Junna Faessel

Junna received her B.S. in Environmental Science and Management with honors from the University of California, Davis. During her time in the EPM program, she worked as a Long-Range Planning Intern at the Sacramento County Office of Planning & Environmental Review and as a Graduate GIS Intern at the CALFIRE Office of the State Fire Marshal. Junna completed her capstone Practicum with Sacramento County, where she completed an Urban Tree Canopy Assessment and designed a Preliminary Needs Analysis tool to identify existing canopy cover and determine priority tree planting sites within the County’s environmental justice communities and greater urban service boundary. Her work provided the critical baseline context and geospatial foundation for the County's upcoming Urban Forest Management Plan. For her capstone Policy Clinic project, she and her team partnered with Farallon Strategies to produce an updated understanding of climate collaborative governance and provide best practice recommendations, identifying key factors that enable collaboratives to succeed in advancing climate action. Junna earned a dual specialization in Conservation Management and Environmental Data Science. After graduation, she plans to pursue a public service career at the intersection of ecosystem conservation, public policy, and geospatial sciences to improve conservation management decisions in the face of a changing climate.