Tiffany Duong ’02 paid a visit to the upper school on March 8 to give a talk about her career path, current work and future goals. Knowing early in life that she wanted to do conservation work, Duong became a renewable energy lawyer after college, working on projects such as the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm and Ivanpah Solar Power Tower. She then made a major career change that took her to the Amazon, Costa Rica and eventually the Florida Keys, where worked with the Coral Restoration Foundation to grow and replant corals along the Florida Reef Tract. With her CRF colleague Sara Nilsson, she co-founded the media production company Ocean Rebels, which seeks to inspire environmental action by creating “media that makes you think and act differently,” Duong said.

Nilsson also recounted her winding path from studying neuroscience (despite her childhood dream of being a National Geographic photographer) to learning documentary filmmaking at the University of the West of England. As a documentarian, she created a widely circulated film about how deaths of Scottish citizens abroad are rarely investigated and their families left without support.

Duong offered her own life as an example of the many divergences one’s career can take, and encouraged the students in attendance to “redefine success to be what makes you happy.”