Alexis Torres
CIRCA Climate Change Intern - (2020 - Present)
Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation
Alexis is a climate change intern at CIRCA who has worked on multiple projects. One being the Resilience Round Up, a monthly e-newsletter including local, state, and national news clips on resilience and adaptation. She has created and edited short videos for our annual summit and YouTube page along with writing and editing for CIRCA’s website while translating outreach materials about sea level rise and community climate adaptation into Spanish. This past year Alexis has worked on CIRCA’s product, the Connecticut Environmental Justice Screening Tool. Before the tool was released, she conducted research on statewide environmental justice mapping tools to create the report “Reaching Connecticut’s Hispanic/Latino Community About Environmental Justice Through GIS Mapping Tools.” The report compares map features and discusses recommendations that were considered for the final version of the tool. Over the Summer of 2023, Alexis contributed in the revision for the tool’s Spanish app, translated the closed captions for the tool’s tutorial video, and created the Connecticut Environmental Justice Screening Tool High School Lesson Plan. She served as a grassroot community member on the Mapping Tool Advisory Committee which aided in the development of the report and the lesson plan. Her volunteer work in the Coastal Bend of Texas and the Bahamas for natural disaster relief sparked her niche in climate/environmental justice work. Her conservation journey began in the Summer of 2020 where she hiked a segment of the Continental Divide Trail in Wyoming while participating in a conservation corps on the rugged mountains of Northwestern Colorado. She is expected to graduate from UConn Avery Point in December 2023 with an individualized major in Marine Resources and Indigenous Communities. She hopes to extend her career into marine and environmental policy in D.C. with a goal of bringing environmental justice to underrepresented groups.
