Alumnus Samuel Campbell
- Fabiola M Rivera
- May 6
- 4 min read
In my 2nd year at UVa, I attended a GDS info session in which Professor Richard Handler strongly advocated for the value of the critical thinking skills we could develop as GDS majors. At the time I agreed with him in principle, but it was hard not to question how this might compare to popular alternatives like the Comm School that touted the employability of their students.
Nine years after my GDS graduation in 2017, I'm grateful I followed my gut and gave more weight to Professor Handler's advice. In my relatively short career thus far, I've already worked in three different fields, and in each of my jobs as well as my career shifts, critical thinking skills have been my most valuable asset. Technical skills are likewise valuable, but these are easier to pick up on the job, and as far as employability goes, I think a graduate degree with a technical component, pursued after several years of post-undergrad work experience, adds more value than a Bachelor's that focuses on technical skills at the expense of critical thinking.
Here's what my path has looked like since I first heard Professor Handler's GDS pitch. I studied abroad for both semesters of my 3rd year as an exchange student at Sciences Po in Paris, France's top school for political science -- this extended study abroad was something I only could have done as a GDS (and French) major, thanks to the program's flexibility and international focus. Towards the end of that year, I headed to Senegal with Professor David Edmunds and two of my fellow GDS students to participate in an international sustainable agriculture conference and to scope out future student internship opportunities. Also in the summers before and after that year, I led groups of fellow students in researching water purification in Tanzania, funded by UVa's Jefferson Public Citizens program and Center for Global Health Equity. I wrote my GDS thesis on human-elephant conflict in Eastern Africa (essentially, the conflict between development and conservation efforts).
Three days after graduation, I headed to Wyoming to work as a horse wrangler at the A Bar A Ranch, to learn how ecotourism can support land and wildlife conservation. In the year that followed graduation, I also volunteered for a nature reserve in Costa Rica, all the while applying for full-time roles in wildlife conservation. When, after several months of applications, it seemed like I wasn't getting much traction, I widened the net and found a very different sort of work with a pharmaceutical research company, negotiating contracts and budgets for clinical trials. Though distant from conservation, it seemed like a good opportunity to support myself while exploring other interests in public health and law.
One year later my childhood dream of working in wildlife conservation had only grown stronger, and in 2019 I moved to Hanoi, Vietnam as a Luce Scholar, where I worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society to combat illegal wildlife trade, particularly trade in African species fueled by consumer demand in Asian countries. The Luce fellowship turned out to be the ideal springboard for me to finally work in international wildlife conservation (a big shout out to UVa's Office of Citizen Scholar Development and Professor Edmunds for helping me to apply for the fellowship). When the yearlong fellowship concluded in 2020, I decided to stay on in Vietnam – their more effective handling of the COVID-19 pandemic relative to the US helped my decision – and after several months as an English tutor, I found work with TRAFFIC, where I supported a USAID-funded project to reduce the risk of future pandemic disease emergence via wildlife trade in Asia and Africa. In 2022, I returned to the US to pursue a Master of Environmental Management at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. Relative to classmates who'd gone directly from undergrad to master's studies, I found my years of work experience in between both helped me to get more out of the program, and on a very practical level, to earn more scholarship funding.
One of my favorite things about being a student (particularly in returning to the classroom after working for a few years) is testing out as many classes as possible at the start of each semester. I thought I would continue to focus on wildlife conservation in grad school, but a favorite class that I tested on my first day was about the global energy system. Our current fossil-fuel reliant energy system is the main driver of climate change, so in shifting to work on clean energy I saw a unique opportunity to get at the root cause of many of the environmental issues I care about. Since graduating in 2024, I've been working for National Grid Ventures based in Brooklyn, where I manage the risks of projects ranging from offshore wind to electricity transmission.
Throughout each of these experiences and changes, my critical thinking foundation in GDS has served me well. Whether in an NGO, a university, or a large company, my GDS learnings continue to help me assess the value of organizations' goals and actions, and to steer myself to where I feel I can have the greatest positive impact on the issues I care most about.
Samuel Campbell
Want to reach out to Samuel?
Email: campbell.sam.g@gmail.com.
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