Synapse and Climable Welcome New Participants of the Energy Workforce Diversification (EWD) Internship Program
This fall we are thrilled to welcome the latest participants of the Energy Workforce Diversification (EWD) Internship Program (formerly called the Energy Justice internship). In fall of 2021, Climable and Synapse partnered to establish the program to diversify the energy analysis field through mentorship; relationship building; and exposure to regulatory; utility, and energy processes.
Welcome Ariella Fuzaylov and Samridhi Sanghvi! Check out their brief introductions below.
My name is Ariella Fuzaylov, and I am currently pursuing a career transition from the software industry to the climate sector. I grew up just west of Boston and I studied computer science and statistics at McGill University in Montreal. I am interested in the climate sector due to my passion for optimizing our limited resources through data-driven decision-making and solutions, as well my desire to use data collection tools to gather community input and data on technologies that impact them.
During my time at McGill, I focused on computation theory, data analysis and visualization (in R, SQL, and Python), and bias reduction in survey design. As an undergraduate, I researched user satisfaction with common website interfaces through AB testing, existing product analysis, and a user survey. This research culminated in a redesign of existing interfaces for displaying recipes that would better serve users, focusing on older demographics and providing haptic feedback to users to improve readability.
After university, I entered the software industry as a data engineer. My work focused on creating and maintaining reliable pathways for data to travel from the source to the users and stakeholders as well as maintaining the data storage on both ends of the pathway. This work taught me about resilient design patterns but lacked the positive impact I know that data can make. At Synapse, I am interested in learning about how data can inform the renewable energy transition to create a more equitable energy system. I am particularly interested in working with Geo-spatial data, working on energy policy, and improving my data analysis and technical communication skills.
Most weekends you can find me hiking and taking note of every plant I see—it’s slow going. In the evenings, I enjoy rock climbing, reading, painting, and learning more about botany, mycology, and foraging for my next hike!
My name is Samridhi Sanghvi (Sum-ri-dhee Sung-vee), but I typically go by Sami (Sumee). I was born and raised just north of Cambridge in Lowell, MA and have been passionate about Environmental Justice since a flood destroyed most of my home when I was 5 years old.
I recently graduated from University of Massachusetts Boston with a double major in Economics and Mathematics and a minor in Wealth, Poverty, and Opportunity. I participated in the accelerated masters track for Applied Economics and have started my last year in that program. I’m currently working on developing my thesis and deciding next steps postgraduation. Hopefully, my time at Synapse will help me figure out both! Most of my schoolwork and past internships have been focused on socio-economic equity and I’m excited to be working at Synapse to learn more about energy’s role in that.
During my free time, I like to read. I have a TikTok account dedicated to reading called Full blown Nerd™. In March 2021, I was a founding member of a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping marginalized authors in the publishing industry promote their books. We held panels all weekend long for two weekends in August and had about 60 authors, ranging from NYT bestsellers to smaller authors, as well as 3,000 attendees. I also love to travel and am thinking about picking up pottery or crocheting as a hobby.