By Keemia Zhang
The Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) has been the launchpad for many a career among its student employees – among them, Amy Johnson Rodas: an honors student and double Golden Bear (B.S. ‘24; B.A. ‘24) turned legislative aide for the Berkeley City Council. Amy credits CLEE with jumpstarting her professional skillset.
“I don’t know where I would have been without it,” Amy declares. “CLEE was a firm launching point.”
When Amy first started, CLEE was on the verge of a major growth spurt, having just approximately 20 employees. “In the two years I was there, it exploded into 40 people, and clearly is just expanding and expanding, while so many research institutions are having funding pulled from them. It’s incredible, honestly.”
Amy first began at CLEE in her junior year. “I had the room to take on more responsibility, and a job made sense, because I was work-study eligible,” she recalls. The dual Political Science and Conservation & Resource Studies major received two offers – a technical role at the Rausser College of Natural Resources, and an administrative assistant position at CLEE. “I was always interested in environmental law and governance, so I went with CLEE.”
Amy’s new role helped her develop a banner professional skillset, including event planning, external communications, data analysis, and website management – all of which, she says, have significantly translated into her current role working for Berkeley City Councilmember Igor Tregub.
“A huge portion of my responsibilities is constituent services, but I also take care of administrative responsibilities and, on occasion, write legislation. Because I got such a broad diversity of skills, I can just pull out of my back pocket and say, ‘I’ve done this before!’”
Amy hopes to stay with the City Council for at least another year, looking into a possible path in graduate education in environmental theory and urban planning. The legislative aide cites CLEE’s broad portfolio of work as a major factor in helping shape her career trajectory.
“I think what makes CLEE special is the interdisciplinary nature. Some people there are land use planners, some people focus on economics, some people focus on the energy sector, and of course there are the lawyers. It really helped me understand that there were a lot of ways to continue being in the environmental sector.”
Amy says her professional beginnings at CLEE gave her “a lot of confidence,” especially as a first-generation American and college student to boot. “I definitely experienced imposter syndrome being at Cal,” Johnson admits. “I think having professional work experience helped me get past that, especially because the job market I came into is incredibly tough. I got incredibly lucky.”
She has an enormous appreciation for the work-study program, and emphatically recommends it to students who are eligible – which, she points out, due to its confusing interface, not all students might know about. “I am so abundantly glad that it exists. I graduated debt-free, partly thanks to CLEE,” Amy says. “I was also in a 4-bedroom apartment and sharing a bedroom, and it was still not cheap.”
Today, Amy has continued her commitment to CLEE’s mission by joining the Nerd Herd, a group of donors who have pledged recurring support of $10 or more toward CLEE. ”$10 a year, that’s a cup of coffee these days in the Bay Area, so that was a pretty easy decision to make,” Johnson jokes. “I gained so much at CLEE. Becoming a donor was the most simple way to pay it back. Donating is also a very symbolic way of saying, ‘I believe in what CLEE’s doing.’”
The article was made possible by support from the Erin Ziegler Fund, an endowment for the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment within Berkeley Law.