What is your background?
I have a bachelor's in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon. Many of the people with whom I work have advanced degrees. When I was first hired, I was the youngest one on the team. Since I was the junior person, I ended up working on a lot of tedious data stuff, which actually ended up being a great way to learn about the topic. I spent a long time as one of three modelers on the team, so most of the projects came through me in some capacity. Since I had the opportunity to look at most of the projects, I learned a lot and became a generalist on the team. I was able to keep track of how everything works, which is one of the benefits of being a generalist rather than a specialist Ph.D. who focuses only on a specific technology area.
Have you changed your mind about anything since you've been in this field?
I was initially really skeptical of consequential LCA. When I first started, it sounded too uncertain. But these days, I’m actually really, really interested in it. You have to be thinking of consequences in some way when you're making these models, especially if you're in a regulatory space. You need to keep in mind what you're doing and how it will be used. If not a fully consequential LCA, often at least a hybrid model seems to be the answer for most things that I do.
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