From Harris to the World: How the Bartlett Fellowship Launches Environmental Leaders

From its inception, the James Bartlett Fellowship Program has empowered students to prepare for — and help shape — the future of environmental policy. Now in its 13th year, the Fellowship has empowered nearly 100 students from the Harris School of Public Policy to work in the fields of environment, energy, and climate. Through a unique partnership between the Harris School and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), Fellows gain access to transformative internships and hands-on experience. The impact of the program spans the globe—from Beijing to Mexico City—where today’s policymakers and analysts are applying the Harris School’s deep understanding of economic policy to address some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

“It's developed into a cohesive worldwide community of students and faculty interested in this area of research,” says Jay Bartlett, SM’08, who named the Fellowship after his father, Jim, an investment banker who has long supported educational causes. “We have former Fellows working in the energy storage space in the private sector in the United States, and others doing international development and finance in the clean energy space. There is great geographical and topical diversity among Fellows.”

One such Fellow is Pedro Liedo, MPP’18. Fresh from earning an economics degree at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de Monterrey in Mexico City, Liedo received a Sustainable Energy Scholarship from the Mexican government to study at the University of Chicago. “I knew that UChicago had the Bartlett Fellowship and I wanted to be part of it,” says Liedo. As a 2016-2017 Fellow, Liedo merged his interests in public policy and energy by analyzing the connection between energy policies and voter turnout in India. It also changed the course of his career.

“I started going to the seminars. I worked a bit with a visiting professor and I first got to know what was happening in the arena of environmental economics,” says Liedo, whose research ideas, like analyzing oil lease auctions in Mexico, were shaped by feedback from faculty. “As I got to meet more the faculty that were working on energy and environmental economics, that inspired me to take the PhD sequence in my second year of Harris.” After earning a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis, Liedo returned to his alma mater in Mexico, where he is now an assistant professor—a path that began with the Bartlett Fellowship. “It gave me the clarity of mind that I wanted to pursue a career in academia.”

Jordan Graham, MPP’21, came to the Bartlett Fellowship from a different angle. After carving out an award-winning career as a political reporter for the Orange County Register, Graham became disillusioned with journalism and decided to shift gears. “I was on the other side of policy where you're reporting on what’s happening at the municipal and county level,” says Graham. “And I got frustrated with the lack of action.”

Graham described himself as “stressed out” over the climate crisis and was drawn to the idea of working on clean energy policy. When he landed at Harris during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was initially unsure how to engage with climate policy; he sought practical experience beyond academic coursework, but internship opportunities were scarce. The Bartlett Fellowship dovetailed perfectly with his new direction, which included a role with ETC, a Chicago-based non-profit that does environmental work in the Midwest where he worked on distributed energy resources (DERs) and regulatory proceedings.

“It ended up setting me off on the trajectory of a clean energy policy career,” he says. That trajectory, which included an internship at Tesla and a role advising Carrie Zalewski, the chair of the Illinois Commerce Commission, happened quickly. “In a very short time, I went from having my first experience of working on issues related to renewable energy resources and regulatory dockets to working for the regulator and trying to figure things out from that angle,” Graham recalls.

Now a full-time managing policy advisor at Tesla, Graham directs the company’s residential and grid-scale energy policy efforts in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S., developing policies related to, among other things, virtual power plants and battery energy storage. And the DERs policy that he learned in the Bartlett Fellowship is part of his everyday work now. “It's really easy to trace it back to the Bartlett Fellowship,” says Graham. “It set up the dominoes for me to end up in a clean energy career, which I really love.”

Claudia Barrera, MPP’17, was drawn to the Bartlett Fellowship through her interest in energy policy—though beyond that, she wasn’t sure of her path. “I was amazed by some of my classmates that were there for a reason, only one reason, and they pursued it until the end,” says Barrera, whose background was in financial markets. “For me, was more than like a random walk.” Her Fellowship gave her direct experience in the sectors of climate and sustainability, during which she studied the relationship between climate change and sexual violence in South Africa.

Following her time at Harris, Barrera returned to her native Mexico to work in the Banco de México and later parlayed her business skills into a consulting role at McKinsey & Company in Mexico City. But it was obvious that Barrera’s true passions—sustainable climate and women’s advocacy—laid elsewhere. After working in an early-stage fertility startup, Barrera made the move to New York where she ultimately landed at CREO, a nonprofit network of family offices investing in climate and sustainability. “We catalyze and accelerate everything that has to do with investing and deploying money in climate change and sustainability projects,” says Barrera, who claims she learned how to think critically about data—particularly questioning biases and understanding what data may conceal—from her time as a Bartlett Fellow.

Now, Barrera is expanding CREO’s presence in Latin America, promoting investment in sustainability and highlighting its potential beyond philanthropy, while also considering societal inequalities. “We want more people to get out of poverty to have access to energy—basically lifting the social floor without breaking the environmental ceiling."

Like Jordan Graham, Pedro Liedo, and countless others, Barrera is a perfect embodiment of the traits that link Bartlett F: empathy and a dedication to environmental issues. “I have interacted with many Fellows from different cohorts professionally,” says Liedo. “And I would completely agree that it attracts a genuinely caring type of person.”

In May, all Bartlett alumni were invited to a series of events at Harris to commemorate the Fellowship. The response, which included presentations by former Fellows, showcased the program’s evolution and impact, and strengthened the community’s ties. “It was great to see how these Fellowships have served to broaden students’ experiences,” Jay Bartlett says. “Meanwhile, faculty let us know how they took on projects they might not have otherwise, broadening research opportunities at the University.”

 The Bartlett Fellowship continues to foster its network of people with a WhatsApp channel and quarterly lunches where Fellows are invited to share their research, pose questions and provide support to one another.. A new degree program, MSCEP (master of science and climate energy policy), launching in summer 2026, will offer yet another point of entry for students interested in pursuing a career in the environmental sector. “The Bartlett Fellowship has great connections with entities that are doing important work in the environmental and clean energy policies base,” says Jordan Graham. “And if you're looking to get into that space, this is a great stepping stone to get from point A to point B.”

Just look at what it did for Graham, Barrera, and Liedo.