It had already been taken down when I tried to access it. The Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, or EJSCREEN, was no longer on the US EPA website. We were trying to use EJSCREEN for an in-class assignment, but the same error message flashed across my classmates’ laptops: “Sorry, but this web page does not exist.” It was frustrating: throughout the semester, I’d already experienced difficulties accessing data about chemical toxicokinetics and pollution-management policies. For my final project, we were testing heavy metal levels in soils across three community gardens in Jamaica Plains; this neighborhood was historically underserved and their soil had not been tested in years. As we discovered, the communities did not know they were working, playing, and gathering in spaces with lead levels exceeding Massachusetts guidelines. I finished the class with a sobering understanding that environmental data and environmental justice tools are critical to our everyday lives, but so often, they aren’t updated or accessible.

I was born and raised in Singapore, the “Garden City” of Southeast Asia. I learned early how different it was from other places: there were days when school was cancelled because of the haze from “slash-and-burn” practices in neighbouring countries. Meanwhile, in my own city, I saw green spaces woven into a grid of skyscrapers and learned to appreciate the shade of trees in our tropical heat. My father would tell me about his life in Singapore before widespread urbanization, when neighbours in communal kampungs traded homegrown fruits and lived off the land. My friends from different cultures would share their traditional herbal remedies as we spent our afternoons lazing by the beach. On our little island, I developed an understanding of the environment not just as a physical space, but a locus where culture and nature are co-created and enriched.

I continue to develop this interest in college: I’m currently pursuing a joint major in Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP) and Comparative Literature. I examine the conceptualization and management of nature across many fields, from ecology and political theory to environmental engineering and even early modern French. The climate crises we face are too complex to be tackled by just one approach—it drives me to create connections between languages and disciplines. 

At a moment when higher education is under attack, I can proudly say that my college experience has empowered and emboldened me to continue dreaming of a greener and fairer world. Whether it’s researching environmental history as a Radcliffe Research Partner or consulting for companies at the Harvard Undergraduate Clean Energy Group, I am grateful for the various extracurricular and professional opportunities that have helped me transfer my studies into real-world impacts. I wrote about the unusual history of Frangipani and its many names for the Dumbarton Oaks Plant Humanities Initiative. I also worked on improving climate data accessibility through categorizing metadata for Climateverse. Most recently, at the Energy Futures Initiative Foundation, I worked on energy workforce demand modelling and hydrogen hub community-based agreements to inform communities and policymakers about nonpartisan clean energy policies. These various experiences have trained me to think of solutions that consider socio-economic complexities alongside the wider networks of information necessary to mobilize the public sector and private industry successfully.

This summer, I am excited to develop various policy research and communications tools. I am also looking forward to connecting, collaborating, and learning from my team members’ varied experiences. As access to environmental data is threatened by recent federal policies and executive orders, the public service work of groups like the Open Environmental Data Project and the Public Environmental Data Partners is more important than ever. Most of all, I am proud to work toward empowering communities and tackling the climate crisis with a group of people who continue to inspire me.