he works as an environmental physicist specializing in wind erosion and dust dynamics. His research investigates the mechanisms of dust emission and the downstream impacts on human communities, with fieldwork based at the Jornada Experimental Range in
Southern New Mexico. Prior to Yale, Samuel earned a B.S. in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences with a concentration in Climatology from Cornell University, and went on to research land-atmosphere interactions at Harvard Forest. A native of El Paso, Texas, Samuel's work is rooted in a personal understanding of how wind, dust, and arid landscapes shape daily life in the
borderlands communities of the American Southwest. Blog
Alice Le Bihan – Western Resource Fellow | Alice Le Bihan is an environmental law and policy scholar who calls the Canadian West Coast and its 17,000 miles of coastline home. She holds a BA in Political Science and French from the University of British Columbia, and a JD with a concentration in Environmental Law and Sustainability from the University of Victoria. Before Yale, she supported Indigenous watershed governance through land- and community-based research, public interest environmental law work, and contributions to a landmark Indigenous land and fishing rights case. At the Yale School of the Environment, she is expanding her interdisciplinary expertise in watershed science and restoration, with the goal of advancing resilient water governance through legal, bilateral, and international collaboration. See what Alice has been up to. |Blog
Li Murphy – WCC Coordinator | Li is a Master of Environmental Science candidate funded by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, focusing on the social and ecological dynamics of insect-human interactions. She is currently working on a project about Mormon crickets in the Intermountain West. Originally from Idaho, she has a particular fondness for the state insect, the Monarch butterfly. Prior to Yale, Li was dedicated to community science, managing field camps in the Great Basin, driving a roving mobile STEM outreach laboratory, and then briefly piloting a planetarium. She believes in providing more inroads and support to folks, especially those with marginalized identities, to participate in framing and practicing scientific research, especially research that drives allocation of resources and environmental decision-making. She holds a BA degree in biology and geology from Harvard University. Li volunteers for the American Geophysical Union Local Science Partners and serves on the board for the nonprofit Nonhuman Teachers. She can often be found jogging, trying to keep her succulents alive, or surfing badly. See what Li has been up to. |Blog
Jackson Newman – WCC Coordinator | Jackson is a master’s in environmental management candidate specializing in ecosystem conservation and management. Prior to Yale, Jackson was a community organizer in eastern Montana for a conservation and family agriculture non-profit. Jackson is particularly interested in private lands conservation, prairies, commodity markets, land ownership, restoration, and lots more. His favorite quote is “there are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land” by Aldo Leopold.
See what Jackson has been up to. |Blog
Paige Wagar – Research Assistant | Paige Wagar is a JD-Master of Forestry dual degree student at Yale School of the Environment and Vermont Law School. She is passionate about public land protection and rural livelihoods. She is interested in how the law frustrates—or facilitates—particular relationships to the land, especially in the context of tribal communities in the American West. Paige has worked for the Yurok Tribe, The Trust for Public Land, the National Park Service, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. She holds a BS from Cornell University, where she double majored in Development Sociology and Environmental Science. Paige loves running in the woods and backpacking with her dog, Bowie. See what Paige has been up to. |Blog
