Meet The Forum Team: Sandy Phan

California Beaches and Troubled Waters.

If you’ve never met Sandy Phan before, I’ll just tell you that she is a delight. Sandy is from southern California and has the classic effortless calm the sunshine state is so well-known for, a positive and passionate exuberance that carries into how she thinks about solving environmental problems. Sandy is confident yet clear-eyed about the challenges of environmental degradation we face. Beaches covered with trash, wildlife overhunted and overfished, biodiversity at risk, and shorelines swelling with the effects of an upcoming “super” El Niño were just a few of the issues she had on her mind the day of our interview. These concerns developed not from fear but from a deep love of nature, mostly progressing from long visits to the Malibu beaches. Sandy’s experience with negative environmental change in her beautiful corner of California motivated her to get involved with the Youth Oceanic Initiative. The goal, she says, was to help other students gain the courage and knowledge to take action to protect marine life and ecosystems. 

It’s Electric!

Sandy’s environmental work naturally morphed into an interest in energy. Now a sophomore at Yale, she has sought to use her analytical skills, currently being honed from a major in Mechanical Engineering and a certificate in Energy Studies, to build things that will make the world a happier and more sustainable place. On that note, Sandy loves being a part of Engineers Without Borders. She was a part of the Science, Technology and Research Scholars (STARS) program, and discovered a passion for researching nuclear reprocessing, a way to recover radioactive waste from nuclear fuel rods. She is a writer for the Yale Clean Energy Forum.

Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow Wow Wow… Eli Yale!

Sandy Phan is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles college at Yale. She admittedly hates brutalist architecture (and thus the hulking pebbled concrete walls of Stiles), but she ultimately loves both Yale University and her college. This summer, she studied abroad in picturesque Vietnam and explored sustainable development, whether through curbing urban sprawl or locally sourcing herbs for traditional medicine. Recently, she has been working on designing and building a wind turbine, along with discussing alternative energy sources with the Yale Student Energy Association.