The Greening of a Young Professional: Ashley O’Neill

The Alliance applauds Ashley O’Neill.

A few weeks before graduating from California State University (CSU) San Bernardino, Ashley, an intern with the Alliance’s Green Campus program, received her first job offer: Marketing Analyst in the California Alternative Rates Program (CARE) for residential energy efficiency at Southern California Edison (SCE).

Why the congratulations? From the Alliance’s perspective, Ashley’s success demonstrates the Green Campus and Green Schools mission: to promote awareness of energy efficiency among youth, and cultivate a new generation of energy-efficiency professionals. “Being a Green Campus intern was a life-changing experience for me. And I think the program has a really positive effect on campus life,” says Ashley, who had previously been exposed to the Green Schools program at her high-school in Hesperia, Calif.

When Ashley joined the Green Campus team as a paid junior intern in 2006, she helped the senior intern in developing the program’s portfolio of campus initiatives. Rising to the position of Team Manager her senior year, Ashley directed the program’s focus to achieving measurable energy savings; these included facilitating building and office audits at CSU Bernardino and presenting their findings to high-level university officials and community organizations. “I tried to take it in a quantitative direction, and really move more toward projects that displayed more measurable savings.”

So when the Director of Energy Efficiency at SCE – a Green Campus sponsor and Alliance Associate – offered her a position in their Energy Efficiency Department, she gladly accepted. As Marketing Analyst, Ashley is finding ways to deliver those “measurable savings” to those in her community.