Charissa Verdoorn

I started my career as a teacher with a double major in education and Spanish, which I completed in 2013. After teaching, I worked as a field organizer for the Democratic Party during the 2018 election, really trying to live out my values by helping elect people I believed in. After that election, I had a decision point about whether to go back to teaching or lean into climate change action, which I've always cared about but never thought I could make an impact in because I wasn't going to be a scientist. I learned that you can actually help in lots of other ways, so I pivoted into working at a climate nonprofit back in Minnesota where I'm from originally, helping faith communities take action on climate change. That was really amazing and I got to live out my values and passions, but I realized I wanted to go farther in this space and learn more about clean energy and decarbonization. I would see churches install solar on their roofs and get really excited, but I didn't even really know the ins and outs of how you make this transition happen. So I started looking for grad school programs and found this program at CU Boulder called Masters of the Environment, a professional master's focused on sustainability with a clean energy specialization. My husband and I talked it over and decided to make the big transition and have kind of an adventure moving to Colorado. I was able to do my grad program full-time, and during that time I worked at a tribally owned renewable energy development company doing about 10 hours a week as an internship. I completed my Master's of Environmental Management with a specialization in renewable and sustainable energy in 2024. It was an amazing opportunity where I learned so much and was able to pivot my career to really focus on and add on experience in actually doing decarbonization and clean energy. Now I work at Scout Clean Energy as an associate project manager on our West Region team, managing utility-scale wind, solar, and battery storage projects. Every day is completely different, and I learn things every single day because we're dealing with something new. I work supporting our lead project managers, coordinating permits, land use, community engagement, and working with all these different teams within Scout including engineering, GIS, finance, and more. The skills I bring are a sense of organization to keep track of everything and make these massive projects happen, strong communication skills to work with external stakeholders and internal teammates and the community, and an ability to prioritize things because there are so many things that need to be done kind of all at once sometimes.