Yvonne Shih was born and raised in Sarasota, Florida and earned her B.S. in Biology with a pre-medicine focus from the University of Florida along with a minor in Sociology. During her undergraduate work, she found a passion for conference planning, stakeholder engagement, and science communication. She was able to further develop these interests after graduation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) in Washington, DC. Her work with the Deputy Chief of Research & Development and with the Director of Sustainable Forest Management Research has been invaluable in giving her a high-level national perspective on USFS’s ongoing research. She was able to dive further into specific topic areas like the wildland-urban interface, smoke, silviculture, soils, and invasive species through organizing national stakeholder workshops, developing national science assessments, writing talking points for Congressional hearings, and producing communication tools for the public. At YSE, she is a second year Master of Environmental Management candidate specializing in ecosystem management and conservation. During her time at YSE, she is interested in the impacts of land use change on human health and community well being including deforestation and urbanization. This past summer, she interned at the U.S. Department of State in the Office of Environmental Quality working to support policy briefs on chemical, air quality, waste, and ocean plastic pollution. In addition, her internship offered her the opportunity to be an observer at pre-ministerial G20 and Montreal Protocol meetings which have lead her to attend UNFCCC COP26. In the future, she aspires to work within the public or private sector looking at how communities can become more resilient at a national and international level in the face of climate change.