Yu Ann serves as an Associate on RMI’s Carbon-Free Buildings team, where she works on the Building Electrification initiative. In this capacity, she works to eliminate fossil fuels from our buildings in a manner that guarantees healthy, sustainable, and permanently affordable homes for all. Yu Ann currently researches the co-benefits of whole-home retrofit packages, particularly for frontline and environmental justice communities. She works on these issues at both a state and local level, with a particular focus on New York State and New York City. Furthermore, she’s investigating the role that public and affordable housing programs can play in driving faster adoption of green building practices and leading the housing market to equitable decarbonization.
Background
Before coming to RMI, Yu Ann helped the New York City Housing Authority develop its decarbonization roadmap as an Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps fellow. She has also conducted research to understand mechanisms that leverage private capital for the decarbonization of multifamily affordable housing and the importance of intersectional economy-wide climate policy.
In a previous life, Yu Ann served as a trial monitor at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and worked on transitional justice and postconflict resolution in Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia. In addition, she has in various capacities investigated forced labor and human trafficking in Hong Kong and across Southeast Asia to promote better migration standards and equitable worker rights and to abolish forced labor.
Education
MPA, Energy and Environment, Columbia University
BSocSc, Psychology (minor in Journalism), University of Hong Kong
Location
New York, NY
