IAIA CEO Gary Baker sat down with Katie Fineran, recipient of the 2025 Young Professional Award. Katie receives this award for her active participation in IAIA’s Climate Change section and the Fit For Future Initiative, as well as creating an online community to help others communicate and enhance their impact on environmental issues.
Watch the video now (and find the full transcript below).
Gary Baker, IAIA CEO: Hello, again. We are back with our series on getting a closer look at some of our award winners this year -- some informal conversations. In that regard, I am really delighted to be joined by Katie Fineran, who is the recipient of our Young Professionals Award this year. That is given to someone who's probably in a relatively earlier stage in a career but is already making contributions to both IAIA and also impact assessment generally. Katie, many congratulations on the award. Welcome to this little chat. Now tell us more—I mean, what's been your background that has got you to where you are now, sitting in this chair receiving this award?
Katie Fineran, Award Winner: Thanks, Gary, for the introduction. My background -- so my undergraduate degree is in Environmental Science, and I specialized in ecosystem restoration, so I have a strong ecology background. And in 2017, I went to my first IAIA conference; it was my second year of undergrad. I did Juan Quintero's training course on biodiversity-friendly infrastructure and had an amazing time. It was actually my first time leaving the United States -- it was to go to the conference -- and it was just great to be in a room full of people from all over the world that were working to address climate change. The theme from the conference that year was using impact assessment to address climate change, and it was just really nice to be in a different space. Back in 2017, the conversation in my dormitory was whether or not climate change was real or not, and there was that debate. It was great to be at the conference where everyone was on the same page that climate change was real, and it was, "What are we going to do about it?" So that gave me a lot of hope to see people working in that space and doing that. Then I finished undergrad. I worked for a year at Eurofins, which is an environmental testing company, and then, when I finished up that project there -- it was a temporary position -- I went to graduate school and got my Master's in Public Health and Global Health Leadership -- that was in Haifa, in northern Israel. While I was there, we did a lot of leadership seminars. We had people from the UN, WHO, CDC come and talk about their work, which was really amazing to meet a lot of those people. Then, for my final project -- my capstone experience -- I did a Health Impact Assessment on a project that UNEP was doing in Ethiopia, where they were helping a community adapt to climate change, particularly drought. It was a desktop HIA, so I didn't interact with any stakeholders or people on the ground. It was just looking at the project and what was done, and then researching public health impacts of that and giving my recommendations. That was my first time doing an impact assessment, and I really enjoyed doing that.
Gary: It sounds like you packed in an awful lot, actually, in a short space of time. So from that initial annual conference you went to, you've got more and more involved in different aspects of IAIA. So just talk a little bit about that as well.
Katie: I most recently was at IAIA24 in Dublin. I went there and helped out with a couple of the different World Cafés, just as a notetaker and then helping to summarize the results. I think that's a great way for young professionals to get involved at the conference. They always need people to help with the World Cafés and take notes and work a table. So I did that last year, and then became more involved in the Climate Change Section and then an associated initiative where they're looking at updating impact assessment methodologies to be more able to address climate change and other planetary boundaries issues -- the Fit for Future Initiative -- we're still workshopping the name -- but helping out with that.
Gary: What's the next sort of target or ambition? Is it broadly still in Health Impact Assessment generally, or other paths? What do you see lies in the future?
Katie: Yeah, I'd say impact assessment -- I have both the health and the environment. I'd say environmental topics are my passion, but definitely I am interested in global health and climate change impacts on health. So impact assessment more broadly -- really anywhere that I can be helpful. We have a couple projects going with the Initiative for setting up training centers in Africa, which is kind of in the ideas stage. But definitely looking forward to helping with that, and maybe working on some publications potentially for IAPA or another journal on impact assessment, so working on that. I've also been setting up a business, so learning how to file an LLC and set up the website and learning course management software called Kajabi. So I've been working on that, and the idea for that is to put together training courses and also free content, but also paid courses on impact assessment, global health, environmental topics. My hope for that is that when people take those trainings or those courses, that they'll stick around and continue to interact with each other through the website, so we can create kind of a community or a network for people to engage further.
Gary: You've done an awful lot and sampled various aspects of IA, and I think clearly IAIA has served you well in terms of also giving you different experiences. But if you look at some of your cohort that you were either in grad school with or earlier, did they see that involvement in voluntary organizations in a similar way? Or would you say that you're particularly different? Is there still that sense that people do want to get involved in volunteering and see the benefits of it?
Katie: I've seen people with both opinions. Some see volunteering as crucial to building your network and getting to meet people and to discover opportunities. And then there's other people that see volunteering as exploitation and they need to be paid if they're going to contribute. But I obviously have never really seen it that way. So I've definitely known people to have both perspectives. But the way I see it, you know, it's not what you know, it's who you know. It's not who you know, it's who knows you. So if you can help people and they get to know you and see what you're capable of, then that leads to further opportunities.
Gary: So final question: what would be your best advice to young professionals coming into this arena? What are the things that they should be looking to do?
Katie: Yeah, so for young professionals particularly, I think my advice—especially with regards to what I was just saying about networking—I would caution against siloing yourself or forming a group with other young professionals. I think there's a tendency to do that among young people because they feel more comfortable or relatable. But really, I find that people that are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond have a more developed network. They have good advice and a lot of knowledge and are very willing to help. As a teenager, one of my best friends was my 80-year-old neighbor lady -- we'd look at cookbooks and watch TV together. So it's always been really comfortable and come naturally to me to see people that are older than me as people. They were in their 20s once, and to them, their 20s doesn't seem that long ago. I feel like when you get to know those people, you can really feel that they're not any different than you. So getting comfortable networking with people that are more advanced, later-stage career, and often times that's where the good stories and the good advice is.
Gary: That is very sound advice, and I think it's pretty clear as to how you might have won this award. It’s a very good summary and advice to young professionals coming in. So congratulations again, Katie, and thanks for sharing some of those thoughts with us today.
Katie: Thank you very much, Gary. Looking forward to Bologna.
