Successful Graduates

Levy came into Wooster with an interest in renewable energy and left with a passion. Its unique course load allowed him to draw from the spectrum of disciplines that cross with the Environmental sciences; economics, politics, biology, physics, and apply them to renewables. Coming out of senior year, Aaron Levy got an internship with a wind-energy technology company in Boston called V Squared Wind, which was under grant contract with the US Department of Defense developing modular and rapidly deployable wind energy systems for tactical energy at Forward Operating Bases. At V Squared, Levy worked on prototype fabrication and testing and wide-ranging business development from competitive analysis to financial modeling. A little over a year into Levy working with V Squared, the core team began exploring the hydropower sector and ultimately founded a hydropower technology company called GenH (Generation Hydro). GenH is developing a fully modular and rapidly deployable system to electrify non-powered dams without construction. The Adaptive Hydro System was largely conceived from the V Squared Wind experience. As a co-founder, Levy is involved with all facets of the business. The majority of his time is spent running daily operations, fundraising, and strategic and tactical business development.

Environmental advocacy was always something Alissa Weinman cared for and became more passionate about during her time at Wooster. Weinman’s I.S., which was a deep dive into how an innovative urban gardening program in Boston tackled food insecurity while addressing social justice concerns, helped her think critically about what it means to tackle problems holistically and exposed her to all the different ways in which people can work within the environmental movement. After graduating, in order to learn about the myriad of ways she could be effective and enact change in the environmental movement, Weinman enrolled in an organizing training program called Green Corps, where she had the opportunity to live in Miami, upstate New York, and Atlanta and organize with and alongside communities facing environmental justice issues like climate change and food system disruption. During Green Corps she was introduced to a public interest organization named Corporate Accountability where she works today. As Senior Water Organizer, Weinman partners with water justice organizers and activists from communities across the globe to prevent water privatization, protect democratic control of water systems, and advance public solutions that provide safe, clean water at rates everyone can afford.

Since graduating the College of Wooster, Rita Frost has dedicated her professional career to advocating for the environment as a campaigner. Immediately upon graduation, she was accepted into the national Green Corps program where she worked for As You Sow, Dogwood Alliance, and Environmental Texas in the span of a year. Following that year, she was recruited to work for Dogwood Alliance, where she spent four years working to protect Southern Forests and the communities that depend on them. This has taken her to the halls of the European Parliament, the forests of Laos, special sessions of the United Nations on climate change, and even to venues such as hosting documentary film screenings in front of a crowd of over 2,000 French people at a climate camp this past summer. Frost been featured in articles in the New Yorker and The Times; been interviewed on camera for outlets such as Mic as well as Denmark’s largest broadcasting channel TV2;  and has found herself at countless NGO strategy meetings laying out the critical need for increased forest protection as one of our best tools in the fight against the climate crisis. She has recently decided to pursue a Masters degree in International Forest Management.

Alex initially went to college to pursue biology and chemistry, but he fell in love with Ohio’s local agriculture scene and learned how the technical and social sciences beautifully came together in food systems work. Alex spent the summer after college graduation working for a farmer’s market that targeted customers living in a food desert in South Salt Lake, UT. He then joined a team of solar installers with a start-up solar company that eventually installed the largest privately-owned solar array on a stadium that hosted UT’s Premier Soccer League. He went on to work for several years on community food systems work, particularly with underserved low-income and New American populations, as part of the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) New Roots programs in Utah, Maryland and Virginia. Most recently he has taken a position with Arcadia, a technology company working to expand consumer access to electricity generated by solar and wind power.

Erin’s environmental studies courses at Wooster exposed her to issues of environmental justice, particularly related to agriculture. She spent a semester abroad with the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute in Thailand, where she learned to apply the lens of political ecology to understand how the landscape of power affects control over resources and management of the environment. Her IS, mentored by Dr. Matt Mariola, took her back to Thailand where she focused on the effects of constrained autonomy on farming practices and health. It was published in the peer-reviewed academic journal International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. After Wooster, Erin worked in the University of Virginia’s Infectious Diseases Clinic as a Community Health Worker with the HIV program. She is now studying at Harvard Medical School, planning to do Internal Medicine/Primary Care or Infectious Disease. Erin is interested in farmworker health and the effect of climate change on community health and would love to work in a community health center/mobile health setting.