• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2022

• Arizona State University, Bachelor of Science in Geography and Sustainability, ‘22

• Host Institution: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

• Executive Mentor: Hannah Kerner

• Brookie Mentor: Erica McNamee

Erica Kriner never thought she would end up in aerospace. As a child growing up in rural Arkansas and staging hunger strikes to protect the trees, she always imagined she’d grow up to be an actress and an advocate. Instead, she is now a senior at Arizona State University where she double-majors in Geography and Sustainability.

In 2019, Erica studied abroad in South Africa to understand the challenges of sustainability in wildlife tourism. She left for the trip a month after her grandfather died, and in the process of learning about South Africa’s socioecological landscape, she also had to learn to grapple with the deepest grief she could imagine.

After returning from South Africa with a renewed passion for science and communication, Erica was selected for the Clinton Global Initiative University. She used this experience to draft a project for expanding intercommunity connections for vulnerable populations on the edges of wildlife reserves. During this time, she discovered a project focusing on human-elephant conflict through the NASA DEVELOP National Program and earned a spot on the team of four working to map land use land cover change alongside elephant movement patterns to determine risk for conflict.

The DEVELOP program spawned new passions in Erica: one for remote sensing, and one for NASA itself. Erica continued to pursue the DEVELOP program, returning for two more terms, once as a project lead and once as an assistant fellow. She then used this experience to springboard into an internship within NASA, conducting interviews to determine the agency’s response to resilience and environmental justice.

In pursuit of a legacy that can honor her grandfather’s memory, Erica has dedicated her life to saving the planet and bringing aerospace to a more sustainable future. However, even goddesses need to relax sometimes. In her free time, Erica likes to spend late nights dancing and singing among the trees or lounging in a hammock with a good book. If aerospace doesn’t pan out, be on the lookout for her directorial debut in the world of horror films. For now, Erica is ecstatic to be matched with NASA Goddard, where she can delve into the world of communication at the organization of her dreams.