I started off my undergraduate degree interested in architecture. I really wanted to improve living conditions in slums. My father advised me that a civil engineering degree would be a good foundation for an architect so I pursued a civil engineering degree with a focus on structures. In my 3rd year in college, I took a few environmental engineering classes and realized that the more fundamental problem in slums was the poor access to water and sanitation. The people's lives were revolving around finding water often of poor quality leading to disease. I started taking many more environmental engineering and sustainability courses and added the environmental engineering concentration.

Two experiences made me realize that a broader understanding of the regulations, policy, economics and financing of water and environmental projects was necessary. The first was working at an environmental engineering consulting firm as a water resources engineer and seeing the difficulty in convincing the public and governments to pay for infrastructure - getting financing was crucial. The second was attending the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 15) and listening to the arguments that countries put forth for not wanting a binding legal action towards climate change. As a young, optimistic, recent graduate, this failure to agree in light of the scientific evidence and calls to action was eye-opening: I realized the technical side just was not enough so I pursued a masters in Technology and Policy. That became a stepping stone for me to pursue academic research because there were so many open questions related to our use, regulations, values around water and the environment.

Water touches every aspect of our society and in that process I have expanded my areas of interest. I started narrowly with a technical question on how we could get water to slums and have now broadened to so many more questions: what do we use water for, why is it unequally distributed, how much will we need for our future food needs, can we meet our needs and the environments simultaneously, what quality or quantity of water is acceptable, what happens if we have too much (floods) or too little (droughts)? Many of the technical aspects in this field are old. We now recognize ancient cultures like the Incas or Egyptians as savvy stewards of water from whom we still have techniques to learn. The bigger issues are societal in how we choose to use a resource that although cycles, is not always available in the right place, in the desired quantity or quality, at the necessary time. Despite this, in many places, the known tried and true technical solutions have not yet been implemented so there's still a lot of work to do.