SARA MOORE- CLIMATE CHAMPION

Hello All!! I would like to introduce you to another FANTASTIC WOMAN IN SCIENCE, Sara Moore!! She is my hero because she is working to help my beloved California reach our goals of finding ways to create and use energy in ways that are best for our beloved planet. 

Sara Moore photo credit:@iamgreenbean

​JACQUE: What is your name?
SARA: Sara Susanna Moore

JACQUE: Where do you currently live?
SARA: Sacramento, California, USA

JACQUE: What is the official title of what you do?
SARA: My day job: Energy Analyst
My self-employed title: Consultant / Climate Adaptation Policy Analyst

JACQUE: What is the layperson description of what you do?
SARA: My day job: helping the State of California attain its ambitious energy efficiency goals
Climate Adaptation Policy Analyst (when I have the opportunity): helping communities adapt to the impacts of climate change, interpreting science for a lay audience or natural resource management audience.

JACQUE: Can you give us a broad picture of how your time is spent at work?
SARA: Research, stakeholder outreach, bureaucracy, getting trained (I just started my current job).

JACQUE: Is there a single reason that you are passionate about your job? Or is it several things?
SARA: I like working at the crossroads of science and human behavior.

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JACQUE: ​Where are you working now?
SARA: Day job: California Energy Commission

JACQUE: Is communications a big part of your job?
SARA: Previously I worked as a consultant writing for WWF’s Climate Prep blog writing about innovative climate adaptation projects. In that capacity I considered myself a science journalist, but I don’t currently have any writing deadlines as part of my day job, and I don’t have any self-employment gigs at the moment. I do try to follow the conversation on science communication and climate communication generally. I think our failure to respond to climate change is a product of inadequate communication efforts. 

JACQUE: What is your favorite part of your job?
SARA: I like to feel I’m part of a larger global effort to slow down and adapt to climate change.

JACQUE: What is your least favorite part of your job?
SARA: Bureaucracy.

JACQUE: What is your motivation?
SARA: I’d say my motivations are multiple. Let me clarify: my motivations to work on climate change are multiple. In general my motivation is to leave the world better than I found it.
My primary motivation to work on climate change is that it feels very satisfying to work on such a fascinating, constantly changing, and hugely important problem. Climate change is a classic “wicked problem,” in other words, a problem that can’t be solved by one measure in one field (there’s more that goes into that definition, but that’s a reasonable approximate definition). It requires long-term thinking and collaboration between many fields. You have to simultaneously think about Earth science and behavioral economics, world trade policy and communication science—I like to say climate change isn’t an environmental problem, it’s an everything problem. 
The thing that first motivated me to work on climate change was a talk by the journalist Isabel Hilton in 2008, where she pointed to data about the Himalayan glacier, and talked about how the trade winds depend on that glacier, and how that glacier is already being militarized by China, Pakistan, and India because of its importance to water resources in those countries… Basically, when (not if) that glacier melts, there are many cascading consequences that will change the world. Hearing all this, someone from the back of the room sent her uncertain voice into the silence: “What can we do?” Ms. Hilton: “Work on adaptation.” I wrote that word down in my notebook, and that launched this new phase of my work life.
But overall, through all the winding ways of my work life, I think I am always motivated to impress the people who impress me. Perhaps not directly (my role models are not all personal acquaintances), but if I were ever to be introduced to my role models, I would want to be able to tell them about my work and have them see me as a worthy colleague, perhaps even a resource. 
When I’ve been in slow times work-wise, and I’m unsure of my path, I reorient on the people who inspire me. Sometimes that has led me on paths of inquiry that helped me get a new foothold. For example, I might read their latest works, maybe set up some informational interviews with them or their co-authors, go to an upcoming event where they’ll be presenting, get books that they recommend out of the library… I just keep following my nose until I find a foothold for a new place to apply for work, or a new project, or a new line of research. “Go towards what inspires you” is a good piece of advice, I think.

JACQUE: What are you currently working on?
SARA: As an Energy Analyst: I’m working on developing policy to protect consumers in the energy efficiency home improvement market (though the intention of the policy is also to increase energy efficiency through improving home improvement installations). Basically, in California there haven’t been any requirements of special knowledge or training for contractors who install things like energy efficient air conditioners, and a lot of things have been installed incorrectly, so the state is trying to figure out how to fix that problem.
As a Climate Adaptation Policy Analyst: In June 2018 I attended the International Climate Adaptation Futures Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, and I’ve been thinking about how to support water/ sanitation system improvements in underdeveloped or undeveloped settlements, and what lessons from those projects can be brought home to California (particularly in relation to its migrant worker settlements). I have not finished my blog post on the conference, but my draft covers water management issues and ​community partnerships.

JACQUE: ​What was the most unusual location you have found yourself in?
In the course of studying climate change? 
SARA: I think just now when I was in South Africa, Langrug, the informal settlement that is developing green infrastructure solutions to wastewater was pretty unusual for me, and very enlightening.
Check it out!!!

JACQUE: Tell us about your educational path so far.
SARA: Grade school/Junior High: I was a 4-H-er who did a lot of animal husbandry/science training as an after-school activity. I wanted to be a veterinarian (after I got too tall to be a jockey). I was an apprentice at a local horse stable between ages 10-15. The training I got at that barn was probably the most critical of all to my sense of self-confidence and discipline. Horses have continued to be my teachers through my whole life, and in recent years I’ve returned to taking riding lessons to help improve my sense of connection and flow when I ride. Taking riding lessons as an adult has also helped return my sense of self-confidence after a lot of career instability.
High school: I focused on languages, English literature and poetry.
Undergrad: I got a double BA in English and Russian (Vassar College). I was an editor on a school literary magazine and ran literary events on campus.
Graduate school: After 12 years in nonprofit service and advocacy organizations (immigrant social services, human rights, environmental rights) I got a double Masters in public policy and international studies (MPP/MA, UC Berkeley). 
In those interim nonprofit years probably the best formal training I got that wasn’t on the job was through a curriculum called Challenging White Supremacy. Over the course of a year this in-person weekly training took participants on a deep dive into U.S. history, including how/why the country’s racial categories were invented, how those categories were privileged in different ways by U.S. law, and how an individual can work to undo the structures of white racial privilege (white supremacy) in their everyday life.

JACQUE: ​A question from 11-year-old Sarah- Do you get paid for being a scientist? In other words, how do you get paid for what you do? 
SARA: I’m currently fortunate enough to be in a full-time job with the State of California.

JACQUE: What are the parts about being a woman in science that you didn’t expect?
SARA: I’ll say that undergoing a transformation from a professional advocate (in the human rights and environmental rights fields) to a policy analyst, I was surprised to find I gained a new respect for politicians. It’s easy for people in advocacy to see all politicians as some degree of corrupt, captured by the corporate capitalist machine, but once you see how difficult and messy public policy is, you realize they have a nearly impossible job, and you’re grateful somebody is trying to do that job. Democratic societies need (good) politicians.

Photo credit: Green Bean @iamgreenbean

JACQUE: ​Who is someone you admire in your field? Why?
SARA: This is an ever-evolving list:
I’ll just share some names.
Susanne Moser
Geographer working as an independent consultant. Thought-leader on barriers to adaptation and effective climate science communication.
Constance Millar 
Paleoecologist working at the U.S. Forest Service. Coined the term “neo-native” to talk about species that are returning to Paleolithic habitat under climate change, introduced a theoretical “triage” system of natural resource management under climate change, willing to push the envelope on climate change planning despite being a federal government employee.
Ellie Cohen
Climate policy/communication thought-leader, champion of “climate smart” conservation principles. Just left Point Blue Conservation Science after being President there for 19 years.
Lisa Micheli
Earth scientist with a talent for communicating climate science to various non-scientist audiences. President of the Pepperwood Foundation, which runs the Pepperwood Preserve, a leader in applied climate science (for example, bringing back Native Californian land management techniques such as controlled burns to help native grasses and rebalance other native plant life, done in collaboration with a Native American Advisory Council).
Cara Pike 
Executive Director of ClimateAccess. Cara is a climate communications guru. She has worked around North America piloting innovative climate communication approaches (and making sure social scientists like Susanne Moser are nearby to measure results).
Jack Liebster 
Planning Manager for Marin County, where I did the pilot scenario planning workshop described above. He became a touchstone advisor for me in that and subsequent projects. He is always thinking of the bigger picture, and is able to conceive of innovative approaches in particular to the sea level rise threat to his county. Political and fiscal realities might thwart him, but he will never stop pushing for real solutions, no matter how unpopular. He was the original creator of the downloadable, award-winning Game of Floods sea level rise teaching tool 
Katharine Hayhoe 
An atmospheric scientist and someone who speaks from the point of view of being a scientist who is also a person of faith. Dr. Hayhoe is not a personal acquaintance, but I am inspired by her work on climate communications. I recommend following her on Twitter (@KHayhoe).
Saleemul Huq 
Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development. Dr. Huq is also not a personal acquaintance, but I am inspired by his work on social vulnerability to climate change. Although his academic background is in Biology, he has been publishing on social vulnerability to climate change and the role of economic development in climate change adaptation since 1989.
I could go on for a while.
Basically, these are people that I will always prioritize seeing speak when I’m putting together my game plan at a climate conference. I always hope they won’t be scheduled against each other
All of the above think about the real-world application of their work. Some are particularly concentrated on the questions of vulnerability and the prioritization of threats. They think beyond one isolated measure of vulnerability, considering vulnerability as a dynamic characteristic that can multiply when overlapping with other factors (in particular how vulnerability changes based on socioeconomic factors). 
They are all multidisciplinary in their approaches, collaborating across sectors, using tools and expertise from outside their fields.

JACQUE: Did you have a mentor? If you did, how did you and that mentor come to work together?
SARA: I have gone to the first six people in the list above for help/input during one research project or another, and would like to think of them as mentors. I met most of them through my PI in a post-masters project. But I’m not sure I’ve had a “mentor” in the sense of a regular advisor who is looking out for my interests.

JACQUE: ​What is your social life like?
SARA: At the moment I have a pretty thin social life because I just moved to a new city for a new job.
I did manage to find a knitting/craft circle, so once a week I have a few hours of socializing with humans face to face in a non-job-related context.

JACQUE: What is your home life like?
SARA: I’m devoted to my kitty cat.

JACQUE: Do you have any pets?
SARA: Yes, a stripey kitty cat.

JACQUE: ​Where did you grow up?
SARA: Northern New York. That’s the part of New York that is north of Syracuse and west of the Adirondack Park.

JACQUE: Who were your biggest supporters?
SARA: My parents were and are very supportive of me. I’m fortunate in my parentage.  

JACQUE: What is your cultural background?
SARA: My family is pretty WASPy. (White Anglo Saxon Protestant.) But it consists of a strange mix of engineers, ministers, and artists. The religious part of my family is very social justice-oriented, and can be found volunteering on Habitat for Humanity projects, or traveling to Central America or Sub-Saharan Africa to work on building schools or other charity projects. We are a family that likes to put our ethics into action. I’m proud of that.

JACQUE: Which socioeconomic group did you grow up in? 
SARA: Middle class. However, my father’s parents were ministers, and my paternal grandfather’s family was a farming family, and those ethics of thriftiness and community service were passed on in my family strongly. I think I identify politically with farmers and the working class more than most middle class people. 
I also think we as U.S. Americans have a skewed sense of what “middle class” is. Studies have shown that people think they are middle class even when they aren’t. I think a lot of people are struggling but don’t want to admit it, and then others are doing relatively well but are comparing themselves to people who are very rich and therefore feeling like they are in the middle. “Middle class” is a state of mind where you think you are average, perhaps.
From a 2017 article by CNBC: “A new survey by Northwestern Mutual found that 70 percent of Americans consider themselves middle class. However a 2015 report from Pew Research Center shows that the middle class has been shrinking over the past four decades and now makes up only 50 percent of the United States' total population.”
So I use “middle class” with a grain of salt.

JACQUE: Are you the first in your family to become a scientist?
SARA: My sister is an environmental engineer. I’m a policy analyst and a social scientist. She’s more of a “scientist scientist” than I am. But we are both analytical thinkers.

JACQUE: Did you see real life scientists when you were a kid?
SARA: Yes, veterinarians.

JACQUE: Were many people in your family educated with college degrees?
SARA: Most people in my family have undergrad degrees. My father got a Ph.D. My sister and I have masters degrees.

JACQUE: Did you have other friends or peers to talk to about science?
SARA: I didn’t have a lot of friends in school (k-12). I was part of a math/science program called the “High School of Excellence,” which took four students out of my class to go to intramural extracurricular learning experiences once a month. It was a lot of fun, but I didn’t make friends in the program. The other three students that went with me on the trip were people I’d known since 4th grade, so we were acquaintances at least, but it was social poison to be seen together. “Brainiac” was a pejorative term thrown at us.

JACQUE: Did you have a teacher in middle or high school that saw something extra in you?
SARA: I feel indebted to my English teachers and my Art teachers. I’m not sure they saw something extra, but I flourished when they gave me serious challenges.

JACQUE: Who were the least supportive people in your life? How did they act?
SARA: I was the victim of a lot of bullying for most of my time living in Northern New York (esp. grades 5-11). I owned a horse who lived in my backyard and one bully regularly threatened to shoot him.

JACQUE: How did you handle situations when people underestimated you?
SARA: I just did my best.Currently, when people underestimate me I do one of two things: under perform and put my efforts into more worthwhile/gratifying things, or I double down on my commitment to sticking things out and doing my utmost.

JACQUE: Can you tell us about a situation, whether in school or at work, that you could have handled better after thinking about it? What would you have done differently?
SARA: I think there are times that I should have spoken up, and I think there are times when I should have bitten my tongue. Often I think I forget that there is an option to let go and walk away – I tend to want to dig in and make my point. That has costs. But on the other hand, I confronted (respectfully) a colleague in grad school who was really rattling my nerves with her brash communication style, and we had a difficult conversation and afterwards became good friends. It took a lot of courage to confront her. I wish I had found the courage to have that kind of conversation with other people in my past who may have been unaware of how they were negatively affecting me.
One piece of advice connected to a regret - I wish I hadn’t donated quite so much time and effort to a particular tiny non-profit organization that later treated me very unprofessionally and disrespectfully, seemingly just out of lack of forethought and management skills. As a result I am very wary of small non-profits who do not have to rely on support from any constituency, just foundation grants to support a generic do-gooder mission, with no accountability beyond their own board, which tends to consist of the executive director’s personal best friends. 
People gloss “non-profit” with “good guys”— and I’m here to say you have to ask some questions. Find out how they make decisions and whether decisions get reviewed and by whom. If it’s two senior staff making decisions and, for example, they are husband and wife, and nobody reviews their decisions, steer clear. There is a lot of good work being done by quirky, small non-profits, but you need to evaluate carefully where to place your faith and invest your time while developing your career. 

JACQUE: Can you give advice on what NOT to do when handling the stress of college and the job?
SARA: My mantra is compassion in the morning, compassion in the afternoon, compassion in the evening, never not compassion.
Another way to say that is – don’t let anger control your impulses, try to find a way to give space (if not respect) to people you find aggravating. Try to see their point of view. It frees up a lot of energy that you can use for better things.
Also, don’t argue with people on the internet unless you have a friendship in real space (“meat space”). Otherwise, there is zero at stake for them in the interaction: they don’t have any reason to treat you as a real human being with three dimensions. It’s just not worth it to invest your energy in interactions like that. And I mean don’t even correct the grammar or spelling of someone online if you don’t know them in real life. Maybe especially that. 

JACQUE: What coping mechanisms do you have that help you handle the stress of your job?
SARA: Riding horses, petting my cat, getting lost in SciFi TV/movies. I love Doctor Who. It’s a narrative of apocalypse mixed with hope.

JACQUE: Were there times you wanted to give up? How did you push through?
SARA: I have felt despair about climate change work. One way I have dealt with it is taking it on as a research topic.

JACQUE: What was your lowest point?
SARA: In my five year period of underemployment, when I was doing odd jobs while keeping up maybe one climate-related project (at almost no hours and mostly unpaid), I considered whether I arrived in this field before it was ready to hire me. I still wonder about the maturity of the field and want to caution people who want to work in this field (especially social scientists or scientists who want to work on the human dimensions of climate change) that the path into full employment might be circuitous.
However, during this low period, I noticed that if I got tipsy at a party or at a bar I was inevitably finding myself shouting into the din about some interesting new development in the climate change field. It’s just my default setting at this point, so I hope I can always find my way back to it to work in a paid capacity. 
It’s like a tightly tied knot that I can’t stop fiddling with, alternately fascinating and despair-inducing.

JACQUE: What is your highest point so far?
SARA: This is hard to say. The one-day scenario planning workshop I did with representatives of private and public land management agencies from Marin County for the State of California’s Third Climate Assessment was exciting. We utilized creative brainstorming about far-away futures considering the interaction of both climatic and socio-economic factors to zero in on management actions we can take today that are robust to multiple futures. One of the top actions was getting fire, water, and emergency management staff together to coordinate planning, and I’ve heard that theme repeated in other contexts since then. Unfortunately, the time and other resources needed for that interagency/cross-sectoral planning remains scarce. 
Check out my two-page summary of results of the workshop!

JACQUE: Please tell us about the thing you are most proud of accomplishing so far.
SARA: I’m proud that I haven’t given up on my passion. I’ve made compromises, but I love what I love and I try to let that love be my guide as much as possible.

JACQUE: ​Can you give us an example of a time that you were treated in a sexist way in your job?
SARA: Not sure what to say here. Sexism is so pervasive in society it’s like asking a fish to describe water. But I will say I’m lucky to have worked in some pretty radical organizations that really valued having a transparent process and the examination of privilege. 
I think the inability of some people to respect boundaries, then being offended when a boundary is asserted, is a gendered thing. Combine that with the fact that U.S. culture teaches us to value overexertion at our jobs. I’ve seen male bosses really put out of sorts by women underlings setting boundaries around personal time and work/life balance. Fortunately, I don’t think I’ve had to deal with that dynamic myself yet.

​JACQUE: Can you give us an example of a time that you were pleasantly surprised that sexism did not come into play?
SARA: Not sure how to answer this. At my current job I’m dealing with more cis-het-white-older males in authority than I’ve ever dealt with in my life, so I’m braced for things to go sideways (since I’m an assertive and opinionated female, and I come across as younger than I am, so sometimes people are taken off guard by my assertiveness). So far so good.

JACQUE: ​Is there a part of your identity, whether LGBT, a person of color, a religious or cultural minority, 
or differently abled, that influenced a facet of your experience as you became a woman in science?
SARA: I’m bi, and I’m always looking for queer allies at work, and my current job (which puts me in the company of a lot of engineers) feels very straight, so I can say I feel a little closeted because I pass as straight, and that doesn’t feel great.

JACQUE: What worries you? Keeps you up at night?
SARA: Great question! I try not to be kept up at night by climate change fears. But sometimes the vast distance between where we need to be to stave off catastrophic climate change and where we are headed right now really overwhelms me. The inevitable loss of the ice caps and glaciers haunts me. The loss of the life in our oceans through acidification is a horrific prospect and there is NOTHING we can do to stop it, we can only slow it. The direction of democracy in the U.S. (by which I mean the decline of democracy) and the smash-and-grab that is happening in D.C. right now under the Trump Administration is sickening and probably keeps me up nights more than anything else.

JACQUE: ​Do you have a large, overall goal for your lifetime of work?
SARA: Honestly? I want to be financially secure enough to retire in a place where I can keep horses. I see myself as leaving the house to get groceries and grain and otherwise puttering on a nice piece of land, hopefully with a view of some mountains. If I’m lucky I might go back to writing poetry (which I used to do daily through my teens and twenties).
I’d love to sponsor a local 4-H horse club and return the favor that 4-H did for me as a girl, getting me solid training in horse science as well as introducing me to a larger world of people through the 4-H leadership program’s trips and trainings. Someone in my local Coop Extension saw something in me and approved my application essays, and it changed my life.

JACQUE: ​If money were no issue, what project would u do?
SARA: If I had unlimited money, I think I’d start a foundation that makes small grants to communities doing adaptation/resilience projects.

Sara dressed as the ghost of the Cassini spacecraft (love it!)

​JACQUE: What advice would you give to a young person wanting to go into the sciences?
SARA: Keep a journal. Write down your dreams and ambitions. Make them as specific and articulated as possible, with a plan of action, even if it seems far-fetched. You can manifest things by focusing on them in this way. 
Reach out to people who inspire you and get informational interviews. Write fan letters. Ask questions of the people you admire. Go to science talks (when you’re old enough, go to Nerd Nite in your town and go up to the speakers that inspire you and ask questions afterwards.
Write letters to the editors of science magazines you read— ask questions or propose new ideas for articles. If you are doing research, write them to tell them about your experiment.
I guess more than anything WRITE. Get your writing skills down however you can. Learn to touch type, also. It’s really an indispensable skill. Second most indispensable skill: public speaking. If you can do debate club in your school, do it, if only for one semester. Learn to talk in front of people and think on your feet while doing so. In 4-H I did public presentations competitively and it gave me a whole skill set around creating visuals to communicate data and engaging a distracted audience. 

JACQUE: Do you have a website we can check out?
California Energy Commission

My research blog

JACQUE: If a future scientist wanted to contact you, how could they do that?
SARA: Saramoore at gmail dot com

I would love to thank Sara for coming on FANTASTIC WOMEN IN SCIENCE. It makes me sleep a little better at night, knowing she is out there fighting to fix how we deal with climate, energy and survival!!!

Important Notes: Sara's opinions are her own and do not reflect the positions of the State of California or the California Energy Commission. Also, Sara wanted me to make sure to mention that the State of California needs good people! The California Energy Commission is hiring interns/ student research assistants (available to any State of California university student – via Sac State).