Weslynne Ashton
Assistant Professor of Environmental Management and SustainabilityWeslynne Ashton made a splash in the environmental arena as far back as her childhood. "My parents remind me that I was swimming in the ocean before I could walk or talk—you could say that's where it started," she says about how her outdoor lifestyle in Trinidad and Tobago seemed a portent to her future direction.
She acknowledges that something else made a strong impression on her. "Trinidad, unlike most Caribbean islands, is heavily industrialized and the economy is primarily driven by oil and gas exploration and processing. It was not unusual to see industrial pollution spilling into the natural environment, and this juxtaposition motivated my interest in reducing society's impacts on the environment."
She obtained a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master's degree and doctorate in environmental science from Yale University, where she also served as an associate research scientist, lecturer, and director of the Industrial Ecology in Developing Countries program. One of her most significant accomplishments in the program took place in Bangladore, India, working with the nonprofit organization Resource Optimization Initiative.
"I inspired their management about new possibilities for the organization, growing the staff team, establishing new projects, and building the capacity within new team members to conduct research on topics like industrial eco-efficiency and informal recycling," she explains about the project, whose impact proved to be far-reaching. "More than just doing research, I reoriented their focus to enhance communication of results and outreach to interested stakeholders who can take the results and put them into useful practice."
