Community Event: Dr. Karletta Chief

I went to hear Dr. Karletta Chief speak at an engineering diversity mixer toward the beginning of the quarter. She described the difficulties she confronted as a first-generation and Diné student at Stanford, how she managed to overcome them, and what inspires her in her current work. Growing up on her rez, her family lacked access to electricity and running water and faced the effects of water contamination and hazardous mining sites close by. At Stanford, motivated by the desire to help her family and community, she studied Civil and Environmental Engineering. Now she’s a professor at the University of Arizona who researches water management, health consequences of mining sites, and impacts of climate change on indigenous people. We were fortunate to have such an amazing woman as our guest speaker and I hope one day I can have even a fraction of the impact she’s had in the field of environmental and social justice.