Student spotlight- Sean Treacy

Sean is an EPM Graduate Student Researcher and the UC Davis Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory analyst with a professional background in marketing. He obtained a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Knox College in 2017, and had a research emphasis on market-driven approaches to environmental problems. After graduating, he worked with a start-up e-commerce business, carving out a marketing role. During five years with the company, he worked to emphasize a business case for sustainability, which helped them scale the business over 1000% in that time. 

Wanting to share those values more broadly, he left to work with the non-profit corporate sustainability certifier, Fair Trade USA, where Sean worked to scale market-driven sustainable development impact globally. These experiences left a lasting impression on Sean, and nurtured his passion for addressing intertwined social, environmental, economic, and governance problems presented by the climate crisis. 

After following his (now) fiancé to Sacramento for her family medicine residency program, Sean learned about UC Davis’ leadership on environmental science and policy, and knew it was where he needed to be. With close proximity to the environmental policy epicenter of California (or as Sean would argue, the nation or even the world), EPM was the missing piece to building leadership capabilities around meaningfully tackling climate change mitigation and adaptation. 

In his first year with EPM, Sean has pursued funded graduate research in partnership with the Sierra Institute, working to find environmentally just, market-driven solutions to sustainable forest and wildfire management, which are massive nature-based carbon dioxide sinks — and increasingly, sources. He’s also gaining experience in industrial decarbonization, working with UC Davis facilities to conduct an annual emissions inventory for the main campus and outlying facilities, which informs UC Davis’ leading campus climate action planning. 

Sean is grateful for the opportunities offered by UC Davis and EPM. “There’s more meaningful work and opportunities for experience here than people to do it,” he says. But valuable experience can also be challenging. “Working to identify funder and stakeholder needs and cultivating buy-in for research is tricky, and you need to take initiative on your own to find the resources you’ll need to be successful. It’s all part of the learning process of developing leadership capacity in this space.” 

In his second year with EPM, Sean is looking forward to building more technical skills. Between completing research, working on the campus emissions inventory analysis, and coursework on Python and GIS, he’s well-positioned to cultivate his technical acumen. He’s also very excited to consult with external EPM partners through the EPM Policy Clinic, which he views as an opportunity to expand his network and apply what he’s learned thus far to real-world environmental problems. 

After graduating from EPM, Sean envisions himself working on climate change mitigation and adaptation with CARB or a regional air quality monitoring body, in the utility space with SMUD, the local community-owned electric utility, or a similar utility provider, with a consulting firm, or with a start-up. He’s eager to apply his experiences and skills from EPM to a government or non-government role and feels confident that between his training and the connections provided by faculty and program experiences, he’ll find a job making a serious impact. “I haven’t started seriously job hunting yet, but there are so many job postings, and it seems like an inevitability that even more funding will start pouring into climate work given the current state of the world,” Sean says.  

Outside of work and school, Sean loves traveling around Northern California with his fiancé and their dog. So far he’s covered Lake Tahoe, Desolation Wilderness Area, Yosemite, Plumas National Forest, San Francisco, and the Norcal Coast, but his favorite spot has been Redwoods National Park. “Having grown up in the Midwest, exploring anywhere in California is a dream come true, but there’s something mysterious and special about the Norcal redwoods.” 

If you’d like to get in touch with Sean, you’re welcome to connect with him on LinkedIn, or email him at srtreacy@ucdavis.edu.