Peggy Nguyen, EIT, D.Env Candidate
Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
Peggy began her doctoral studies with the IoES in 2017 while working full-time at the City of Los Angeles as an environmental specialist. During her 16 years with the City, she helped inspire support for the creation of the LA Parks Foundation and the Griffith Park Wildlife Management Plan; co-founded Friends of the LAX Dunes (FOLD) by empowering community members (FOLD eventually became a partnership between The Bay Foundation and LA World Airports (LAWA)) and an internal partnership between the LA Zoo and LAWA that is enabling the gradual removal of invasive weeds from the 307-acre El Segundo Blue Butterfly Reserve; spearheaded agency- and city-wide business process/capital improvement program/project management training/design and technical standard/policy improvements in support of climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation and enhancement, and environmental justice; helped with the development and measurement of the City’s Biodiversity Index; and worked with the sanitation industry to advocate for federal and state pollution source reduction solutions and funding.
For her residency, Peggy Nguyen has worked as a senior environmental scientist/project manager, and after earning her Engineer in Training license, is now working as a hazardous substances engineer and project manager at the CalEPA Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) where she is supporting implementation of Governor Newsom’s Cleaning-up Vulnerable Communities Initiative in workforce development and contaminated site identification and cleanup efforts in vulnerable communities, and sea level rise planning.
Peggy Nguyen earned a M.S. in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from U.C. Berkeley, an M.Ed. from UCLA, and a Graduate Academic Certificate in Restoration Ecology from the University of Idaho. She completed her science/math foundational coursework at Harvard University as a pre-med, and earned a B.A. in Psychobiology/Psychology.
Her interest in environmental science and engineering is broadly interdisciplinary and deep, and she hopes to continue to dive deep during her doctoral studies and work on interesting interdisciplinary project teams to help to put in service to the public the best available integrated policy, science, environmental management and engineering and technological solutions for challenging environmental problems.
Education:
- UC Extension, Non-Profit Management, Project Management, Sustainable Business, Technical Program Manager
- M.S., Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources
- M.Ed., Bilingual Cultural Language Acquisition and Development/Urban Science Education, UCLA Center X Teacher Education Program
- Graduate Academic Certificate, Restoration Ecology, University of Idaho
- B.A. with high honors, Psychology/Psychobiology/Pre-Med, Harvard University
