I am an early career scientist who will be re-emerging into the job market sometime in the next few months. Luckily, I have been armed with a set of skills that were greatly boosted during my time as a Sea Grant Fellow.

As I begin to look ahead, I am finding it useful to focus on common threads that have tied my professional interests together thus far. It is my hope that by writing about this process, I will inspire others to consider how their long-standing interests tie into their career path.

I earned my BA at a small liberal arts school in central Arizona. I chose the university because course work was hands on and they offered students an opportunity to build their own degree program. I began my freshman year 100% certain that I would pursue a degree focused on sustainable agriculture and small business development. Food systems were a lens through which I hoped to explore how humans rely on the natural world to fulfill our most basic needs. I grew up in a neighboring landlocked state, so at this point agriculture was the most approachable vector for me to explore food systems.

On a whim, I spent my second semester of college at my university’s field station on the Gulf of California and quickly rerouted my degree path to focus on marine and coastal systems. My coursework shifted to technical field skills like conducting snorkel surveys and algae transects for the remainder of my degree program. The most meaningful part of this time in Mexico, however, was interacting with the nearby indigenous communities and fishing communities who relied very directly on the ocean for both sustenance and economic stability. Even though I had veered away from agriculture, I found myself gravitating back towards food systems.

I continued this thread in OSU’s Marine Resource Management M.S. program, where my research examined the coupled human-natural systems at play in Oregon’s fishing communities and commercial fisheries. After my successful thesis defense, my main career aspiration was to deepen my understanding of these coupled systems in coastal and marine environments.

As of August 2020, I am about ten months into my position as an Oregon Sea Grant Natural Resource and Policy Fellow at The Nature Conservancy (TNC). This position stood out to me because it offered an opportunity to delve into climate change impacts on West Coast communities (see my past post on scenario planning). During my time at TNC I have been deeply engaged in scenario planning, but I am also involved in a number of projects that integrate human needs and ecosystem needs and environmental uncertainty, and I am even serving on a committee that focuses on social-ecological systems.

This fellowship has taught me the complexities of balancing human and environmental needs at a far deeper level than academia could afford. As a Sea Grant fellow, my work has integrated state and federal policy processes, management and regulatory entities, as well as the ways in which stakeholders/communities, tribes, non-profits and researchers take part in the decision making process. It has been fascinating to see how all of these entities and processes tie back to marine food systems here on the West Coast.

Although I have transitioned from high desert farming to foggy fishing docks, my career thread still prioritizes the connections between humans and the natural world, through the lens of food systems. While I have thoroughly enjoyed a deeper dive into fishery policy and management, I have found a deep passion for building relationships with resource users and communities, particularly in the realms of education and collaboration. By clarifying my long-standing career priorities, my experience and the type of work that I really enjoy, it has become easier to target my next steps.

If you find yourself in a similar position to mine, it may be useful to ask yourself these questions as well:

What are some factors that have tied your educational and professional career together thus far?

Which experiences did you love, which you rather not repeat? How can you build on the great ones?

What type of work keeps you motivated and engaged, what type of work is more challenging for you?