Cora Kammeyer joined the Pacific Institute in 2017 as a research associate. At the Institute, she focuses on the intersection of public water policy and corporate water risk and water stewardship.
When asked what she hopes to achieve through her work at the Institute, Cora says she wants to change the way society thinks about water. “I’d like to increase awareness and understanding around the value of our water resources, so it’s something people think about every time they turn on the sink, eat a fresh meal, or jump into a stream.” While Cora’s interest in water extends globally, she says her fascination began in California. “With some of the most complex and contentious water systems, laws, policies, and politics in the world, California is a great place to cut your teeth on water issues,” she explains. “I feel like I could research California water for my whole life and still not understand everything.”
Cora’s first foray into water began in her sophomore year of college at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a California water “field course” led by her professor, Bob Wilkinson. The two-week summer course consisted of a driving tour of California’s water system. The trip spanned Owen’s Valley; Mono Lake; the Hetch Hetchy, Oroville, and Shasta reservoirs; the Tuolumne, Sacramento, Feather, Klamath, and Eel rivers; the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta, and more. Squeezing into overstuffed SUVs with a dozen other students and camping alongside rivers and lakes every night, Cora says this trip gave her the opportunity to “see and talk about water every day.” “The raw beauty of the rivers, the rich history of the state, and the inextricable connection to other issues I cared about like climate change, locally grown food, and the protection of wild nature drew me in,” she explains. By the end of that trip Cora was convinced she wanted a career in water.
Cora earned a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara, while interning at a tech startup focused on changing peoples’ water use through water utility customer education and engagement. She then went on to earn a master’s degree from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara, specializing in Economics and Politics of the Environment with a focus on Communication.
During her time at the Bren School, Cora became especially curious about the legal, economic, and political aspects of water. Her graduate research focused on how to employ market mechanisms to better allocate water resources, particularly to account
for environmental flows. For her thesis project, she worked in a team of five graduate students in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, looking at the potential of water markets to provide wetland habitat for migratory birds in the Sacramento Valley.
In every water-related class or research endeavor throughout college, Cora frequently found herself coming back to the expansive suite of Pacific Institute reports to guide her studies and to reference in her work. Cora says, “I cited Pacific Institute reports in probably almost every paper I wrote in grad school.”
At the Institute, Cora’s work ranges from watershed-scale collective action projects in Southern California, to water policy and metrics consultation for the California Department of Water Resources, to international engagement on corporate water stewardship through the United Nations Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate. She says she enjoys “the opportunity to work with a variety of stakeholders on my projects, but also getting to ‘nerd out’ on research and report writing.” While only barely over a year into her tenure at the Pacific Institute, Cora says she is excited about the opportunities for learning and making an impact that lie ahead. “I’d love to be a leader in creating a new mindset around water, one in which the pricing, systems of management, policy, and societal perspective of water reflects its true value.”
In her free time, you can find Cora running, hiking, or biking. She also enjoys backpacking and rock climbing with her boyfriend, who she lives with in Oakland. She says her favorite river is the Yuba River in northern California, thanks to many weekends spent swimming and wading in the South Fork near her family’s cottage in Grass Valley.