Events & Calendars Careers in Environmental Studies: A Panel with Recent ENST Alumni

Sponsored by the Department of Environmental Studies and the Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning.

Zack Gerdes '14 lives in Washington D.C. and works as a conservation organizer with the Sierra Club. Zack serves as staff lead for clean water and public health campaigns in the state of Maryland. He also supports Sierra Club's political campaign to elect environmental champions on the local and state level. Before joining Sierra Club, Zack worked as a philanthropy fellow at the Pisces Foundation. While at Amherst, Zack helped launch the coal divestment campaign with the Green Amherst Project and worked with 350.org as a fossil free fellow.

Meghan Cafferty '14 began working for Senator Elizabeth Warren in her Boston office as a staff assistant. In 2016, she transferred to Senator Warren’s D.C. office and was promoted to legislative correspondent with a policy portfolio covering energy and environment. She helped prepare the Senator for meetings, including on national natural gas pipeline infrastructure. In the fall of 2016, Meghan began her JD at Boston University School of Law. She has been a legal intern at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office in the Energy and Telecommunications Division and has participated in BU Law’s Environmental Clinic. She has helped conduct legal research for Alternatives for Community and Environment, a non-profit organization supporting a citizen suit to stop the construction of a power plant in Brockton, MA. This past summer Meghan was a Summer Associate at Brown Rudnick LLP in Boston, MA and will be joining their Commercial Litigation department after graduation.

Charles Nutter ’15 is a manager with Nexamp Community Solar. Charles graduated from Amherst in 2015 with a degree in Economics and Environmental Studies. Through the College’s Center for Community Engagement, he interned as a team leader with the Gulf of Maine Institute, an environmental youth stewardship organization that educates and performs community service all along the Gulf of Maine, from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. After graduation, Charles began an internship at Nexamp, a leading community solar developer in the Northeast, with funding from the Mass Clean Energy Center. Beginning as a community solar sales and marketing intern, he is now the energy sales manager and leads the company’s efforts to identify and contract institutional and commercial clients to receive energy credit produced by Nexamp’s solar arrays.

Panelists will be available for office hours through Handshake; search "office hours" to locate their individual schedules. For questions regarding this event, please contact Kate Sims (ksims@amherst.edu).