Terra Alpaugh

After a decade in New York, Terra Alpaugh returned to her home state last year to start her masters in Environmental Science and Management at the Bren School at UC Santa Barbara. She is specializing in Climate and Energy, with an emphasis on the impacts of climate change on water supplies. She is contributing to research on the potential global impacts of climate change on the wine industry. Terra’s career path, however, has been in no way linear! Born and raised in Los Angeles, Terra decamped to upstate New York to attend Cornell University for a Bachelor’s in history and international relations. During that time, she studied abroad and traveled extensively in China and Tibet, interned with the Natural Resource Conservation Service in Wyoming, and then worked for the National Archives at the Nixon Library on Watergate oral histories. After graduation, grant writing for animal and habitat conservation projects at the LA Zoo segued into work for the education-focused Guttman Foundation. For the past two years, she served as the Executive Assistant to the Vice Chancellor of Facilities Planning, Construction, and Management at the City University of New York.