Alumni Spotlight: Brianna Besch '13

Brianna Besch, '13

Geography and International Studies Major 

Due to Brianna's unique upbringing in Atlanta, Georgia, Almaty, Kazakhastan and Cairo, Egypt, she knew that she wanted to go to a school with a strong international focus; Macalester seemed like a perfect fit. Brianna graduated in 2013, majoring in Geography and International Studies with a concentration in International Development, and a minor in physics. 

Curent Job

The summer after graduating, Brianna had an internship with National Geographic, working in their education foundation on online education material. She said it was "a lot of grunt work, monitoring, evaluating, and putting the information up online, as well as web development, excel work, and statistics." She praised National Geographic as a "fantastic place to work" and a "wonderful organization." 

After completing her 9-month internship, Brianna followed in the footsteps of her parents and joined the Peace Corps, where she was assigned to work in Ethiopia as an agriculture/environment volunteer. There she worked on a wide range of projects, including watershed mapping for community development, offering backyard gardening trainings for women, and teaching English and computer skills to middle school students. She also developed an open source GIS training for Peace Corps volunteers and staff.

Brianna is currently starting her new job at the EPA in the Office of Global Affairs and Policy in Washington D.C., where she'll be working on trans-boundary environmental issues with other policy bodies like the UN and the Arctic Council. 

Most Memorable Sustainability Projects at Macalester 

During her time at Macalester, Brianna served as the main senior facilitator for the student organization MacCares, helping to revitalize and refocus the org to bring different groups together around sustainability issues. She was also a strong advocate for the bottled water ban on campus, working closely with the Sustainability Advisory Committee on campus on which she later served as a student representative. Brianna also helped start the conversation about solar energy on campus. 

Career Advice 

When asked what advice she had for other students who were interested in a career in sustainability, Brianna emphasized "getting involved in something other than class, like an internship, a project that you're passionate about, or a student org. Academic experience is great and necessary, but you need to get out of the bubble a bit." Brianna says "internships really worked for me, I love my student orgs, and the IGC student council was a fantastic experience." She emphasizes "finding stuff that makes you excited and hopeful" stressing that "working on issues that are only depressing is too hard and you'll burn out." 

How does Sustainability Fit into Daily Life? 

During her time at Macalester, Brianna said that she was able to grow into her interest of international environmental issues, saying that "Mac gave me hope for the future," as well as "exciting and realistic solutions to big environmental problems." Brianna said that to this day she continues to use sustainability in her daily work, highlighting how important it is to be mindful of your daily actions, reducing impact, and trying to find work that does not just pay the bills but you actually support philosophically.