Alison’s career has focused on environmental improvement and sustainability, inspired by a great love of nature and a desire to ensure its viability for future generations. Alison comes to Occidental from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) where she worked on transportation, sustainability, resilience, and environmental justice. As a Clean Cities Coalition Director and the SCAG Clean Transportation Technology Program Lead, she focused on strategies and partnerships to advance zero and near zero emission technologies across modes such as passenger, transit and freight. She also served on the California EPA’s Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling Committee developing recommendations to address EV Battery reuse and recycling.
To share her passion for nature-based solutions, Alison teaches a course she created called Nature in the Urban Environment as an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Southern California. This course provides students tools to incorporate natural processes into planning decisions and covers subjects such as the water cycle, urban habitat, parkland, equity and climate change adaptation. Alison received her PhD in Urban Planning from the University of Southern California where she focused her dissertation work on corporate environmental responsibility and successful program design to reduce environmental impact. She is delighted to join Occidental to lead environmental action and planning for the campus and broader Occidental community.