The University of Vermont Graduate College is pleased to announce that the 2017-18 Thomas J. Votta Scholarship recipient is Bonnie Reese, enrolled as a Natural Resources doctoral candidate and Certificate of Graduate Study in Complex Systems student.

Bonnie Reese is from Concord, Massachusetts. As a child, she spent her summers in Vinalhaven, a small lobstering island in Maine, and developed a lifelong love of the forest and a deep well of curiosity around the natural world. She was also interested in human behavior and earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology from Trinity College in Hartford, CT. After college she moved to San Francisco, where she embarked upon a career at the Citigroup Private Bank, eventually becoming a Vice President. In 2009, she earned an MBA from Babson College in Wellesley, MA with a focus on entrepreneurship. While at school she co-founded Radius Tracking Systems where she served as CEO and successfully fundraised and developed an RFID-based hardware and software solution for commercial laundries. Following her work at Radius, Bonnie moved to Vermont where she worked with entrepreneurs to develop and evolve their business development strategies.

As Bonnie’s interest and fluency in entrepreneurship developed, she was inspired by her clients’ visions and became interested in how innovation and entrepreneurship could help change the world and mitigate climate change. At a Gund Tea at the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute, Bonnie heard a presentation by Jennie Stephens, a UVM Professor who was working to facilitate the country’s transition from an energy system based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable energy. The critical need that Professor Stephens described in her talk lay at the intersection of Bonnie’s interests and skills. Her background in Psychology could be used to explore and analyze potential areas for entrepreneurial innovation and this work would allow Bonnie’s career to have a direct impact on climate change mitigation.

Bonnie is currently working towards her PhD in Natural Resources with a Certificate in Complex Systems. The complexity of the energy sector can best be understood through a systems approach, and the programming and mathematical coursework required for the Certificate in Complex Systems has resulted in a much deeper and more technical skill set with which she can address some of the key challenges in the energy transition. In order to flesh out the intersection between energy, the environment, and entrepreneurship she has worked extensively in both the Natural Resources and Complex Systems departments, gathering insights from each that complement one another in surprising and potentially powerful ways. Ultimately, she hopes to drive change in the energy industry, encouraging new social and technological innovation to solve some of the world’s most important problems.

In addition to her academic work, Bonnie’s curiosity and passion for the outdoors has resulted in a plethora of extra-curricular activities. She enjoys tennis, rock climbing, downhill and cross-country skiing, sewing, improvisational acting, snowshoeing, hiking, cooking, brewing, and tree identification. Her five-year old daughter Scarlet is an enthusiastic participant in most of these activities as well (with the exception of brewing). Bonnie and Scarlet live in Winooski, Vermont and spend a lot of time playing outside.