Our Transpo Manager Heads to Yale this Fall

Emma Weissburg, who joined OAR in February of this year, is leaving us at the end of the summer to continue her studies at Yale. Emma launched the coordination of our transportation program at OAR, making OAR a leading transporter of vulnerable communities in the Southern Tier of NYS (we transport 70-80% of vulnerable populations). 

She'll be going to Yale School of the Environment to get a masters in environmental management.

Here below Emma shares her fascinating journey to OAR, combining her love of nature and her deep desire to protect both the Earth and the people who live on it.

"I grew up in Tompkins County and completed all my schooling here. After graduating from Cornell in 2021, I worked as a seasonal biologist for several years, covering a wide range of needs from renewable energy, entomology [study of bugs] and plant biology, forestry, and a little in ichthyology [study of fish]). I also coordinated an environmental justice program in Seattle and worked to support rural health equity in Montana. 

In 2024, I started to work internationally. I lived in Kiruna, Sweden for three months for the CAESAR campaign. The project's multi-faceted goals were to understand Cold Air Outbreaks, cloud feedback systems, and aerosol pollution in the Arctic. The work entailed operating scientific instruments on research flights over the Norwegian and Greenland Seas and up to Svalbard. After completing fieldwork for CAESAR, I moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where I worked in the coffee sector to assess if roasters (like Starbucks, Petes, Dunkin', etc.) were adhering to social and environmental standards. Through that work, I developed agronomy [study of farming] training programs and worked on the ground in India, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Colombia to train field teams and interview farmers.

I came back to the US in 2025, and joined the staff of OAR in February of 2026. When I first started, the organization wanted to build a transportation program. My work has entailed creating an internal system to support that capacity. Since launching the program in early March, our drivers Desirae, Angelo, and Daniel have completed almost 200 transportation cases, making OAR a leading transporter of vulnerable communities in the Southern Tier of NYS (we transport 70-80% of vulnerable populations). 

My background is in environmental science, but I am interested more broadly in how vulnerable communities are impacted disproportionately by climate change. People who spend the majority of their time outside -- whether farmers, refugees, homeless people -- are also the people who experience climate change the most directly. Because of this, I think it is especially important to work with these populations to meet their needs. My plans at grad school are to develop strategies that more vulnerable communities can use to strengthen their resilience in the face of climate change."