Helen Aki is a graduating senior at the University of California, Berkeley. She is pursuing a self-designed major in Ecological Economics, and a minor in the Energy and Resources Group. At Berkeley, she is involved with the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC), an interdisciplinary student organization which utilizes resources from the Bay Area clean tech world and the Lawrence Berkeley Labs to foster innovative energy solutions. She also facilitates a service-learning energy efficiency class with Building Sustainability at Cal (BS@C). Helen grew up in New Hampshire and completed her first two years of college in Massachusetts, at Bard College at Simon's Rock. After receiving her A.A., she moved out to California to work as a summer fellow at the Breakthrough Institute, an energy policy think-tank run by the authors of The Death of Environmentalism, where she helped advocate a climate policy agenda of government investment in clean energy R&D. In her free time, she plays acoustic guitar and sings in the indie-rock band, L'Avventura. She loves baking, darkroom photography, and hiking in the redwoods. Her dream jobs are working as a consultant for the Rocky Mountain Institute, or living in Denmark and joining the Vestas (wind turbine company) team.
Breakthrough Blog