Growing up amid the lush hills and valleys of Appalachian West Virginia, Rebecca says she didn’t think much about water sustainability until moving to California in her twenties. “I remember when I first moved out to California in 2007, there was this long rainy season, what I thought of as the California winter. But then the 2012-2016 drought started, and I learned how climate change is increasing weather extremes in California. That’s when I first started thinking about California’s water challenges.”
As a child, Rebecca spent many hours exploring the forest behind her family’s farmhouse, developing a keen interest in the natural world. At university in West Virginia, she studied Women’s Studies and Photography, and she managed an environmental film festival, where she first learned about issues at California’s Salton Sea through one of the festival’s films.
In 2008, Rebecca moved to California. She worked as an innkeeper near the Point Reyes National Seashore and took community college and online classes before beginning studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012. While studying abroad in Rome at UC Berkeley, she interned for the Forestry Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization, learning about the impacts of issues like climate change, population growth, and migration patterns on the world’s forests. Back in California, she interned at a nonprofit that supports women environmental leaders around the world, contributing to a report on the effects of environmental violence on Indigenous women. After finishing her Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on Feminist Perspectives in International Relations at UC Berkeley, Rebecca joined the Pacific Institute’s communications department in 2015.
“My studies focused on how governance and policy affect women and marginalized groups, as well as how values associated with femininity and eschewed in traditional realist theories of international relations could inform stronger, more resilient governance and policies. These values include a recognition of interdependence and inclusion. I think these values are especially useful when dealing with water resources, which often cross national boundaries, and can be fraught with equity and access issues,” she says.
At the Pacific Institute, Rebecca leads media relations, publication outreach, and social media efforts. “The work of the Pacific Institute touches on so many issues of importance, since water is connected to everything we do,” she says. “From water and sanitation access in California to our work mobilizing the business community on sustainable management of water resources globally, it’s exciting to work for an organization helping to ensure water availability for future generations.”
In her free time, Rebecca enjoys volunteering with Bay Area immigrants and refugees, finding new trails to explore, swimming in open water, dancing Argentine Tango and Salsa, poetry, Irish music, and opera.